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Ask Slashdot: How Can Technology Improve the Judicial System?
An anonymous reader writes One of the cornerstones of any democracy is its judicial system. Fortunately, most of us never have to deal with it. On the other hand, the fact that we so seldom interact with it also means that most of us are not constantly thinking about it. It is possible our judicial system would be much better if most of us had to spend more time thinking about it. I myself had not put much thought into it until I watched a documentary about Aaron Swartz. It is frightening to think that someone could have been left in a position like that. I also hear about so many cases were people end up pleading guilty because they do not have enough money to fight a case in court. Is this really the best we can do? The Marshal Project is also an interesting source of information regarding the shortfalls of our current system.
What do you think about it? How can we improve our judicial system? Is there any interesting way that technology could be used to improve the system?
What do you think about it? How can we improve our judicial system? Is there any interesting way that technology could be used to improve the system?
It is a question of vested interests and poor incentives. Elected judges and elected prosecutors - how can you not end up with poor decisions? Poorly thought through kneejerk laws, like asset forfeiture and three strike life sentences - how can you have justice with a system like this?
[FUCK BETA]
Promis:
-kgj
The system is working just as the system wants to work. If you have money, it is kind to you. If you do not have money, it will grind you down and hopefully in the process transfer what little money you do have to the system.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Robotic judges and robotic lawyers. Just what we need...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
the delusion that you can get justice against the State when the STATE owns the court is fucking ludicrous.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Technology probably isn't the key. But here is what I'd like to see...
1. A constitutional right to privacy from arrest to conviction for those who choose such. That way good names don't get tainted. (Just look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope_Solo#Arrest )
2. An effort to make it more about reform than punishing people.
3. Eliminate mandatory sentencing. Rename it as "suggested". I think one issue is granting smaller sentences to people you "favor", hence why mandatory sentencing perhaps was created?
4. Start paying those who serve on juries (actually in the courtroom) minimum wage. (Or is this would be a financial disaster, only on days 3+.)
5. We talk about requiring coding in schools. How about requiring something that might make a difference? A law course. Nothing big, but just to get people familiar with it as much as a 90 credit hour class would cover.
6. The six-month thing required for jury trials in so many places should be scrapped. Allow a jury trial for any length of potential incarceration. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juries_in_the_United_States#Scope_of_constitutional_right
Whose metric? Does improvement mean fewer false convictions or more convictions? Does improvement mean conviction rates remain the same but everyone gets a lollipop?
The judicial system is, at heart, a method of resolving disputes. Sometimes those are disputes between civilians (civil suits) and sometimes they are criminal cases, disputes between people and the state.
The most obvious and easy place to start is with small claims courts. Commercial arbitration handles many disputes that would otherwise end up in small claims courts, but we don't exploit this anywhere near enough. Most people just rely on their bank to act as a dispute mediator via the credit card chargeback mechanism, but this is a one-size-fits-all solution and banks are often not good at mediating disputes. There's lots of fraud and problematic outcomes.
The place where most of the better-law-through-tech research is happening right now is the Bitcoin community, because of the general focus on decentralisation, global trade and frequent desire to avoid relying on government. So we have for example BitRated which is a platform for doing dispute mediated Bitcoin transactions, where anyone can be the dispute mediator. So you can get a fluid, international market of specialised judges who are experts in very particular types of transactions, like software contracts etc where "I didn't get software of sufficient quality" is not a dispute that makes sense to handle via a chargeback. And it can all happen over the internet.
That's a very simple example. More complex examples involve specifying a contract in the form of a computer program and then effectively having the program be the "judge". I wrote about how to implement this, again with Bitcoin, several years ago. The technology is not that complicated actually. The hard part is figuring out the right user interfaces to make it easy. Presumably only very simple and precise contracts could be managed that way, so there's still open research in how to craft these digital contracts such that you can escape back to human judgement if there's an exceptional case.
When it comes to criminal rather than commercial cases, probably the best way to apply technology to reduce costs is to allow remote lawyering. That is, you should be able to outsource your legal representation to someone who isn't physically present. They may be rather good and experienced, but just lives out in rural areas or in a country where the cost of living is cheaper. The issue here is not really technical but rather just institutional inertia.
The UK is putting its judicial system under tremendous financial pressure at the moment, to the extent that some criminal cases are just being abandoned because there's insufficient money to run them. They're (finally!) starting to experiment with allowing small claims court cases to be resolved over the phone, and also looking at decriminalising TV license violations to reduce pressure on the system. But you get the idea - the judicial system innovates extremely slowly even when being sliced to the bone. So don't hold your breath.
guilt = ( rand() & 1 ) ? "Yes" : "No";
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
The problem with the Judicial system is partly a reflection of it's fundamental design, and partly a reflection of current American culture.
