> Johnson’s three children were cast into foster care while she was incarcerated. One daughter was molested, state records show. Another was physically abused.
Speechless... Makes my blood boil
You can, though it's not very common, and, in the US, it's not available in all jurisdictions.
See, e.g., https://www.justia.com/criminal/bail-bonds/bail-while-pursui...
As a practical matter, the number of lawyers who get reinstated each year numbers in the single digits or low double digits.
"Permanent" and "disbarment" don't go together the way most people assume they do. When the public reads that Attorney Bob got caught doing Bad Things and was disbarred, they assume that down the road if they hire an attorney (or receive PD services), the Bad Guy is not in the running.
A 2007 paper titled "Should Permanent Disbarment be Permanent?" published in The Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics provides a good overview of just how impermanent 'permanent disbarment' is.
Its author found that "Five states mandate that all disbarments be treated as permanent. Eight states allow for disbarments to be permanent in some situations. In these states, when disbarment is not permanent, readmittance can either be applied for in seven years, five years, or at any time, depending on the jurisdiction. . . . The remaining 35 states and DC have no procedure for permanent disbarment." Of course, there's also the matter that not all states have 'disbarment in any other jurisdiction' as a disqualifier. Disbarred? Maybe it's time for a move?
Joseph O'Malley is best known for his 2013 "indefinite disbarment" after the now-former prosecutor was charged with nine violations of the Rules of Professional Conduct arising from his improper influencing of a judge, and his August 2011 convictions in an Ohio federal court for misprision of a felony and making a materially false statement in a matter within the jurisdiction of the federal government. O'Malley's 2013 disbarment generated a lot of press. Know what no one reported anywhere? That he was reinstated in 2016. He was recently appointed as public defender for a cop who was arrested for OVI. (Adjudicated not guilty on that charge.)
As a practical matter, the number of reinstated lawyers each year is not even remotely close to as low as you claim. I just now looked at the data for a handful of states and I'm already way over your upper end. It's more like "In any given state, annual figures are in the single to low double digits" — with a few much larger outliers.
You might say "well to protect kids". Except, there's a massive body of research proving that they make things worse, certainly on average:
https://sci-hub.se/10.1257/aer.97.5.1583
Massive negative effects, from reading scores, to later earnings, to subjective happiness (yes, really, kids report more happiness while being abused than in youth services), to later crimes.
So no youth protection is better for everyone. This is obvious in the case of scandals and the many "accidents". But it is true in general. And it is true for everyone. No child protection is better for the kid, for families (obviously I guess), and due to the increase in crime if we destroyed youth protection causes, it is better for society itself. If you start checking, you will find that youth protection is involved in the raising of many of the worst criminals we've ever known.
Even child psychiatry and "special needs schools" ... well. Comparing symptoms upon entry and symptoms upon exit paints a very clear picture that really questions why they're allowed to exist.
https://sci-hub.se/https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007...
And then of course there's the many scandals that these people keep and keep and keep producing. Abuse within foster families is higher than in families in youth protection services. In institutions it is a lot higher.
So they don't protect kids.
And crimes are astronomically higher in both foster care and institutional care (and youth psychiatry).
So they don't protect society against those kids either.
If my parents had both died during my childhood we knew we'd live with our cousins Catherine and Victoria. If somehow we didn't come with a pile of money (from insurance paying out or other mechanisms that fire when two child-rearing age people suddenly die) things would have been very tight for my Uncle and his wife but we'd have family.
The answer to this question doesn't really matter for that reason.
The vast majority of kids are in foster care because otherwise their parents would be "unreachable" for social workers, for various reasons, like refusing psych treatment for their kid that the school insists on, like autism treatment for "difficult" children, sometimes just because they can't because treatment can only happen during working hours, but the parents need to work. Meaning they are hostages to "force change". That group is huge. Next largest group are kids suspected of a crime. Keep in mind that the way our law works kids don't have any legal rights. They may be convicted of a crime but for kids there is no difference between suspected and convicted.
The thing is, with just kids in youth services that really NEED to be somewhere the current system cannot possibly survive.
