Quote:
Originally Posted by ianch99
What a load of twaddle. He has an informed opinion and seem perfectly able to express it succinctly via social media.
I suspect it more a case of you not liking the opinion rather than the medium over which he expresses it.
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Of course I don’t like it ... but then you don’t like the contrary, do you.
Liking or not liking is besides the point anyway. The danger lies in uncritical acceptance of opinions we happen to agree with, regardless of how well informed they appear to be. Twitter as a medium is the ultimate echo chamber for the reinforcement of comforting points of view. The ability to instantly retweet, coupled with the prohibition on any significant critical engagement inherent in the character limit, ensures that it has little more intellectual credence than an internet meme, regardless of who is doing the tweeting.
There are legal opinions on both sides of any legal debate. At the end of the day one opinion is accepted and the other is rejected, or perhaps aspects of both are upheld. “Informed opinion” is not congruent with “correct”. There are informed opinions on both sides, both informed by a trained ability to assess relevant information, yet they are never both fully validated in the final judgment.
As things stand, the “secret barrister” has nothing more than a contested legal opinion, that cannot be properly evaluated until it is tested in court against contrary legal opinions. Everybody with multiple brain cells should dislike the tendency to assume (s)he is correct just because (s)he is a barrister.