Take the design issue. We have an adversarial system rather then an Inquisitorial system. This means that your defense is up to you, the government's sole job is to convict you, and the Judge's only job is to call balls and strikes. Which means that if you're poor in America, and you don't have a lawyer who can go over every single piece of evidence with a fine-tooth comb for Fourth Amendment violations, then de facto you don't have Fourth Amendment rights. The Judge is not allowed to force your lawyer to triple-check that the cops didn't fudge the info they put on a warrant application, your public defender probably only has 8 hours to deal with your entire case, so you're fucked. In France and some other countries the Judge is allowed a more active role, but to do that you have to give him more active role in the investigation, at which point the system becomes an Inquisitorial system. And in the US we're reflexively Protestant, so we insist on remembering the Evils of the Spanish Inquisition (just as Queen Elizabeth I intended) and that's a non-starter.
Note that this means that the only way a Judge has to convict somebody with really food rules lawyers in the US is think his way around Constitutional rights in ways rules lawyers can't counter (for example, the "good faith exception" to the Fourth Amendment says the cop had to know that he was violating the Fourth Amendment to get evidence thrown out) or nobody who makes more then $80k would ever be convicted. The muddle class thinks it always looks innocent, so $80k guy can can easily beat probable cause. But then there's a precedent the guy making $20k can't afford to reason around.
And there's the ridiculous amounts of money we pay people with PhD-level degrees in lucrative fields, and a legal degree (or a Juris Doctorate) is one of those degrees. you make it virtually impossible to give every defendant a lawyer who has a week to devote to his case. The money to pay the lawyers does not exist, the lawyers themselves do not exist, etc.
The "looks innocent" thing is huge. In NYC until De Blasio took office it was routine for cops to stop every young black man in the city once a year on the basis he was pretty sure said young black man had a gun in his pocket and was going to pull it out and start a murder spree. The warrantless search almost never turned up a weapon, does not seem to have ever prevented a murder spree, and was entirely justified by legal paperwork the cop filed when he was back at the station. It resulted in black men into weed losing most Federal financial aid (because they were convicted of drug crimes), including student loans, and thus being ineligible for most colleges. And yet when a Judge ruled that shit violated the Fourth Amendments fairly explicit right to be secure about one's person, she got reprimanded by the Appeals Court.
The basic fact is the Founders took a system that was literally designed solely to protect the Nobility from commoners (in English Law, for example, "Peer" is the word for "nobleman", so a "Jury of your Peers" means a Jury made up of nobleman of your own rank) back in the UK, added some Amendments so their new King-stand-in couldn't use said system to prevent himself from being voted out of office, and called it a day. If you want it to be fairer to people who don't have $250k lawyer budgets you'll need to make good legal help cheap, which probably won't happen unless you change the job market so that people with $250k legal budgets are much rarer. The $250k will get them a very convincing actor with legal skills for the jury trial, and it will get them people with mediocre acting skills to go over the paperwork of the investigation in very close detail and determine what can be excluded, which Juror is most likely to vote innocent, etc. while still having $15k to pay for expert testimony.
In my rural county, some jurors must travel 100 miles each way to Superior Court. Jury quality suffers because so many potential jurors wash out on the economic burden questions, shrinking the pool to a small core of the nearby retired. Allowing jurors to remote in would be a real help. This doesn't have to mean attending from home; if control of the juror's environment becomes a problem, have remote jury rooms at branch libraries and police stations.
What a load of crap. In Canada we have a healthcare "system", I can go to a hospital without mortgaging my house.
What happens to you once you get there, on the other hand...
The problem is that federal prosecutors are appointed by the executive branch (DOJ, but the under the president) and are selected for, and instructed to pursue the political agenda of their superiors. Each prosecutor also has their own political agenda. The prosecutor that went after Swartz (Carmen Ortiez) has a reputation for this sort of thing. The best way to fix the system would be coming up with some non-partisan method to select/appoint/elect the prosecutors and perhaps even the attorney general. The way things are right now the president is nearly immune from any legal oversight, but can bring the full wrath of the USDOJ upon his/her enemies. I don't claim to have a solution, but perhaps if we moved DOJ under the control of the SCOTUS things might improve somewhat.
what about tech jurors that know stuff about IT for some court cases.
...I'd like to see technology deliver a true veil of ignorance between juries and prosecutor/defendant/court.
It would be the job of prosecutor, defendant (under the eye of the judge) to present a basic outline of events with neuter models in a visualized space. Witnesses could be questioned and cross examined in real time, but with the judge having a time delay circuit allowing the to excise any non relevant information to the case...defendant would not be a white man or black woman, just "defendant", etc.