And let's not forget that there really aren't that many effective ways to reduce recidivism, so this ought to be worth a lot to society.
Generally carrots work a LOT better than sticks.
Such programs exist, in a limited way: https://www.npr.org/2018/12/06/663516573/programs-help-incar...
Yeah, but who's to say whether that something was remotely reasonable versus something completely frivolous (she rolled her eyes at him, she didn't cry convincingly enough, some other bullshit).
Anyway I'd argue that our justice system should have zero room for such capricious, emotional judging.
"What would be left to the judge's discretion exactly" - f..n work within the limits of laws and regulations. The existing framework gives judges plenty of discretion as it is.
And the last thing. Sounds like you do not mind people being jailed for the sake of the judges having discretion? I guess you would not mind then going away for a couple of years for spitting on a sidewalk or something similar.
i.e. someone who has been banned from driving due to previous offences but who is caught driving may be sentenced to a maximum of 6 months in prison.
Well, duh. She is black. That pushed the judge's buttons.
This wasn’t a single aberrant case where maybe he made a mistake, it was an long term persistent pattern of deliberate behaviour identified in a inquiry. He even said he was ‘very remorseful’.
Devil's Advocate 2: Single motherhood shouldn't entitle you to ignore traffic laws. If anything, if you get more traffic violations, you are more likely unsafe for your children (who have no one else to depend on), so maybe they should be taken away (foster care being worse is a separate issue)
What.
2. "foster care being worse" is exactly the issue, no? Even if I buy the "traffic tickets correlate with unsafe environment" assumption, you're suggesting we remove the kids for their own safety (or a guess at it, based on a noisy signal)...but then suggesting their actual safety is a separate issue?
Those sentencing practices couldn't be further from what, for example, Germany does and Germany's roads are way safer than US roads (going by vehicle kilometers traveled).
You don't need to hand out stupidly excessive sentences like you get for pretty much anything in the US to have safe roads.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
> Single motherhood shouldn't entitle you to ignore traffic laws.
So your children should be taken away if you get a parking ticket? What?
I'm not sure taking away the use of the vehicle is much more humane than prison for someone too poor to pay traffic tickets. Without a vehicle in the US, they likely won't be able to get to work, which all but ensures they won't be able to pay their tickets.
Same with revocation of the license, what if they drive anyway? What if they don't show up to community service? What if it's because they need to work? These punishments seem to me to need to be backed up by the threat of prison, or else they're just as toothless as the fines themselves.
Wage garnishment seems much better, though it requires that they have an identifiable employer and that they make enough to pay the fine and rent. Getting evicted because of wage garnishment, like the taking away of a vehicle, seems like somewhere near the same level of inhumane as prison time, for a person in that precarious of a situation. And what happens if the employer refuses to garnish the wages?
Though I know that some garnishments are income dependent, and employers are usually compliant, so that's probably the best of all worlds.
All of your suggestions seem more compassionate than prison, but I still think there is a major question of what happens if there is still non-compliance? Do we let violators go, or do we escalate until we are doing some violence, either through prison or confiscation of property?
And if we aren't willing to do violence, should the penalty exist at all in the first place?
That's the problem with these debates about penalties--for the very poor, any penalty might be life destroying. But then how do you incentivize certain kinds of behavior? And how do you determine when somebody is too poor to be subject to any kind of penalty? Any loopholes you create will always be abused by the rich and powerful because that's the very definition of power--capable of bending the system to your advantage.
The real problem is that the poor are very often unplugged from civil society as experienced by the middle classes. They don't have a stake in it. Rather than just throw up our hands, if we're serious about the plight of poverty and its ill effects, we should be more proactive. Keep the penalties, because jail time is something everybody understands, no matter how poor you are. But be proactive about not only enforcement but remediation. Send the darned judges to the people rather than making the people come to the judge. If all the person can afford is a quarter, then take the quarter and thank them for their time and their participation.
