On behalf of taxpayers who fund the legal system, crime/court reporters and legal analysts should keep in mind:
• Justice Russell Fox, who researched the law for 11 years after he retired, said justice means fairness; fairness and morality require a search for the truth, otherwise the wrong side may win; truth means reality, what actually happened.
• The adversary system in common law countries - Britain and its onetime colonies - does not search for the truth. In a majority of criminal trials, the wrong side wins.
Nonetheless, most common lawyers insist that their system is the best. But how could they know? Universities are supposed to be truth-seeking institutions, but law schools generally teach only what the law IS, not what ails it, or the cure (let alone its origins, or how the truth-seeking [inquisitorial] system works).
If veterinary and medical schools operated like that, a lot of cats, dogs and people would be seriously unwell, or worse.
Yale law professor Fred Rodell said the adversary system is "nothing but a high-class racket". His assertion can be tested by comparing an inquisitorial system with ours. In France, for example:
• Trained judges are in charge of evidence. On a fixed wage, they have no incentive to spin the process out. Most hearings take a day or so.
• Evidence is not concealed, and judges do not let lawyers question witnesses directly lest they pollute the truth with sophistry: trick questions, false arguments etc.
• The innocent are rarely charged, let alone convicted.
• Judges and jurors sitting together convict 95% of guilty defendants.
In the adversary system:
• Lawyers trained in sophistry control evidence, and have an incentive - $5 plus a minute - to prolong the process; the record spin-out is 117 years. Lawyers for white collar criminals, e.g. tax evaders, can run regulators round the courts for years. Trials can take months.
• Untrained judges do the decent thing: they try to stay awake. Lord Thankerton's solution infuriated lawyers; he knitted on the Bench.
• Judge-made rules conceal evidence, and lawyers for both sides are allowed to use sophistry to make honest witnesses look unreliable.
• Criminal law is unfair to victims; more than half (84% in India) guilty defendants get off, but at least 1% of people in prison (4%+ in the US) are innocent.
• Civil law is unfair to people in business and industry, doctors, and (outside the US) journalists. Litigation is a lottery; appeal courts a casino.
It looks as if Professor Rodell was right about the racket, and taxpayers are suspicious, perhaps without knowing exactly why:
• An Australian poll in 2011 found that judges are less trusted than bus drivers, police, hairdressers, and chefs.
• A 2012 US poll on attitudes to the civil system found that 92% want change, and 41% want fundamental change.
Justice Russell Fox also said the public knows that "justice marches with the truth". That means:
• Common lawyers, including lawyer-politicians, judges, academics, and legal bureaucrats, are the only people on the planet who believe, or purport to believe, that you can dispense justice without knowing all the facts.
• The humblest citizen instinctively has a better sense of justice than any judge, including those on the US Supreme Court.
• Informed voters will support the obvious remedy: change to a truth-seeking system.
Unfortunately, lawyers became the "dominant influence" in the British Parliament in the middle of the 14th century, and effectively remain an oligarchy in most English speaking legislatures: they are about 0.2% of the population, but 60% of the US Senate.
Lawyer-politicians have thus had the power to block fundamental change for more than six centuries. The remedy for that problem - voting the oligarchs out, however sweet they may otherwise be - is also obvious, but it will take a few more years.
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