A lifetime of protecting and advocating alongside whistleblowers, the excluded, and the exploited and has convinced “Movement Lawyer” Lewis Pitts that law in capitalist society inevitably protects the privileged. He came on Philosophisnt to discuss why with Roman Raies. Pitt's biography The Life of A Movement Lawyer by Jason Langberg details how his life experiences from growing up in rural South Carolina, applying for conscientious objector status in college, taking on corporate corruption, and working in the organizations that held to account the Reagan administration for the Iran-Contra scandal shape his view that systems rather than people, are the source of immorality.
His defense of rehabilitation over punishment for people who commit shocking acts might even strike some as merciful and nonjudgmental to the point of being morally apathetic, but I wanted to pick Lewis’s brain in order to find out how he would challenge others to reconsider their worldview on justice. Most of all, if today’s political system can’t produce justice, what system can?