-Styopa
My family has a cottage up in Ontario.
The biggest difference we notice in ER visits is that a) it takes the Canadians forever to remember how to charge people for care, and b) the bill is always much smaller then it would be in the states.
This does not happen because of some deep-ass hard-to-understand-psychological-king-fu they've done with their health market. It's because every year each province sets up a price list (a "Fee Schedule" to use the health care wonk jargon). They generally don't let the fees go up by 10-15% a year without a very good explanation, so the fee we pay today is roughly equivalent to what it would have cost to get the same procedure in America back in the 60s when Canadian Medicare (their name for their universal health system) wrote the first price lists. Hospitals can't charge more then the fee schedule or they lose their government funding, and since everybody uses government hospitals that means they'd go out of business.
State-side they know you'll pay more every year for the same service because what option do you have? Your kid is bleeding, you're at the hospital, and they'll tell you to get back into the car and drive for another half-hour unless you pay up.
This is one reason the US (which only funds healthcare for Federal employees, Federal retirees, 65-year-olds, and the poor) actually paid more per capita for health care then the Canadian Federal government did, despite the fact that the Canadian Feds provide 100% of health funding in that country.
... is probably just as good as what they'd get here in the States, CRE notwithstanding
That is all.
Need to be nuked
-no sig today-
This is one reason the US (which only funds healthcare for Federal employees, Federal retirees, 65-year-olds, and the poor) actually paid more per capita for health care then the Canadian Federal government did, despite the fact that the Canadian Feds provide 100% of health funding in that country.
The real key is that there is a body in Canada (other than the ordinary Joe on the street) who wants prices to be kept down, and which has the power to actually make that happen. Because keeping charges down is a priority, use of generic drugs will be more widespread, as will the use of programmes to improve general public health (because they tend to be very cost effective overall) and the more rapid progression from diagnosis to treatment. That last point can be both good and bad: good because if they got it right, you're getting treated sooner instead of having more expensive (and possibly invasive) tests done, and bad because if they got it wrong, you're not being treated for what's wrong at all.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
Technology can only make you aware of the law, rules of evidence and relevant precedents and possibly coming up with some convincing illustrations / presentations / simulations to aid your case. It can't fix the letter of the law or how the legal process works, particular not where you're dealing with statutory damages, mandatory sentencing guidelines and so on, it can't help you get expert witnesses, it can't cross-examine witnesses, honestly the legal process is mostly a person-to-person thing. In the legal system, tech doesn't do you much good. Unless you're talking about using tech to evade the legal system, but I assume that's an entirely different question.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
There is much to be done, but a great place to start would be moving to an independent system of true forensics science. In our current system, the forensics people work for the prosecution. They are not blinded as to what the police and prosecutor think about the crime or potential perpetrators. Much of what passes for "science" in the courtroom has absolutely no scientific basis, despite their "Frye Standard" of evaluating scientific evidence. There is very little research into the accuracy of forensics conclusions.
Radley Balko over at the Washington Post just published a 4 part series on the flawed science of bite mark analysis. Our system is so increadibly screwed up that even getting caught on video tape framing an innocent man using junk "science" that has been discredited by actual scientific research isn't enough to get the courts and prosecutors to consider the possibility that they might have an innocent man in jail. The series is well worth the read, and if you really want to get your blood pressure up, follow the links to individual cases down a rathole of righteous indignation.
In Mexico, where I live, notwithstanding the judiciary system is bad, there have been some recent technological improvements:
1) Since some years ago you can check for judiciary notifications regarding a case online. It works all of the time in federal level courts and sometimes in state level courts. You can also receive the writ of sentencing online for non penal cases.
2) At the federal level you can request a free cryptographic certificate (as a citizen or lawyer) and use that to communicate electronically with the courts and file certain types of procedures (such as requesting constitutional protection or challenging the constitutionality of a law ['trial of Amparo']).
3) In many states you can file reports to the police or the prosecutor online, and they assign a case number and follow through as if it was filed personally.
Also, in Mexican law the right of sharing cultural and intellectual property with others is more important than the right of profiting from it. So you can legally (as long as there is no profit involved) share, copy, and download any kind of copyrighted work, it is a right specifically enshrined by the law, and specially to educational works, which can be copied freely and without restriction.
Just work on fixing the system.
Not just jurors; for anything short of a felony, let the victim, er, I mean defendant, remote in too.
