Injustice incorporated

Shocking - that is the first incredulous conclusion after reading the article in the NY Times of today on American justice courts. As it turns out, justice court is a misnomer for a large number of these institutions that often occupy premises more reminiscent of a farm barn or a workshop.

"Some of the courtrooms are not even courtrooms: tiny offices or basement rooms without a judge'’s bench or jury box. "

These courts are supposed to bring affordable justice to common people in small towns in backyard districts. Instead, according to a NY Times report following a year long investigation, dependents are often denied proper recourse to law, unfairly judged, unduly sentenced and obstructed from an appeal through utterly incompetent court transcriptions, if any.

"People have been sent to jail without a guilty plea or a trial, or tossed from their homes without a proper proceeding. In violation of the law, defendants have been refused lawyers, or sentenced to weeks in jail because they cannot pay a fine."

The judges are often incompetent.

"Some 1,140 justices have received some sort of reprimand over the last three decades - an average of about 40 a year, either privately warned, publicly rebuked or removed. They are seriously disciplined at a steeper rate than their higher-court colleagues."

"For the nearly 75 percent of justices who are not lawyers, the only initial training is six days of state-administered classes, followed by a true-or-false test so rudimentary that the official who runs it said only one candidate since 1999 had failed."

There is little control over these courts and the judges that run these institutions.

"State court officials know little about the justices, and cannot reliably say how many cases they handle or how many are appealed. Even the agency charged with disciplining them, the State Commission on Judicial Conduct, is not equipped to fully police their vast numbers."

These courts are prevalent in a majority of states in the USA.

"New York is one of about 30 states that still rely on these kinds of local judges, descendants of the justices who kept the peace in Colonial days, when lawyers were scarce."

These courts handle not just trivial cases such as speeding offences either.

"It is tempting to view the justice courts as weak and inconsequential because the bulk of their business is traffic violations. Yet among their 2.2 million cases, the courts handle more than 300,000 criminal matters a year."

Small wonder that this travesty of law and justice is the order of day: A judge of a justice court can be appointed willy-nilly - as long as the person is elected!

"The reason is plain: Many do not know or seem to care what the law is. Justices are not screened for competence, temperament or even reading ability. The only requirement is that they be elected. But voters often have little inkling of the justicesÂ’ power or their sometimes tainted records."

The article in the NY Times continues to cite examples of abuse and incompetence by these justice court judges.

In defense of the system of justice courts, it is argued that the benefits to people outweigh the rotten spots. However, in reality this system is the remnants of a thirteen century English system of layman law for lowly cases. Unfortunately, modern times have left this system behind and exposed it for the folly it is today: a band of cavalier henchmen who reign supreme over their little local fiefdoms, often providing anchor points for wholesale nepotism and prejudice on a local scale.

Not in Britain, the Netherlands, both ex-colonial powers; or South Africa, an ex-colony of both forementioned countries, is there today any such aberration of justice as the justice courts of the USA, a country that prides itself on being a land of laws. Perhaps it would be better served by setting its own house in order rather than preaching to other countries about justice.