The big news: Once Ciavarella was convicted, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court tossed out 4,000 convictions issued by the judge. Will the kids or their families get any restitution for wrongful imprisonment?
"sometimes referred to the States’ immunity from suit as "Eleventh Amendment immunity[,]" [that] phrase is [a] convenient shorthand but something of a misnomer, [because] the sovereign immunity of the States neither derives from nor is limited by the terms of the Eleventh Amendment. Rather, as the Constitution's structure, and its history, and the authoritative interpretations by this Court make clear, the States’ immunity from suit is a fundamental aspect of the sovereignty which the States enjoyed before the ratification of the Constitution, and which they retain today (either literally or by virtue of their admission into the Union upon an equal footing with the other States) except as altered by the plan of the Convention or certain constitutional Amendments."
Also this: the State of Pennsylvania has committed grave injustice against thousands of its citizens. If they cannot get justice done through the courts what are they supposed to do instead? Take recourse to Direct Action? That's not desirable in civilized society. You can't be your own judge and executioner.
Can you name any of these countries so we can do a fact-check?
This is what government IS! Executive, Legislative, and Judiciary.
States have some subservience to the Federal government, as well.
The question really is "should the judiciary have power over the executive in this case, or should the executive or legistlature decide what compensation is appropriate." It's still "government" either way.
And let us remember which branch of government was the original villain in this case!
One shouldn't think of laws as something that exists to be obeyed - laws are (or should be) the written down consensus of We the People about how we want our society to be, and any [lack of] such law can and should be fixed.
I'm not sure who else other than the families would get that.
"The answers became a bit clearer on Thursday as the judge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., and a colleague, Michael T. Conahan, appeared in federal court in Scranton, Pa., to plead guilty to wire fraud and income tax fraud for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care."
The prison sentence was the punishment of the wrongful imprisonments.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13judge.html?pagewanted...
He should pay punitive damages though.