The goal afterall isn't punishment for punishment's sake, it's to heal the wounds to civil society caused by law breaking, repairing the relationship between the offender and the community, and bringing the offender back into the fold. If the offender doesn't have any sense of a personal relationship with the state, then punishment imposed from a distance can't meet even half of its function. Moreover, no penalty whatsoever, or one with no teeth, does absolutely nothing except reinforce the estrangement, which is worse. It's like leaving the mentally ill on the street to rot to death out of some absurd sense of individual liberty; it functions only to make the non-mentally ill feel more secure in their privileged circumstances, rather than addressing any of the real underlying issues.
This is probably true, but a car impoundment isn't a first pass at punishment. It would presumably be after someone is a severe repeat offender with no remorse. It's okay to set a maximum punishment, say car impoundment, and then judge from the fact pattern that someone deserves the max punishment. I do hope that the max punishment is less preferable than other hypothetical punishments.
> The real problem is that the poor are very often unplugged from civil society as experienced by the middle classes. They don't have a stake in it. Rather than just throw up our hands, if we're serious about the plight of poverty and its ill effects, we should be more proactive. Keep the penalties, because jail time is something everybody understands, no matter how poor you are. But be proactive about not only enforcement but remediation. Send the darned judges to the people rather than making the people come to the judge. If all the person can afford is a quarter, then take the quarter and thank them for their time and their participation.
This is a fine take, but is nearly impossible to do wholesale because there are so many entrenched interests. You're talking about a fundamental change (that I agree would be good) to the whole justice system and its goals, which isn't practical in any sense. But in this hypothetical world where the whole justice system is changed, I might agree that jail time is something that could be on the table for speeding tickets.
However, that is not going to happen anytime soon, and certainly not all at once. While we ponder how to enact a total overhaul of the justice system, let's make speeding tickets not have jail time as a punishment.
> The goal afterall isn't punishment for punishment's sake, it's to heal the wounds to civil society caused by law breaking, repairing the relationship between the offender and the community, and bringing the offender back into the fold. If the offender doesn't have any sense of a personal relationship with the state, then punishment imposed from a distance can't meet even half of its function. Moreover, no penalty whatsoever, or one with no teeth, does absolutely nothing except reinforce the estrangement, which is worse. It's like leaving the mentally ill on the street to rot to death out of some absurd sense of individual liberty; it functions only to make the non-mentally ill feel more secure in their privileged circumstances, rather than addressing any of the real underlying issues.
This is super debatable and there are many schools of thought on the goals of punishment. Some say people should be punished for punishment's sake, and indeed the way sentences are handed out in many cases reinforces that this is the prevailing view.
Base the fine on income. Say, a traffic ticket is 0.1% of your income, while running a red light is 1% and a DUI could be 10%.
Wouldn't it be done as "they go to jail, but still owe the money afterwards"?
The biggest impact, by far, is on the working people.
The rich would be somewhat miserable for a time, but that's it. After jail they can go back to their rich lifestyle.
The poor can be miserable or not, depending on exact level of "poor". Freedom is lost, but with hot meals and a roof and medical care, it's not all bad. People have been known to purposely commit minor crimes in from of the police, or to self-report by phoning from the scene of the crime, so that they could go to jail.
Working people of all levels are devastated. At the low end, failing to show up for work on time is cause for termination. At the high end, failed background checks will make the person unemployable by an entire industry or career field. Bills had been getting paid, but that ends, and the family is evicted. All belongings are likely lost; getting them moved isn't so easy while passing the days in jail. Divorce is likely. Cars will be repossessed. The person leaves jail with no belongings, no money, no family, no job, and no possibility of getting a similar job.
The working people are rightly terrified of jail. It usually keeps them in line. When it doesn't, it transitions them to being poor.
That the crime on record changes names does not detract from the originating crime being a minor traffic violation.
Where i live, fines are enforced same ways like civil damages - bank account suspension, wage deductions, even forced sale of property. But no 'personal' punishment like jail or community service.
Case A) A poor person pays their fine, and is devastated by the loss of money.
Case B) A poor person can't pay the fine and gets sentenced to prison or gets something repoed, and is devastated by either the criminal record or loss of property.
