Blog Assignment: Jonathan Swift Style Modest Proposal For the Judical System

A Humble, Prudent, Simple, Unassuming Proposition

For Preventing Any Further Disagreement over the Punishments Given to the Suspected Perpetrators of Various Heinous Crimes, and for the Discouragement of All Crime in the Entire Country as a Whole, Now and forever, for the Infinite Benefit of the Public.

            It is an unfortunate truth to any and all of those who travel, or make their way through, or live in, or travel through to live in, or live in after having traveled through, our great, prosperous country, that crime is ever rampant, and that furthermore our judicial system is entirely incapable of doing absolutely anything about it. Even the decisions that are made by the system always lead to one side being dissatisfied, and the sentencing system leads to all sorts of different punishments for all sorts of different crimes.

            In my humble, prudent, simple, and unassuming opinion, anyone who could provide a decent, logical, and detailed plan by which to fix our judicial system should be remembered and respected by everyone, ever, for all of eternity, and thus showered with riches, and also rewarded with exemption from whatever system he proposes.

            Now that that has been said, let us turn our attention to the problem at hand. After much careful thought and deliberation, I have come to the appalling conclusion that our court system is entirely flawed and in some places simply irreparable. It is true, some courts and cases are capable of producing some satisfactory results, but, when discussing true justice, any non-satisfactory court decision is absolutely inexcusable. Logically speaking, a satisfactory court decision is one wherein justice wins, and herein lays the main flaw with our system.

            In any court case, there are two sides, those being the prosecutor and the defendant. The two tell their different sides of the story, present evidence to back their various claims, and finally demand one thing or the other. The Judge, that is, the representative of the court, and therefore of justice, then makes a ruling in favor of the prosecution or the defense. Either the defense or the prosecution wins, and because of this, the Judge, the one who represents justice, is incapable of winning! Justice cannot win due to the actual inherent structure of the court proceedings!

            Thus, in order to fix this grievous error in our judicial branch, I propose a simple fix.

            I have been informed by a very knowing German-Chinese man of my acquaintance in Bulgaria that crime is indeed wrong. Furthermore, one cannot do anything wrong when they are dead. Thus, since it has been statistically proven that those who have committed a crime are more likely to commit another crime, the only truly viable punishment for any crime is death. As such, I propose that, no matter what the crime, the punishment should always be immediate execution.

In a courtroom scenario, this would allow for the complete elimination of the prosecution, and as such the complete elimination of the defense. Only the guilty and the Judge would remain, and since the guilty would be sentenced to death, the Judge would win. Because of this, justice would win, since, of course, in any competition, the person who stays alive the longest is generally deemed the winner.

A secondary and very minor change that I would then tack on to the first would be the complete and utter elimination of the judicial system as a whole. Instead, the person to deliver the universal sentence of execution should be the person who catches the guilty committing the crime. Since not every citizen is equipped with the tools to kill a man on sight, this task would fall to the police, who would now carry the responsibilities of the judge, the jury, and the executioner.

The recent non-indictment and complete dismissal of many police brutality cases throughout the country over the course of the past few months and years only evidences the fact that proponents of the current judicial system would probably find the above to be a welcome change, since they clearly support the decisions that these officers are already making out in the field.

Now, if you will forgive my little digression, I shall return to listing the benefits of such a system, which I believe are plentiful and obvious.

For first, such a system would discourage crime as a whole. I have it on good authority from my German-Chinese friend that people, generally speaking of course, do not want to die. Since that would be the punishment for crime, people would obviously no longer want to commit crimes.

Secondly, execution has the same effect on a human being no matter who they are, and as such the punishment is entirely equal. There will no longer be any fear of discrimination, since all crimes, big or small, and all people who commit them, would be punishable and punished with the same thing, death.

Thirdly, as I have stated before, such a system would allow justice to win in every case it is presented, since the winner of the gunfight would usually be the police officer, who is the representative of justice. Should the police officer lose, other police officers would simply search for and kill the criminal. Ultimately, a representative of justice would eventually kill the guilty, and should the guilty ever die (which is inevitable) justice will have been served anyway.

Fourthly, such a system would remove all the pesky details usually involved in crime fighting and solving. All we have to do is simply trust the police officers and their judgment without question, since they would be the envoys of justice.

Fifthly, as I have already stated, it would get rid of the judicial system as a whole. Since there would no longer be a court system to be corrupted, politicized, or dissatisfied with, all corruption, politicization, and dissatisfaction within and surrounding the court system would cease to exist.

Many other advantages might be enumerated, one must only sit down and think about this genius of a solution for a short while before even more come to mind. I can think of no one objection that could possibly be brought up against this proposition that could effectively disagree with the idea that it either prevents disagreements over punishments given or discourages crime as a whole. Therefore, let no one talk of these other, phony, apathetic and passive solutions; of learning to recognize the influence of socially sanctioned hatred and discrimination: of improving public access to judicial proceedings and the like: of encouraging transparency in investigations: of discouraging polarization and politicization of the courts and judges. Lastly, of encouraging honesty, discipline, decency, and equality in the judicial system and the criminal justice system; let no man talk to me of these expedients and the like of them, at least until he sincerely believes that there is even the slightest hope of putting them into practice.