A lot of people, especially poorer and with more time-demanding jobs (think retail, fast food, etc. compared to office jobs where in many it's no big deal if you're gone half a day if you make up the time) or less ability to travel (gas is cheaper now, but not free, or many may not have a car and in most of the US public transit is lousy) just can't fight even basic traffic tickets and have to pay the fine and increased insurance costs. They can't wait around for the entire day to be called at 4:59pm.If they could attend remotely (wouldn't even need to be from their computer; friend or library or pay-for-use station at FedEx may work too) that would make it easier to attend.
Of course, making it easier to fight them would make it more likely that the state would lose, and so they'd never go for it. But it might get a trial in more adventurous/advanced locations such as New Hampshire.
... don't get caught.
It's funny that the summary starts with "One of the cornerstones of any democracy is its judicial system". That's true of all forms of society/government; it is absolutely not limited to democracies. So why bring democracy into it - except that it's one of the holy words of our society, a word that stuns everyone into instant acquiescence and worship?
One can make a strong case that justice is particularly hard to come by in a democracy, as opposed to a monarchy or a true aristocracy. The distinguishing feature of real democracy is that the people as a whole wield supreme power. So a majority can carry out any act, no matter how illogical, unethical, or downright disgraceful. Such as the execution of Socrates, for instance. Or the decision to execute the admirals of the Athenian fleet after the battle of Arginusae - which was rescinded the following day, when the people changed their minds.
You can see a similar pattern in the USA, where many prosecutors are elected by the people. This leads them to pursue popularity at all costs - and, in a populous society where most electors will never get to meet the actual candidate, popularity is usually sought by lighting up the media with sensational news. How many miscarriages of justice have been perpetrated because a prosecutor wanted to make a name for himself? And of course the prosecutor is not held responsible, because his job is only to argue the case for conviction. If someone is wrongly found guilty, that is the fault of the defence, the jury, the judge, the police who made up evidence or concealed exonerating evidence... and anyway, it's all forgotten the next week.
Probably the best place to start constructing a good judicial system is with a genuine concern for justice. It has been well observed that, in any country that has a Ministry of Justice or something similar, justice itself will be conspicuous by its absence. (Just as any corporation that has an "ethics committee" has probably forgotten what the word "ethics" means). Honest people know what's right, but given enough bureaucracy and laws - assisted by thousands of career-minded functionaries - we get today's situation where any lawyer can tell you that the law has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with justice.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
...find out what the law is on a given subject. The current case-law system worked for a limited network of courts and practitioners (in England) who could refer to older cases for jurisprudence. Now, you have to pay thousands of dollars to have access to digital/searchable caselaw in a sprawling network of courts across a continent. In a democracy people should know what the law says.
Jury size and composition were defined using 18th century statistics. Voir dire - the jury selection process was intended to be a variation on cake cutting that removes bias but it is so stunningly gamed. Justice is now about how much money you have for the law firm. Law and crime are now a function of cash. The reason for this is that defense lawyers stunningly game the system. They reject anyone with a brain, anyone that isn't "vote innocent". That is not the same thing as justice - it is war, not truth.
Electronic means allow jury sizes that 1) account for bias so that - as George Carlin says it - "think of how dumb the average person is, now realize that half of all people are dumber than that" is not the measure of justice. Idiocracy no longer has to define the jury. In our hyper-surveillance culture the biases can be known and accounted for with a weight in the vote. 2) improve sample size. The size of the jury was a "necessary but sufficient" rule contrived when horse-drawn carriages were the norm and literacy was not. With larger sample sizes it is harder to "cherry pick" the few most likely to vote your way. In many places a measure of the sample statistic (taken from a subset) approaches the population statistic in the limit of "sufficient samples". This can make sure that there isn't a "hung jury" based on a limited outlier that the defense attorney was lucky enough to cherry pick. They can instead sample the actual opinion of the population given the prosecution and defense cases - the original intended function of current approach to justice.
I find it repugnant that our current system is fundamentally corrupt enough that a good lawyer can extort/blackmail egregious sums from criminals and prove them innocent when they are not. The idea of justice is so devastated that in the minds of lawyers it means "what can be proved" and no longer means "the truth about what was actually done". I would really like to see that resolved.
One of the big problems with the legal system is how inefficient and time consuming it is. We live in a world where just threatening legal action can put a big question mark over someone's financial future. To do anything, you need to pay for the services of expensive lawyers and paralegals. So this naturally puts the wealthy, big corporations and big government agencies at an advantage.
You can see how inefficient the judicial system is just by looking at how much paper they produce. They literally have to wheel boxes of documents into court with carts. Armies of paralegals have to manually sift through the documents by hand. It's really one of the most conservative and backwards industries out there.
The most obvious way that technology can help is by increasing efficiency and leveling the playing field. The ideas are not new (e.g. http://www.amazon.com/dp/01995...) and I think eventually law firms and courts will learn to leverage technology and make their services more accessible. Making information more accessible will also help shoot down abusers of the legal system (e.g. in invaliding bad patents - http://www.joelonsoftware.com/...).