The other problem with using corporal punishment is that it's very easy to overdo it. It's also very easy to not do enough.
Take speeding tickets. What if a person just decides not to pay and keep speeding? Not that they can't, but they don't. Eventually you lose your licenses. You continue to speed, getting more tickets, and now also getting tickets for driving without a license. You continue to refuse to pay the fines and continue to drive without a license. You aren't driving any differently than when you received your first ticket, so there is no increase in negligence. What option do you think the courts should have to someone who acts like this? Currently there is jail time for contempt of court, but we are taking that away.
You can try to forcefully take the money, and if they are earning a paycheck hopefully the business agrees. But what if they don't, or what if the person does not earn income in a way that the state can easily seize it?
You could seize their property, take their car, etc. But at that point you are still threatening prison if they physically try to stop the police. Yes, the crime is now escalated to assaulting an officer, not just speeding, but it is all because of that speeding ticket. And if they resist with enough force, they may face lethal force in return. All for a speeding ticket.
That's how our legal system is structured. Any punishment is accompanied by a risk of a harsher punishment if it isn't followed. If you ever have a punishment that is not, then you effectively have a law that can be ignored (which we see sometimes with businesses who break laws and pay fines lower than the profit they earned from breaking the law).
No, just moving what the maximum punishment is from jail time to a boot on their tire. Conversely, who says jail time is enough? Why not make the maximum even worse than jail? At some point you have to have a max, just advocating that the max is reduced.
> Take speeding tickets. What if a person just decides not to pay and keep speeding? Not that they can't, but they don't. Eventually you lose your licenses. You continue to speed, getting more tickets, and now also getting tickets for driving without a license. You continue to refuse to pay the fines and continue to drive without a license. You aren't driving any differently than when you received your first ticket, so there is no increase in negligence. What option do you think the courts should have to someone who acts like this? Currently there is jail time for contempt of court, but we are taking that away.
How about a boot on their car? Seizure of their car for failure to have a license? Mandatory community service? That would prevent them from driving without a license, but not put them in jail. Wage garnishment is another one, they can keep speeding all they want
> You can try to forcefully take the money, and if they are earning a paycheck hopefully the business agrees.
The business doesn't have a say in wage garnishment.
> But what if they don't, or what if the person does not earn income in a way that the state can easily seize it?
Boot their car. Or seize it.
> You could seize their property, take their car, etc. But at that point you are still threatening prison if they physically try to stop the police. Yes, the crime is now escalated to assaulting an officer, not just speeding, but it is all because of that speeding ticket. And if they resist with enough force, they may face lethal force in return. All for a speeding ticket.
Assault is not malum prohibitum. Assaulting someone is evil in itself and depending on the facts of the case would mean jail time whether that assault stemmed from a ticket or not. Removing the possibility of someone going to jail altogether is not what I am advocating for.
> That's how our legal system is structured. Any punishment is accompanied by a risk of a harsher punishment if it isn't followed. If you ever have a punishment that is not, then you effectively have a law that can be ignored (which we see sometimes with businesses who break laws and pay fines lower than the profit they earned from breaking the law).
Not any. Most crimes have a maximum punishment. The maximum punishment for malum prohibitum crimes should be something less than prison.
As an aside, it's okay if there are edge cases where you have some rich person with no paycheck and 100 cars and loves to flaunt their ability to speed without repercussions because they can easily afford the ticket (or refuse to pay) or use one of their other cars.
Well the maximum penalty is a combination of death or solitary confinement, depending upon if the lethal force subdues a person enough to put them in solitary or if it kills them.
Please remember, I'm not talking about the penalty prescribed for a given specific crime but instead the penalty that follows a series of escalations where the escalations would be deemed common, and often lawful behavior, if not for the fact it is against someone acting on behalf of the court/law enforcement system.
