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Comment by treetalker | Hacker News Reader

As a counterpoint, confidence in US courts (particularly the federal courts) is rapidly declining — both among the public and among those who operate within the court systems.

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As somebody who has been involved in civil actions in Federal Court, I can assure you that it deserves zero confidence and is basically pay-to-win. (Unless two billion-dollar-plus corporations are involved.) This is largely, but not only, on account of discovery taking years and costing unbounded sums of money, plus monetary penalties for not complying with expensive discovery.

I would second this. I would add that the federal court system is far ahead of the state courts, in that the federal trial courts at least put out reasonably well-written decisions on hearings, whereas the county courts generally just hand-wave everything in emotional verbal rulings.

That depends on what kind of media you consume. Feeling isn't really a good indication of reality.

I'd be interested to look at any studies (or even opinion pieces) that indicate either that confidence in the courts is remaining unchanged (compared either to recent or historical levels) or that it's increasing.

Agreed, that would be interesting to see if the methodology were sound. The problem is naturally that measuring "confidence in the courts" is almost inherently a methodologically difficult thing to do.

Additionally: shortage of confidence in the US Courts isn't a new thing. The reality of the US Courts system is: Money wins, and its been like this for the entire life of essentially all Americans alive today. This is, actually, rather convenient and good if you take the view that faith in the US courts system is a critical component of the US Dollar's global reserve status. If money controls the courts, and courts support the money, that's a pretty nice virtuous cycle. But, for the People; its been hit-or-miss for a long, long time.

The economy and markets of made of people with feelings. Perception is an important part.

This is about how the courts operate with regards to international business disputes, US has proven record about being impartial in these matters.

Even if that is true, the US's proven record does not include the current administration.

It excludes the current administration, the separation of powers goes a long ways here to help insure things are not overly influenced by internal politics. Worst case is you stall until things change, which is not much of an issue when dealing with the amounts of money that matter in these cases.

I don't think our system of separation of powers was designed with the modern political party system we currently have in mind.

That’s true, but doesn’t necessarily contradict the question posed. Is any other country _better_ in both of those dimensions?

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