Do you really want more efficiency? Even the simplest technology adoption would help immensely help that group of self-serving luddites. How about using email to mail copies of documents in advance of actual signed copies? How about using electronic records for managing cases? How about sharing information between jurisdictions? How about better surveillance equipment so we can simply have better evidence? WHOA.. wait.. maybe not some of those.. Hm.. maybe this is a slippery slope and you should be careful what you wish for.
----- obSig
I'm in my tenth year of practice in California handling general civil litigation. I can try to share a few key points that won't get me in trouble with my peers or area judges.
-- Every state should implement a PACER-like system where the public has remote access to all court records and can download all the PDFs they want for a small fee, 24/7. PACER/ECF is the Federal system for accessing and filing court documents, and it makes it really convenient when you can review an entire case file without physically going to the courthouse as you have to do in most state courts. The cost of implementing PACER with every state court system would be astronomical, but it would also provide astronomical benefits to the public. For one, the public (or more likely the legal section of the local news media) would be able to verify or refute bullshit public relations statements made by lawyers by reviewing the actual case filings.
-- Absent a full PACER/ECF implementation, every court system in a state should be linked to a centralized repository of searchable metadata instead of the current patchwork of incompatible systems for searching records. In California there are fifty-eight separate counties, each with its own Superior Court. This means each court has its own system for storing and accessing court records. Some aren't even searchable online; you have to go there in person. It makes it really difficult to conduct research on a particular case or client. Also, this is one reason why the private legal providers WestLaw and Lexis have services that I can't do without-- without a unified system, these private providers are the only way to sensibly aggregate and organize judicial opinions.
-- Lawyers should make better use of technology in their practices and lower their hourly rates as a result. I wrote my own calendaring software a few years ago that gave me a fully electronic calendar (until I started using Google calendar, which is a big improvement). I also run a paperless office with no permanent support staff and with a tiny physical office. This means I can make deals on my hourly rate with savvy clients so that we both win, and I can scale my practice appropriately so that I don't make big financial commitments and then not meet them. Some lawyers use electronic practice management software like Rocket Matter. Others find clients on Craigslist. Realistically, this type of technology interaction is one of the only ways to increase access to justice; currently, you have to make well over $100,000 per year to afford an actual lawyer, and even then it is a stretch for most people. Most hourly clients in civil litigation are actually businesses and companies, not individuals, because individuals don't have enough money to pay hourly. What I've observed though is that lawyers who have great technology keep their hourly rates the same and just pocket the extra money. And why shouldn't they?
-- Courts and older attorneys should get with the program in terms of new technology. Currently there is a lot of bureaucratic resistance as well as a generational gap in how lawyers and courts use technology. There are plenty of older attorneys out there who do not even have email, and there are many others who just don't care enough to learn MS Word. After all, if they can just hire support staff to do that, there is no incentive. As older lawyers retire or learn technology, this problem decreases for the profession, but courts are still way behind. There should be rules for judges requiring them to use technology.
-- State legislatures should spend more money on courts, but condition that funding on the use of industrial psychologists or other experts to help design better systems for information management. A local Superior Court that I practice in frequently and that I don't need to name still has physical documents hand-carried between its courthouses and administrative facilities. This is a huge waste of time, money, and effort when a few ScanSnap type machines and automated data p
1. Too many laws make for too many criminals. Repeal a LOT of laws. The exponentially increasing number of malum prohimitum laws has been eroding personal liberty since the 1910s.
2. Make congress do the legislating. No more, "as the secretary shall determine." That just means we have no law and we're ruled by unaccountable bureaucrats, and each president gets to appoint his cronies to exact his political agenda on his enemies. If congress isn't smart enough to write the law, then it shouldn't become a law.
3. Loser pays, in both civil and criminal trials. Yeah, I can bring a lawsuit against the US government for violating my rights, but they get to use their unlimited wealth on an army of DOJ lawyers to stall in the courts until I'm bankrupt. The fact that rights are only restored when groups like the ACLU, EFF and NRA get involved against the government is proof enough of the problem.
The technology of distributed version control should be applied to legal text much like it is to code. A proposed law is pull request. An enacted law is an accepted pull request. Various jurisdictions can fork and merge laws.
And while we're at it, let's build domain specific languages for laws with with well defined syntax, in order to disambiguate law at least as much as politics will allow.
Catchy phrases are no substitute for knowledge and thoughtfulness.
Neither are ad hominems and ridicule.