Take being taken to jail. Outside of the legal system, someone trying to forcefully locate you into a caged environment ran like a jail would be kidnapping (and possibly enslavement) and lethal force to resist them would be a natural response. So someone being arrested can either submit to the law, in that they realize the person arresting them has the right to do so and thus allows the punishment to follow, or they can resist. In the latter case increasing force will be used to subdue them, potentially resulting in their being killed.
This is part of the philosophy that all laws are enforced by the barrel of a gun. That is speaking as a last resort in the worst case, not in the common case.
>How about a boot on their car? Seizure of their car for failure to have a license? Mandatory community service?
If they submit to these then that is that. But we are talking about the maximum penalty for someone who resists. What happens when they continue to resist? Not show up for community service? Not show up for court? Do you send police to arrest them?
>Assaulting someone is evil in itself
Not when done in defense of property (even if you don't believe in self defense, do you support police having the right to arrest a thief and use physical force if they resist). If the person respects the law's claim to their car then the escalation stops, but I'm talking worst case where they do not respect the legal structure enforcing the law.
>Most crimes have a maximum punishment.
Only if you submit to the punishment. Not submitting is accompanied by a harsher penalty.
I know this is HN, but do we really need to reinvent the concepts of punishment and deterrence from first principles? And I shouldn't even have to say it but of course the example instance at the root here is far beyond excessive.
The good it does is deterrence to the rest of the population. Or that's how authoritarians like to see these sorts of dis-proportionate punishments.
It’s because she’s black.
White authorities in the American South (this was in Alabama) have been jailing, fining, beating, harassing, blackballing, and even lynching black people for hundreds of years.
It continues to date.
They voted for a judge because they thought he would be "tough on crime", or some other slogan. I am really speculating here. The reason though is a lack of information on the voters part. I am not sure how we solve that problem though.
Judges like this should be put disbarred so that they cant practice law or serve time themselves.
That's just your opinion, and you're in the minority. Probably most people in that jurisdiction are happy with the overall behavior of the judge.
Democracy doesn't care about the needs of the individual, only the wants of the group. The group wants exclusive use of a particular area, thus limits parking. Public streets with reserved parking, the antithesis of a functioning society.
A few months after Judge Hayes’ suspension ended, his term as a municipal judge was set to expire. So, the Montgomery City Council took up the question of the judge’s future on March 6, 2018. On the agenda of its meeting: whether to reappoint Hayes to another four-year term.
Everyone on that city council knew, for years, what a terrible judge they had hired. This seems to undercut the idea that appointing judges is some sort of solution to the problem of injustice in USA.
A bit of a survey from the Venice Commission, some sort of gang of euro-judicial boffins:
https://www.icj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/CDL-AD2007_02...
I certainly hope we can improve our "judicial" system in USA, to make it more just, less tyrannical, less capricious, less totalitarian, less active, etc. Sometimes I wonder whether that's possible for a society that's happy to spend $750B/yr on killing machines and in fact has killed millions of innocents overseas over the last several decades. As Thucydides wrote, the tyranny that the Athenian empire imposed on others it eventually imposed on itself.
Lower level appointments go thru a provincial JAAC, while superior and above go thru a federal JAAC. After JAAC's shortlisting, the respective provincial or federal government or minister of justice decides.
I suppose there's always a way to stack the committee to get a biased shortlist to choose from, but the committees aren't all appointed by the government. Some are appointed by judges, law society, etc. In practice, it seems to work way better than just having a city council choose.
In the last election, I tried to find out about the local judges on my ballot and could find virtually nothing.
The media has been neutered in to an infotainment machine, so there's very little investigative journalism left even on issues of national or international importance, much less on small issues like who your local judges are and how they rule.
This is definitely one of the problems. There was a study that showed judges were handing stricter sentences for the same crime during election years than non election years ("tough on crime"). Elections are a popularity contest in a way, even well informed voters do not always make rational decisions.
If one doesn't have elections to worry about, he/she can do their job to the best of their ability without thinking about pleasing anyone or pandering to any one group, just good old honest work. The moment they have to think about elections, things change. What kind of judge would you like to have - someone who is totally honest and fair without giving a crap about what others think, or someone who is trying to be popular?