I profess, in complete and utter honesty, that I have no involvement or personal interest in promoting this system, seeing as I would be exempt from it because of the fact that I created it. Thus, I remove any and all bias from my end, and present this fantastic idea in the hopes of bettering my country.

Supreme Court Update (12.5.14)

The oral arguments for the following cases were heard in Court this week.

·         Elonis v. United States

·         Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Assn.

·         Whitfield v. United States

·         B&B Hardware, Inc. v. HargisIndustries, Inc.

·         Young v. United Parcel Service, Inc.

·         Hana Financial, Inc. v. Hana Bank

Elonis v. United States sparked the most controversy, due to the fact that the Court’s decision will have to ride the line between reinforcing freedom of speech, or strengthening censorship, while also addressing the growing problem of threats and other such bullying in social media.

Outside of oral arguments, lawyers for couples in Louisiana and Michigan have told the Court that they are giving up part of their filing rights, a decision that could move the cases up to private Conference as early as January 9^th. This puts even more pressure on the Supreme Court to take up the same-sex marriage question directly at some point within its term, since any case granted as early as January has a good chance of being decided before the term ends.

On December 3^rd, at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, there was strong backing for the introduction of cameras at the Supreme Court and other federal courts. The bill – H.R. 917, the Sunshine in the Courtroom Act of 2013 – is the latest in a series of efforts by Congress to introduce cameras into all federal courts. Proponents argue that the bill would expand public access to the courts, and build confidence and understanding of and in the process. On the other hand, the bill’s opponents pointed out that such cameras could impair a defendant’s right to a fair trial, and threaten the safety of officials and participants alike. In any case, the Justices themselves are heavily opposed to televising the Court’s proceedings, and since the bill would not mandate them to do so, there is little chance that anyone will be witnessing televised Supreme Court cases any time soon.

Supreme Court: The Basics

The Supreme Court is made up of 1 Chief Justice and 8 Associate Judges nominated by the President and appointed by the Senate. Judges serve until either death of retirement. Term begins on the first Monday of every October, with a recess from late June/early July to October.

Chief Justice                           JOHN G. ROBERTS, JR.

Associate Justices                   ANTONIN SCALIA

ANTHONY M. KENNEDY

CLARENCE THOMAS

RUTH BADER GINSBURG

STEPHEN G. BREYER

SAMUEL A. ALITO, JR.

SONIA SOTOMAYOR

ELENA KAGAN

While the above is, for the most part, common knowledge, the actual process underlying the acquisition, argument, and ruling of a Court case is less well known. It all begins with a party that is dissatisfied with the decision of a lower court petitioning to the U.S. Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari (a request from the Supreme Court to a lower court to send up a record of a case for review). Four of the nine justices must vote to accept the case, and even then only about 100 cases are heard per year, of the average of 10,000 that are submitted.

Once the Justices accept a case, it is placed in a docket. The petitioner and the other party (known as the respondent) are given a certain amount of time to write a brief legal case, with a limit of 50 pages. After these initial “briefs” are filed, the parties can file shorter ones responding to each others arguments.

The next step is the Oral Argument. Oral Arguments are heard from October through April, usually on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Both parties get a half hour to speak their case, and most of that time is spent answering the Judges’ questions, since most of the case details have already been covered in the briefs. Once the cases are heard, the Judges vote on them during conferences typically held on Wednesdays and Fridays, and only on Fridays when the court is out of session. The dissent and majority both write opinions. If a Judge agrees with the decision, but not the rationale, he can write a concurring opinion. If there is a tie vote, the decision of the previous court stands (this can happen when one of the Justices is absent).

Finally, once a majority of the Justices agree to the contents of the Court’s opinion, they are handed down, and made public, either on the last day of that term or at some point before then. No opinion is considered the official opinion of the Court until it is made available to the public.

Elonis v. United States

  On Monday, the Supreme Court heard the argument for Elonis v. United States. The issue at hand was whether a Pennsylvania man's conviction for making threats on Facebook should stand, his defense being that he was only "venting", a clear demonstration of his right to free speech. Thus, the question presented was whether conviction of threatening another person requires proof of that person's intent to threaten, or whether it is enough to show that a "reasonable person" would regard the statement as threatening. Elonis argued that his conviction should lie in whether or not he personally intended to threaten someone.

The oral argument seemed to yield no results, leading to many questions and few answers. Justice Samuel A. Alito questioned Elonis' argument, pointing out that such a rule allows threats to be completely neutralized by simply adding the phrase "just kidding" at the end, or forming the threat itself into rap lyrics. He is quoted as saying that such a precedent "sounds like a road map for threatening people and getting away with it." Justice Sonia Sotomayor took issue with both standards, saying that there is little difference between the two; after all, inferring someone's state of mind from the words they said is the same as seeing what a "reasonable person" thinks of those words. The term "reasonable person" also came under dispute, since different situations might lead to different people being considered "reasonable" or "average.” For example, a reasonable adult and an equally reasonable teen might have completely different views on threats made by a teenager online.

Ultimately, the case is proving difficult, since any decision that the Justices make will have to ride a fine line between deterring useless, dangerous threats, and restricting our freedom of speech. In any case, the decision will not be known for at least several months.