Letigious Culture and Our Judges

The problems are two-fold, the first problem being that we abuse the rights of our citizens, and the second being that the U.S. criminal justice system doesn't actually succeed in deterring crime (which is far more important than dealing with it after the fact.)

There are reasons for these problems other than the fundamental desire the win at all costs, that's prevalent in our court systems. Part of the problem is that instead of a justice system, we have now a litigious system. It has stopped being about what's right, and started being about what's legal.

Who decides what's legal? You may think that federal, state, county, and city governments make laws, and you would be right to a point. However, judges also make law by establishing precedent. When a new issue is raised, the may establish legal precedent in the manner. At the time this system was established, the system even made sense, because judges were respected members of the community, chosen by the community. Judges are rarely appointed by election, and even the judges with the highest legal positions in our country, the Supreme Court judges, are chosen for us by the president.

It happens because the average law abiding citizen pays little notice to their selection. It falls to other people they think. Who cares, they say, I'm never going to be arrested. So we find an Orange County Superior Court Judge, who I kid not has a button that produces a large obnoxious sound every he decides he's not in the mood to listen to either of the attorneys. You think I jest, but there are some crazy judges on the bench here in California. Many judges keep there positions until retirement or death, which is scary once you run into a bad one and the reality is the system is too overloaded and underfunded to notice.

Because judges take an active part in forming the law, all judges should be elected by the citizens in there respective jurisdictions. This is a low level change, but the insistence on electing people who take a fundamental role in the interpretation of our legislature, and also on our right to remove them from office by vote, is a first step in returning our country to a Democratic Republic.