Jefferson, Madison, at al feared the Judiciary for a reason. Particularly the Federal tier. Elected judges have a built in check in that they are subject to periodic reaffirmation of confidence from the populace. An appointed judge just needs the right connections once, and to not do anything on such a regular basis that they become the subject of an ethics investigation.
I don't know which one is worse. Maybe both are equally bad.
Then again, maybe you could make a longer term work with some sort of "anti-election" mechanism. You vote in/appoint/have judges nominated by the bar, whatever, and periodically, a dismissal election is held. If a certain threshold of votes for dismissal/no-confidence are cast, then that triggers a conventional election/run-off for that judges spot. In that sense, the judge no longer has to actively politik, though those vying for the spot are free to campaign to try to get people displeased enough to trigger an election.
It still seems like it may only work with a populace who stays on top of their judges, but I actually kind of like the idea because in theory, good judges would never really be upset from business as usual, bad ones would very quickly become apparent in theory, since the number of corrupt supporters would be very unlikely to dwarf the number of "victims" of the judges corrupt acts, and you get away from some of the politicization of the position except when the public clearly has a change in the winds of policy in mind, in which case the election may put the judge back in office, but with renewed attention to the change in civil sentiment.
I don't know, it just feels better to me that way. I mean I do kinda get where Go's coming from, and I semi-dig it. I just don't think judges should ever be more than arms length away from the people whose lives they impact most.
Maybe your state has something similar. I found it useful to read a couple decisions written by the judges on our last ballot.
I'm pretty sure it is... why would you elect a judge? They're not supposed to apply any opinion just interpret the law technically. What are people voting for them based on? Their political affiliation? That's absolutely bonkers.
Its kind of like how two competent people can implement a POSIX compliant operating system in different ways (microkernel or monolithic, emacs vs vi, systemd vs sysvinit).
Their qualifications, history, and biases. I mean it isn't like most judges are getting the position without having a law degree, so the majority of them are in fact qualified for the position. So how else do you fill a public position when you have multiple qualified people and a single position. The argument for election is so to reduce nepotism and cronyism.
They should leave them at home if they're a freaking judge!!
You're telling me that Gorsuch doesn't have biases? RBG? Kavanaugh? Roberts? Sotomayor?
All these people interpret the same laws in different ways. If that isn't called bias than I don't know what is. The issue is that there is no objective truth, at least one which can be known. All laws are subject to interpretation. In fact, that is literally why we have judges and juries in the first place. To scrutinize and check interpretation of laws.
Are you telling me there's an objective truth to what "Freedom of Speech" means? What "the right to bare arms" is?
If there are major questions of interpretation they leave it to the legislature to clarify.
I'm not sure why you would expect judges to be a special class of people that are void of opinions.
Also, speaking as somebody who recently voted for local judges and prosecutors, I got to choose a prosecutor who won't take police-union money and a judge who thinks they can do better than the possibly-corrupt incumbent. I wouldn't give up this vote just for some imagined peace in the political process.
You see this seems massively inappropriate in the first place. Take that money for what? A prosecutor shouldn't take any money from anyone, in any circumstance, apart from their salary. They shouldn't even be talking to a political organisation like a union.
Both things seem like grounds for automatic dismissal for a prosecutor. Why are you having to check for it as a voter?
Yes, it's stressful being a vigilant voter. But what's the alternative? Not caring?
Instead we have a situation where, as the article points out, corruption is swept away where people get to walk away with a cozy retirement and say 'well gosh I regret my mistakes' as if that fixes the fact that they ruined someone's life over a failure to pay traffic fees.
That's the example of the revolving door and people who abuse it get away scott-free.
Not electing prosecutors and judges.
That's where this thread started.
> In the last election, I tried to find out about the local judges on my ballot and could find virtually nothing.
In my last election I had the voting booklet. There were two judges running for a position. One had a website and the other (the incumbent) didn't.
Honestly, a lot of candidates I found didn't have websites. If you aren't going to take the time to make a simple website to state your policies I'm not sure I trust you to be transparent and make decisions on my behalf. In 2020 if you don't have a website you are demonstrating to me that you don't want to inform me, the voter, about yourself.
