Thursday, October 22, 2009
Napoleon Trial
Even though I was on the defense side of the Napoleon trial, I agree with the jury. Napoleon was guilty, one of the cross examiners on the prosecution side made a point that i think was direct, and hurt the defense side extremely. Napoleon was said to be a man of enlightenment ideals yet he crowned himself emperor. I think that this was probably one of the biggest points from the prosecution side. An emperor has power over the people, he decides at the end what happens. Every philosopher we learned about in class besides Hobbes has the idea of equality, they all thought that everyone should be equal: equal rights, and equal power. Also, another great point made by the prosecution was in the Napoleonic Code the rights were for the men never the women. There was one philosopher, Montesquieu, that thought men should be superior to women but overall most of the philosophers believed women should also be equal to men. Napoleon however thought women were not up to par with men, so he gave them no rights. The prosecution I think did very well, they were well prepared and knew very well the opposing sides faults. I think overall that we the defense side needed more time to prepare since we were a bit weak and unsure. Good job to both sides.
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I think we all would have benefited from more time. I think we would have been able to create better questions for the cross examination. I felt as though they didn't really make any points except for Cy vs. Alexandra. I think people didn't really have time to learn the other witness so that they could challenge them.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree about how Napoleon was emperor and how three of the four Enlightenment thinkers disagreed with the one ruler kind of system. I wasn't there for the trial and so I wasn't there to hear the points but that was one that I thought of when reflecting! Good job!
ReplyDeleteAlso since I wasn't there to see the trial, I don't know how it went and how to improve it. But I do know that I was thought more time would have been nice because I felt that we didn't have quite enough time to prepare and run through everything. I may not know what I am talking about since I was gone all of last week but I felt a little overwhelmed with the tasks we had to fulfill, i guess two weeks ago to prepare, was a lot to do in the small amount of time we had. But like I said I don't know! :)