You start by implying that it's NOT too complicated for the average person. You then state that criminal cases are decided by a jury and civil cases by a judge, which is incorrect on both points. Criminal cases are frequently heard by a judge only. In fact, the in the majority of criminal cases there is no jury - the judge solely makes the final decision after reviewing the plea agreement. Civil cases routinely include a jury.
So unfortunately it seems to be too complicated for you to grasp even the basics.
Go to reddit.com, and allow people to suggest punishments. The most upvoted punishment after 1 day becomes the punishment.
God spoke to me
The biggest problem with our judicial system is the cost. In any complex case the cost is out of reach for too many people. For example recently here in Oregon a soccer coach was charged with inappropriately touching a 12 year old girl on his team. After a year and a half the case was dismissed a week ago but he had run up legal bills of nearly $500,000. How many of us could afford something like that?
Frankly the judicial system is not completely designed to achieve justice or find truth. Often the system exists to either create business or to enforce popular prejudices. For example no judge is dumb enough to actually believe the cops snagging someone under the excuse of a broken tail light or a car seeming to sway a bit. Cops use false charges to stop drivers and seek out felonies and their promotions and job security are tied to these tactics. The average traffic stop is not in reality a traffic stop at all but it is a fishing expedition and that is even truer at night when cops reason that good people are at home and creeps are out on the roads. On the other hand when a town gets short of money the mayor calls the cop shop and orders a lot of tickets be written to raise money for the towns expenses. And then there are other money grubbing tactics. One is sentencing a lot of people to enforced therapy at a public clinic and forcing them to pay a hefty fee for the therapy and a monthly probation fee on top of that. Wife slaps husband three times and husband responds and slaps back one time and the husband is sentenced to two years of weekly therapy at $60. per week plus $75. per month for probation. The prejudice is that the woman is not charged as she threw the first slap and three times at that whereas the cops prejudice is based on the fact that he can slap harder than his wife supposedly and therefore he gets busted, all the while the judge goes along with the ride knowing that the public clinic is so bad that it could not diagnose mustard on a ham sandwich but the city just collected 104 weeks multiplied by 60 dollars a week plus 24 months at $75 per month for probation. We are talking about big bucks folks. And a joint or walking a bit drunk can get you exactly that kind of sentence. In my area if you get caught sleeping on the beach three times you can be considered a felon and actually put in prison. In reality we have no justice system, no law and very little order and the order we do have is often the wrong kind.
What would Constitutional Law be viewed like if it was handled by a Machine Learning program wraped in AIML? Would Citizens United still be?
If that's true -- I don't know -- it is a horrifying commentary on justice within the entire human context. Because the US justice system is severely broken in just about every facet one can name.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The only thing which can improve the judicial system is making it as luddite as possible. US has a common law legal system. All common law systems have O(n!) complexity. Any attempts to fight the expanding complexity by hiring more lawyers are attempts at linear scaling (O(n)) solutions to O(n!) problems. Adding computers into the mix allows for exponential solutions O(n^K). Which creates the illusion of solving the problem because O(n^K) > O(n). But, for sufficiently large n and any fixed K, O(n^K) O(n!). So this creates a problem which will manifest itself as the system collapses under its own complexity with justice becoming completely impossible. The only reason that common law system existed and were viable before computers is that people forget. So all attempts at hiring more lawyers go out the windows and O(n) does grow very large; laws which are at the centers of the nodes which cause common law spider web of irrevocable "precedents" get repealed. But hiding this obvious need for repealing certain laws inside of the O(n^k) solutions makes near impossible to discern which laws need repealing. Which causes the whole legal system to collapse. The only solution to winning this game is not to play.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I genuinely appreciate your earnestness in wanting to reform the system, and I think more people should have strong feelings and ideas about how to "fix" things as you do. Unfortunately, a lot of things that seem like they have easy answers don't, and that's why they're hard. The devil is in the details, and the law of unintended consequences makes itself felt very keenly here. To wit:
a judge serves a randomly assigned trial with one requirement: it must be somewhere FAR from where they live
For better or worse, people elect judges because they want their views to reflect that of the community where they live. Maybe a liberal area wants judges that are more lenient in sentencing, or vice versa. Do you really want your Bay Area case where some wing nut has sued Google for not basing the Android clock on days since Biblical Creation to be decided by an imported judge from Alabama who may actually think they're right?
Third, plea bargaining has turned out to be an extremely bad thing.
Plea bargaining has its abuses, but more than anything else it is a very practical thing. A full jury trial for any serious (felony) offense is extremely expensive and time consuming, and plea bargaining is a way to reduce the burden on courts and juries by exacting some form of a minimum toll on the guilty without going for the maximum.
Congresscritter dimwit writes up a law that infringes on your right to keep and carry, he's shown the door.