What would you like to see on a judge's website? Their opinions on things? They shouldn't have any personal opinions!
Like... voters?
> What would you like to see on a judge's website?
Qualifications, what ideals are important to them, how they handled complex cases, etc
> They shouldn't have any personal opinions!
Unfortunately they are human, so they do have personal opinions. They are allowed to have personal opinions. They just aren't allowed to have party affiliations. But if you look at the supreme court this is clearly also an absurd notion to expect them to not have leanings.
In the US could a town elect a judge who says they're going to convict everyone who's left-handed?
> they don't try to appeal to anyone, they just implement it. Is this not how it works in the US?
On paper, yes. In practice, no. Because again, laws aren't objective.
> In the US could a town elect a judge who says they're going to convict everyone who's left-handed?
Let's rephrase it.
> In the US could a town elect a judge who says they're going to convict everyone who's black?
Welcome to Jim Crow era. So the answer is clearly yes. Of course, conviction still relies on the jury and "jury nullification" exists in an effort to put these types of judges in check. This is why you're supposed to be judged by peers. Now there is interpretation of what peers means. Or what community is. Is this your neighbors? Or is this just people that live in the town? Are people in the Brooklyn your peers if you live in Queens? What about if you live in Mountain View? If you do a search you'll quickly find different answers from legal scholars as to what "jury of peers" means. I brought up the first and second amendments because these are frequently debated in the public domain (where judges/legal scholars are debating and we the public can see and listen in).
To me, the idea that laws are objective and not up for interpretation is "bat-shit insane." To do so would require perfect humans writing laws and last time I checked we didn't have any of those.
If they're open to too much interpretation... send them back to the legislature to clarify.
> Welcome to Jim Crow era. So the answer is clearly yes.
Well this seems like an indication to me that the system is not great.
Good idea. Now what do we do in the mean time with people that are being tried? Wait? How? Are they free or in jail? What's the default position?
Or do we just do our best (i.e. interpretation)?
> Well this seems like an indication to me that the system is not great.
Well... yeah... I don't think anyone has claimed it as such. If you have a better system I think a lot of people would be happy.
The issue is that there's lots of nuances involved. Even if we had Multivac judging it would still be difficult. People can't write code to be absolutely unambiguous and error proof. Code that takes into account every possible scenario. So I'm not sure why you would expect people that are in a more complex feature environment and using a less precise language would be able to perform better. This is really absurd, to me.
HUMANS ARE NOT PERFECT ROBOTS.
And I'm not sure why this is a controversial opinion.
> And I'm not sure why this is a controversial opinion.
I think by asking them to stand for election you make them less perfect and amplify their flaws, because they have to appeal to some sector. Do they appeal to left-wing extremes, or right-wing extremes? They can't easily target both. They can't just do what they think is right. They have to pander to some niche.
Plainly applying the law doesn't win votes.
The only people who will votes are those who promise to twist it to some extreme.
> The argument for election is so to reduce nepotism and cronyism.
So we come back to the question: "Which is better? Elected judges or appointed judges?"
> They can't just do what they think is right. They have to pander to some niche.
The question is about who's bias you are using to appoint the judge. Are you using the bias of current lawmakers/elites? Or are you using the bias of the public? You're right in that they have to pander to some niche. So which do you want?
I also mentioned in another thread that the point of democracy is to distribute power. Letting officials is a consolidation of power. Letting the public do it is distribution. There's advantages to both.
And honestly, looking at voter information guides, judges are mostly talking about their qualifications and how they are unbiased. In my last guide there were two judges. One said that he served the community well and cited some cases. The other said we need more transparency and that as a judge he would make rulings public to increase transparency of the law. Neither were really pandering to parties. Judges aren't allowed to be affiliated with parties. Neither of those judges were saying things like: "We're going to get those black people," (like Jim Crow era) "I'm a liberal and hold left-wing values," or even things like "I'm concerned with immigration law." The latter because it would be considered political. There are guidelines. These guidelines are to restrict their ability to make party appeals. At least pandering to the public is more transparent.
