This country was founded as a republic, not a democracy.  Why is everybody always talking about this democracy thing?  Benjamin Franklin said, "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.  Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the results."

...it is silly to think that excluding any specific background will produce a better or more fair process , sort of an anti-prerequisite ... some of the finest statesmen of our history have been lawyers or had been politicians for many years ... reagan for gods sake would have been excluded , having been governmor of calif. ... if this logic worked then i suppose a man that had attended law school but failed the bar would qualify for the goooh process , but the man that attended law school and passed the bar would not ? ... as i said , it is just ludicrous .gch

Lawyers should not be in a position to enact laws because they are the only group that can provide remedy.  It's as if a doctor poisoned the water supply and forced you to come to him for the antidote.  Lawyers, in their training, are taught to argue, and they confuse argument for intelligent discourse.  For instance, if you pose the question, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make noise?", to a lawyer, you would hear all sort of what ifs and buts from attorneys.  In fact, there are two answers: 1) who cares? and 2) yes, because the perception of sound is not necessary to its generation. 

In the private sector, lawyers are allowed to engage in activities that are forbidden in other professions.  To lie, mislead, fee-split, and take enormous sums of money from their clients on contingency are just a few.  When they get in positions of influence, the taking of money from lobbyists and defense contractors is just "business as usual". 

In the framing of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, the authors were not dominated by lawyers.  Two questions: 1) are the laws enacted today as clearly defined as those documents?and 2) do we really need more laws, or should a group of sound-thinking individuals declare a moratorium on new laws and review the necessity and redundancy of the existing ones?

Cfuller makes a good point in that GOOOH does not suggest that lawyers or the wealthy can not run for office - they already hold over 50% of the seats as members of the two parties, and they will continue to claim the vast majority of the seats in the House if the two parties maintain their stranglehold on the process.

Sometimes you have to take a step backwards before you can take two forward. If the system does not put men of a different stamp in office, will we get the change that we seek? Would the country be better off if we had representatives who were not so wealthy and who were educated in business, economics, theology or other trades? Do we benefit by having half of all seats held by men educated in law, or could diversity add value as it does in the business world? Change is needed, and building a more diverse House of Representatives may very well outweigh maintaining the status quo.

A party can and does discriminate.  Are you welcome, as a common man, to run for office on the democratic or republican ticket?  I know I'm not.  I'm not liberal enough to run as either and I'm not rich enough.  I don't befriend snakes because those who do deserve it when they're bitten.  They're snakes, for crying out loud.

This is one of the reasons we're in this mess.  Most people are unwilling to exclude those who would rule them by oligarchy or kleptocracy.

I'm not saying exclude the wealthy or the law degree holders from the electoral process (as I originally thought GOOOH was doing), but a party must be defined by something.  It's simply being defined by commoners who don't want to be ruled by the wealthy and those who would steal your wealth, steal your right to preserve your life and steal your right to true liberty.

I can no more give a seminar on the value of having a nanny look after my children than the wealthy can give a seminar on the difficulties of living paycheck to paycheck.

You're discrimination would have excluded Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, a couple of of the founding fathers you like refer to.

Saying there are too many lawyers in Washington is like saying there are too many physically fit firemen, correlation does not always imply causation.

I like Joe's weed comment.

Most importantly, I encourage everyone to keep posting justification for and against. The current screening criteria and questions merely reflect the current state of thinking, and what we think will most effectively get the change we all seek. We will survey all GOOOH members on many very specific issues, including "should lawyers be excluded from participating in GOOOH?" next spring. A better way to approach this may simply be to ask a dozen or so questions (e.g. Are you a lawyer? Do you have more than $11.5m in assets? Are you a member of a political family?) of each participant and then let the others in each pool determine what is important.

-- 11/25/2007 1:52:11 PM.

-- 11/25/2007 1:52:47 PM.

Lawyers are not excluded from serving jury duty.  Lawyers are often struck from the panel because of their profession but not by the process itself.  The lawyers trying the case can strike anyone they want, up to a certain number.  Usually the party with the weaker argument does not want another lawyer on the jury, because the lawyer will "retry" the case with the other jurors, pointing out the weaker arguments and ultimately convincing some or all of the jurors who won.