What? Who decides this? Right now, through separation of powers, the courts rule on the constitutionality of laws. Under your idea - does John Boehner get to automatically impeach President Obama because he thinks executive orders on immigration are "unconstitutional?" Who gets to boot Republicans automatically for bringing DOMA to the House floor? What if I just think you're a dick and your law is unconstitutional and you should be gone?
Still in this context, the 2nd is perfectly clear if you're not being outright disingenuous or ignorant
Sorry, friend. I agree with your statement, but probably in exactly the opposite meaning you intend. Why even mention "a well regulated militia" if that is not the justification for the 2nd Amendment? And if you're not in a state-sponsored militia, why do you have this right again? This is just an example of where well intentioned people can wildly disagree on the meaning of legal/constitutional language and there is no shortcut to divining meaning.
Fourth, piling on charges post-arrest should be abolished.
So just to make this clear - I arrest you for drunk driving. But I search your trunk later and find you have a kidnapped person in there, and I can't charge you for it? Or, more likely, I arrest you for stealing a car. While the prosecutors are interviewing witnesses for the case, they talk to a chop shop operator who testifies you stole and sold 25 other cars to him. Why on earth should you not be charged with that?
I suggest lobbyists go as well, in favor of a system where a congressperson has a system that constituents can access where they can either open an issue or join other voices on an issue
You're right, nobody likes lobbyists. But they do actually have a purpose. Let's say that a congressperson from Maine is going to have to vote on a bill to grant or revoke a complicated set of tribal fishing rights on Federal land in California. Is this congress critter going to have constituents who are informed about this issue, or will they have time to learn about the issue on their own? No. Instead, lobbyists - on both sides of the issue - have their opportunity to brief lawmakers and try to sway their vote. Certainly not a perfect system, but you really do want to have professional advocates on both sides of an issue. Imagine if the EFF couldn't talk to congresspeople, and they had to rely on what some dumb-as
"95% of all Slashdot
I want judges to be part of a service where they have to pass an exhaustive test that demonstrates they are both well informed and even-handed, and I'd want an overwatch panel too. Don't mistake my suggestions as intended to cross every t and dot every i. They're problems to be solved, not glib answers.
There are way, way too many laws. Get rid of drug and sex worker cases and reduce lawsuits and you'd have a whole different idea about "how busy" the courts are.
First, presidents should not be making law. There is zero provision for it. Second, the President, as the head of the enforcement arm, should have a system for watching for such things and seeing to it that they are brought to the president's attention for action as the chief executive. I think that would be excellent.
You have suffered a parsing failure, because you are ignorant of the meaning of the words when and as written, and because you have failed to discriminate between an explanation (which you got wrong anyway) and a direct instruction (which you advocate ignoring.) I will illuminate them both for you:
Well regulated as used at the time meant "consistently supplied", and the point was that everyone (which is essentially what the "militia" was comprised of) should show up with a weapon and ammo and so on if and when called up, and therefore, those rights were very well protected.
Regardless, the first phrase is an explanation, and the second is a restriction on government. The restriction doesn't go (shouldn't go -- it certainly has done) away until an amendment says it does as per section five. That it has is utter sophistry. Someone would have to demonstrate, at the very least I would say, that the need for armed citizens has passed. There's lots of evidence they are very badly needed, and we are suffering when they are not immediately available.
There's no authority to arbitrarily say "we don't have to obey the restriction, and it is the worst idea EVER to think that the government can say that, because if they can do it with the 2nd, they can do it with every other amendment and rule as well. Good bye constitution, hello banana republic.
That's exactly right. Just like the limits on getting a warrant, the state gets to labor under a handicap, because it is known (extremely well known, now, as a matter of fact) that it will abuse the privilege if and when it is allowed to run free. Unrestricted government is dangerous. As we see every day. And as the founders knew full well.
Sure they do. To subvert the system. Out they go. Your argument that congresspersons who would not otherwise learn about issue X will then do so because some lobbyist bribes them is utter horseshit. The lobbyists don't bribe them to learn; they bribe them to steer their vote, and the one with the biggest payoff is the one that wins. It is purest u
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Actually the Canadian federal government does not pay 100% of health funding in Canada. They do pay a good percentage (which is shrinking due to austerity and the current assholes in power refusing to even talk to the Provinces, little well compromise) which varies on how rich the individual Province is. Here in BC the average working person has to pay more and more in the way of premiums to offset the income tax cuts the government is so fond of.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
One could invest in Tech stocks then use the profits to selectively bribe members of the courts system to act in a manner which from the outside looks consistent with justice-for-all.