But when it comes down to it, it really is a question of who they are pandering to, not if they pander. There has to be some mechanism to appoint judges, and they will just pander to whoever is in charge of that.
Civil law is a lot less flexible. Most of the world uses civil law. Common law is I think exclusive to the former British colonies.
Judges are the one who recommend the sentencing length, their is guideline and its upto the judge to give the minimum or maximum or in between.
Unfortunately wrong. https://ballotpedia.org/Partisan_election_of_judges
Many laws are not so black and white that the decision is explicit. You have to handle weird chain of custody questions, whether evidence was seized lawfully, etc, etc.
I admit I don't know how judges in other countries are appointed, but I think it usually involves a pretty thorough screening process involving several different requirements and organisations.
This looks more like indictment of US foster care.
I really wish people here would understand the real fleecing of America isn't by the CEOs of the country, they cannot make you pay their retirement but public servants can and those at the upper levels easily pull down one hundred thousand or more per year when retired!
Big fucking whoop.
And no matter the reasoning (or lack of it), the fallout of this (where the kids are harmed/molested in foster care) is hard to attribute to the judge. If the mother had been a serious threat to the children and the judge had sentenced her based on truly unquestionable reasons, they still might have met the same fate in foster care. As part of the legal system, the judge basically has to have complete confidence in the integrity of the foster care system (and it isn't his job to ensure that integrity).
So we suddenly have proven guilty without proof, but rather just because there's some suspicion. Doesn't seem American.
A judge enacting a sentence based on inadmissible evidence is a violation of the rights of the accused, the Constitution, and the specific oaths and duties of their profession.
This is an absolutely absurd "reading" of what I said, and it is patently offensive. Please look again.
I am not fine with someone being sentenced and jailed for a crime they were not found guilty of, which is what you're describing. That's an abuse of power and a deprivation of due process.
I ask you again to just use your imagination; set aside this particular case and imagine a case where there is absolutely compelling grounds for thinking that the mother is a direct harm to her children, but no admissible evidence to establish that in a legal context. So given the legal "room" to hand down a harsher-than-would-otherwise-be sentence for some separate offense, that doesn't strike me as totally inappropriate or out of line with our expectations about what judges should do. This of course requires the legal establishment of the "room" for judges to do such things, but they have that to a large extent.
FYI the system which we are discussing does not entertain such a notion. Or else we wouldn't need or bother with juries, whose main job is to deliberate and argue over whether presented evidence is compelling enough to remove any possibility of doubt.
> So given the legal "room" to hand down a harsher-than-would-otherwise-be sentence for some separate offense, that doesn't strike me as totally inappropriate or out of line with our expectations about what judges should do
I... _wildly_ disagree with this. Not that my disagreement here should matter much – surely the justice/legal system has its own expectations here, that would trump yours or mine?
As an example of a judge taking it on himself to "do the right thing", U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan tried to conjure up some way to continue the prosecution of General Michael Flynn by appointing a special counsel after the US District Attorney had moved to dismiss the case. [1] Judge Sullivan thus tried to act as prosecutor, despite a unanimous SCOTUS ruling that such action was not allowed, and was ordered by the Appeals Court to dismiss.
1. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/michael-flynns-case-ordered-...
1. The judge must understand that the (justice) system is flawed, it's his/her job to bring about justice anyway.
2. The judge must believe the (foster care) system is flawless, it's not his/her job to worry about that.
2. I don't think the judge has to believe it is flawless. In fact, the judge might believe that it is not flawless, and again exercise in the opposite direction of NOT sentencing someone who would otherwise be correctly sentenced just to keep kids out of a bad foster care system. My point was that, barring a situation where the judge has grounded suspicions about the foster care system, the judge must basically (as a principle of law) endorse the foster care system as a viable caretaker of the children. Judges would otherwise be required to initiate investigations into foster care systems (and the like) whenever they might be utilized in a legal setting. That's an impossible burden.