It is an English proverb, which means that it is stupid for the person not to have a law degree and to try to defend themselves. This saying expresses its meaning literally and is easy to interpret. In other words, it means that if a wise person is accused, he should have other people to defend him, such as lawyers. It also means that when a person represents himself in court, he has taken himself because he cannot defend himself properly. This saying is said to have appeared in Henry Kett`s book, The Flowers of Wit, first published in 1814. It reads: «I hesitate not to say that any man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client. At this time, in 1700, the lawyer John Brydall published a book entitled Non Compos Mentis; or The Law Relating to Natural Fools, Mad-Folks, and Lunatick Persons, which gives us an excellent summary of the law and general understanding of idiocy in the early eighteenth century. He described the system of «begging for an idiot,» referring to the process of requesting an investigation by the Court of Chancery to determine whether a person was legally foolish or not. From this flows our modern saying, «Do you think I`m an idiot?» According to Brystall, the king`s right to identify idiots and take possession of their lands remained intact at the time. He also explained that idiots are easily recognizable by their appearance, cannot make a promise or contract, get married, make a will, or give voluntary consent.
They differed from fools and others with unhealthy minds in that they were «completely for no reason. by eternal infirmity, as. Fools, of course. In 1540, under Henry VIII, the Tudor administration established a powerful Court of Wards. This led to a more precise definition and focus on what constituted legal incapacity according to loose and sporadically used medieval instructions. This court consolidated and shaped conventions and practices for the legal treatment of those deemed incapable by idiocy in a form that continued throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Despite the abolition of the Court of Wards in 1661, after the Civil War and the restoration of the Stuart monarchy, its functions simply passed to the Court of Chancery (they now survive the Court of Protection). The prerogativa gave the sovereign custody of the lands to «natural fools», with the obligation to preserve the person during his lifetime. He also tried to distinguish between the natural fool, whose state would never change, and the fool or madman, whose loss of mind could be temporary and who could recover or have clear intervals. The insane therefore enjoy greater rights. Idiots have been identified since the Middle Ages by inquisitions ordered by the monarch and conducted by lay (never medical) officials.
These focused on arithmetic, knowledge of others, and self-knowledge. In the seventeenth century, more sophisticated knowledge was needed, including weights and measures and days of the week. Idiocy was seen as a legal problem affecting wealth and property, meaning it was not a problem for the landless working poor. Lineage and protection of family property and inheritance are crucial. As for the small educated elite, the great masses of the poor, for whom illiteracy was the norm and inheritance unimportant, were all idiots. However, Bryan A. Garner, a prominent legal writer, notes that its first use has been postponed to 1809 in Philadelphia, because «he, who is always his own advisor, will often have a fool for his client.» Speaking the right words in the right order, even if those words were given by God, was not enough. The idiots` words made no sense because they lacked understanding or intent. Brydall left some room for speculation, suggesting that if further evidence of reason and understanding could be provided, the testimony of an idiot might remain. His argument, however, was clear – even the idiots who could speak did not understand the language, they repeated it like parrots, however wise their words may sometimes seem.
So it was with this understanding of the law that the idiot began in the eighteenth century. Idiots were solitary beings, unable to understand money, numbers, or social relationships, and lacking self-confidence and memory. In an increasingly dynamic and commercial society, with more and more people fleeing the poorer class, it became increasingly difficult for the idiot to intervene invisibly within the framework of the illiterate masses. The immutable idiots were joined by the sparse outline of a dumb new class, the Simpleton group was also challenged by the demands of the rapidly changing world around them. Their right to social status was called into question by «simple misunderstanding». The idiot of the law has moved to the social center and has become a complex and remarkable affair, with families increasingly coming into conflict with the state and its crushing laws of appropriation of land and idiotic wealth. The (rather annoying) joke was that a person satisfied his hunger by simply smelling the cook`s food instead of eating it, and refused to pay for the privilege: the idiot had resolved the dispute wisely, but also naively, judging that if the customer smelled only food, the cook should only hear money. Brydall presented this as a «case» and demonstrated the irrational idiot`s ability to have rational thinking. He admitted that it had been narrated by «various credible writers.» The use of a joke as an illustration in a legal theory book is one of many examples of knowledge that goes both ways between popular knowledge and legal theory. The popular idea that the idiot has a happy and random clear thought would endure.
How was legal knowledge about idiocy formed and transmitted? It wasn`t just a top-down formation of sharp legal minds. The idiot of the early eighteenth century not only had a legal identity, but also occupied a place in people`s minds, defined in popular terms, talking about jokes, slang and everyday conversations. In addition to using previous jurisprudence and legal theory, Brydall drew on this popular cultural wisdom, «common sense,» and cultural understanding of what constituted idiocy. He acknowledged the interplay between general understanding and formal and legalistic definitions: «Fool generally means a person without education or education, but among English jurists is a concept of law, and for one who is completely deprived of his reason and understanding from birth and . In our common language, a fool is naturally called. Brydall also had words to say about the fool. There was, he argued, a human type «who has only one ability or a common understanding, or someone who is, so to speak, between a man of ordinary ability and a fool» and who, it seems, could make a will. However, this should only be done on condition that «he understands the essence of a will – otherwise, [he] is not fit to make a will.» The mental inadequacies of the person of «dull ability.
The absence of virtue, morality and theology or rapid understanding» did not in itself justify depriving them of their legal rights. But that also didn`t mean they were automatically entitled to it. Although ambivalently viewed as somewhere on the threshold between capacity and scarcity, the idea of the life-long born foolish class, a cup above the idiot but among the rest of humanity, began to take legal form. In the future, the law will have to think about how to respond to their complexity. Example #1: When Justin decided to defend his own case and turn down the defense lawyer, I remembered the saying «A man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client.» This saying is a complete sentence. The meaning requires no explanation «If there is a strategy in these interviews, it is buried under layers of incompetence. Giuliani got this job because he knew Trump, because he was willing to work for free, and because he flatters and reflects his client. He talks too much. He ignores the evidence. He makes savage accusations. He gets lost in his own incoherence. There is a saying among lawyers that a man who represents himself has a fool for a client.
The same goes for a man who chooses to be represented by a friend who shares his faults. Trump has a fool for a lawyer because Giuliani has a fool for a client. The idea of an idiotic person has been part of the law since ancient times. In early Greek society, idiota referred to a private person who lived in solitude and was separated from public and social life. For the Romans, such a person was illiterate. This concept of the single person, isolated from the social and public connections and networks that most people enjoy, underpins the early English legal understanding of idiocy. It was the «naturalness» of the condition, the fact that it was there from birth, that occupied the legal mind. Did such a person born in this way count as a whole person or not according to the law? The British legal writer John Cowell declared in 1607 that those whom the Greeks called idiots and whom the Romans called illiterate «will be caught.
In our law for non compos mentis or a natural fool. We believe that the words «a natural fool, a fool by birth,» could very well have been omitted from the direction, although their addition did not in any way prejudice the complainant. Overall, the instruction adequately expressed the definition of an idiot, although we thought that an idiot could be more accurately defined as a person who has no mental abilities of birth or childhood and who lacks ordinary intellectual powers. Edited by Aviezer Tucker and Gian Piero de Bellis, this book is a collection of articles on various political concepts, among which panarchy is of particular interest. The peculiarity of this concept is that this is the saying in question.