Requiem for the American Dream
Actually the Canadian federal government does not pay 100% of health funding in Canada. They do pay a good percentage (which is shrinking due to austerity and the current assholes in power refusing to even talk to the Provinces, little well compromise) which varies on how rich the individual Province is. Here in BC the average working person has to pay more and more in the way of premiums to offset the income tax cuts the government is so fond of.
And it's all Elizabeth May's fault. Seriously.
Prior to the rise of a national Green party splitting the vote in every Riding, Ridings only had three parties, and to get a majority government the rule of thumb was you needed 42%. Now Elizabeth has a seat in Parliament, her party got roughly 4%, and the Tories got 39%, so they got a majority. And a majority PM has more power then any American official will ever have because a majority PM runs both the Executive and the Legislative branches.
Which means that if you actually want any of the things Elizabeth May wants, what you want very very much is for her to come to some sort of deal with the other left-wing parties so there aren't there left-wing options in all 338 Ridings.
Look at Norway if you want to see a functioning system. It is not a technological problem it is a political, sociological, and phsychological problem. Have a look and read carefully this comment on the Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/com...
I agree with almost all of this, and it seems you have a real interest in protecting the interests of the little guy so to speak, but #16 wholly runs against that grain. If you take out the teeth from civil lawsuits, you empower Ford to never stop making Pintos, or fertilizer manufacturers to blow up as many neighborhoods as they want. This would be a massive form of corporate welfare that would benefit large monied interests and make regular people incapable of striking back in any meaningful manner.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
We've often had more then three parties in Parliament. Way back there was a small Social Credit caucus in Quebec. More recently there was the Reform Party in the west splitting the right wing vote as well as the Bloc in Quebec.
As for the Green party splitting the left, well in our (BC) last Provincial election, the Greens seemed to take votes equally from the right and the left. And federally the left has hardly ever done very well until the last election where the NDP increased their number of seats by almost an order of magnitude, mostly based on having a very well liked leader in Jack Layton. The Liberals have always been mostly center and unlike the Conservatives they actually ran a surplus budget for 8 years
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Insist that ALL laws be open to the public, not hiding behind expensive pay-walls. Legal decisions that affect literally millions of people are available only to those with the $$$ to pay to view the decisions. Those with out access to the decisions get shuffled through the courts and squirted into prison with out an real avenue of defense.
Laws hidden behind some secret court order are not laws but just so much junk. Unless one knows a law exists one can not obey the law. Hiding laws and then bringing them to court with secrecy demands is totally ridiculous!
Having a lot of parties in Parliament is not the problem. Having a lot of parties splitting the vote in every single fucking Riding is the problem. The SoCreds/Credistes, for example, were never a national party because they never really competed outside of one of the four Canadian regions. Reform was not a national party until the very end, right before it ate the PCs. The Greens are.
I have read many Green apologists claim they take votes from parties that are not left-wing. Pretty much every analysis of this phenomena I have ever seen is pure motivated reasoning. Minuscule sample sizes frequently appear. What actually seems to happen when political campaign types strongly analyze the data is that much of their vote comes from the left--wing party, and every-goddamn-body-else would have been a non-voter because they're incredibly angry at the political system.
Think about it this way for two minutes: the Tories stand for no gay marriage, lower taxes, more weapons for the Armed Forces, strengthened links to the UK, ending the Kyoto treaty, siding with businesses whenever environmental activists complain on principle, strong support of Israel, near-slavish subjugation to the US in every important foreign policy arena, etc. The Greens strongly oppose all those positions. Yet many analyses claim that half of Green voters care about these issues so little that their second choice is the Conservative Party.
What do you think happens more often: a fairly far-left activist whose so angry at NDP/Grit impurity on the issues (not their ineffectiveness in fighting for said issues as minority parties in a majority-Tory parliament), vents by claiming the Tories are his second choice to some idiot who doesn't understand human psychology; or that there actually exists large class of people whose first choice argues that a) LGBTQetc. rights are the moral issue of our time, c) the military should be shrunk to the minimum conceivable, c) Global Warming is a man-made disaster and EVERYTHING should immediately change to reduce it's impact, etc. but has as a second choice Stephen fucking Harper.
As for your definition of Canadian left, in Canadian terms you are right. The Liberals define the center ground. OTOH in terms of English-speakers on the North American continent the Liberals are really truly fucking Liberal. Prior to the PC-Reform merger they could win because the moderates right-wing party had it's vote split. They even managed to turn their votes being split into an advantage, because they could use the NDP for cover to move left when they wanted to create Medicare and still play the moderate.
fMRI can improve Judicial system;
Casteism
All rise for the honorable R2-D2. Processsing.... Robo-Judge says you are guilty! Pay these fines. All your property are belong to us! Sit in this cage with this rapist!