Lowering the Bar

It's not completely unreasonable. Here's a quote from Warren v. District Of Columbia

> A publicly maintained police force constitutes a basic governmental service provided to benefit the community at large by promoting public peace, safety and good order. The extent and quality of police protection afforded to the community necessarily depends upon the availability of public resources and upon legislative or administrative determinations concerning allocation of those resources. The public, through its representative officials, recruits, trains, maintains and disciplines its police force and determines the manner in which personnel are deployed.

> At any given time, publicly furnished police protection may accrue to the personal benefit of individual citizens, but at all times the needs and interests of the community at large predominate. Private resources and needs have little direct effect upon the nature of police services provided to the public. Accordingly, courts have without exception concluded that when a municipality or other governmental entity undertakes to furnish police services, it assumes a duty only to the public at large and not to individual members of the community.

Australia [0] and England [1] are roughly similar (the only countries I googled; I don't have time to google more but I'd guess almost all countries are legally or practically the same).

In general in the US the courts are reluctant to second-guess police officers for decisions they might…

> Waiving your rights is about removing future options. Since you're agreeing not to do something.

Every contract entails waiving your rights and removing future options. And tons of contracts include, as consideration, the agreement not to do something. Leases, for example. If you lease an apartment, you usually have an implied legal right to sublet; correspondingly, most landlords have a clause in the lease requiring you to waive that right, right next to the clauses requiring you not to get a pit bull or smoke cigarettes indoors or have somebody else living with you unbeknownst to the landlord.

Another example is exclusivity agreements: a shopping mall might sign a contract with Panera giving that Panera an exclusive right to sell sandwiches at that mall, which means the mall is agreeing not to lease a different retail space to Subway or Quiznos. What if they lease it to Qdoba and Panera thinks a burrito is a sandwich? That was a real lawsuit, which Panera lost, not on the grounds that it's impossible to incur a negative obligation by contract, but on the grounds that a burrito is not a sandwich: https://loweringthebar.net/2006/11/judge_rules_bur.html

There are legal rights that are protected to the extent that you cannot waive them and that any contract that entails such a waiver is an illegal and unenforceable contract. It's just that these rights tend to be explicitly stated as such in law, and the right to go to a court of law is not currently one of them. Maybe…

> Everything about a "lawyer dog" is just bad journalism.

No. Not at all. From [0]:

> On Friday, the Louisiana Supreme Court declined to review the trial court’s ruling in State v. Demesme refusing to exclude incriminating statements that Desmesme allegedly made to a detective. The vote was 6-1 but there was no majority opinion—the court just denied review and noted one justice had voted to grant it. But Justice Crichton, one of the six concurring justices, did write a very brief opinion, saying he wanted to “spotlight the very important constitutional issue” presented. The conclusion above—including “reference to a ‘lawyer dog'”—is taken almost word-for-word from that opinion.

The conclusion mentioned in the quote above is in the article linked at [0]. The article is well worth reading.

> Since that wasn't an unambiguous statement saying he wanted a lawyer...

When you look at the entire sentence, it is clear that it really, really unambiguous is to anyone who isn't interested in jailing someone who talks funny:

> [I]f y’all, this is how I feel, if y’all think I did it, I know that I didn’t do it so why don’t you just give me a lawyer, [dawg] cause this is not what’s up.

"If you think I did it, just give me a lawyer." The desire for a lawyer is clear as day to anyone who's not using motivated reasoning to fabricate excuses to "justify" trampling over the rights of regular folks.

[0] <https://www.loweringthebar.net/2017/11/lawyer-dog.html>

Oregon ended up having State Senators flee across State lines. Even one going so far as to warn law enforcement to send unmarried men without families to try to forcibly collect them.

https://kval.com/news/local/oregon-senator-on-governor-sending-police-send-bachelors-and-come-heavily-armed

When there is as much on the line as there is in America's legislative system, you will be surprised the shenanigans that ensue.

The business of the Congress at one point had to ban the practice of dueling. Not necessarily because it wasn't seen as a way to settle a dispute, but that it happened so often. Kentucky I think is the state that specifically disqualifies legislators based on participation in duels.

https://www.sos.ky.gov/admin/land/resources/articles/Documents/CodeDuello.pdf

Robert's Rules of Order are often looked upon those with a darker sense of humor in the same light as the Third-man out rule in hockey. Ruins all the good fights.

Though Asia has been known for some doozies. I recall the use of either a chainsaw or fire axe at one point.

Ah! Taiwan was it.

http://loweringthebar.net/2017/07/brawling-again-in-taiwan.html

South Koreans seem to prefer the legislative Sledgehammer.

https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-korea-fight28-2009jan28-story.html

The full PDF link of complaint is linked from here:

http://www.loweringthebar.net/2012/06/carreon-v-the-oatmeal.html

Carreon did something quite interesting:

Carreon sues National Wildlife Federation and the American Cancer Society in order to give them all of the money collected in their name, preventing IndieGoGo to take 9% of the collected money and Inman to get any cent himself and to have a chance to decide how much to pay to which charity (claiming that Inman promised to pay only USD 20,000 to both). And of course to prevent him photographing with the collected money. :) Ground: the collection of the money over IndieGoGo wasn't done according to the law that regulates collection of charities.

Moreover, Carreon claims that he himself paid to the campaign(!) and wants to protect the charities and all contributors who assume that charities get everything that was paid.

Cool. It doesn't look like he didn't think about the suit.

> that "law" is some kind of magic...

Law is some kind of magic, though. Consider the case where I want to cast the "Lawyer" protection spell.

If I chant "I am invoking my right to remain silent. I want to contact my attorney" then the police must stop questioning me and provide me one [1]. The spell worked.

If I chant "This is how I feel, if y’all think I did it, I know that I didn’t do it so why don’t you just give me a lawyer dog ’cause this is not what’s up" then my spell is not strong enough and the police can interrogate me as they see fit [2].

And then there's the time where a wizard had to interpret a comma [3].

[1] https://www.nedbarnett.com/do-i-have-a-right-to-an-attorney-during-police-questioning/

[2] https://uproxx.com/culture/louisiana-supreme-court-suspect-lawyer-dog/

[3] https://www.loweringthebar.net/2017/03/the-oxford-comma-use-it.html