I have no idea how much of non-speedy trials is down to insufficient supply (judges), excessive demand (drug war and other petty things gumming up the works), or bullshit process. The first two seem easier to tackle though.
2: It's too bad we can't benefit from his insights as insider to the process, but I suppose that would violate the code of ethics anyway.
Adopting the Napoleonic Code, and while we're at it we adopt the metric system too.
4 how about the Robespierre code instead?
I find the latest arguments for Fahrenheit / against Celsius overblown. Are we toddlers that we cannot internalize a scale that does not primarily range 0-100?
I think fixing this one is simple but not easy. Don't allow private attorneys make everybody use the same public defender system.
7: Yes, we could, but why shouldn't we get to be toddlers about this? Can't we make something easy?
They could fix Celsius by making the boiling point of water at 200C instead of 100C. It would be a lot more useful like that.
Also they could move the freezing point up to about 30C, so the temp doesn't have to go negative in the winter unless things are really bad.
This is all very interesting. So when Celsius is fixed, our legal system will run like clockwork?
13: heebie has a good point here. Sorry, Minivet, but you're banned.
I guess Spike, JRoth, and me are also banned. Fortunately, in the Unfogged system of justice, there's no lengthy appeals process and the bans go into effect immediately.
8: Are there any "private attorneys " left here on Unfogged?
I don't even know who I'd hire if I needed a criminal defense attorney and I know dozens of lawyers.
Even just 10 would help a lot.
This private attorney definitely opposes the abolition of private attorneys in criminal court. The result might be more and faster convictions, but that's not the only goal. Minimizing convictions and punishment of people who have not committed crimes is also relevant.
If I like punched a guy, and it was totally self-defense, I don't know what attorneys do that work here. If I killed someone, sure. That lawyer is in the newspaper.
19: To be devil's advocate, if rich people had to use public defenders, wouldn't there suddenly be a lot more well-funded public defender's officers, in such a way that it would help address your concerns?
Probably you'd get your public defender based on your school district so you buy your lawyer with a fancy house in an area with poor people kept out by zoning.
We actually know what would happen if relevant authorities made a concerted effort to bring Trump to trial quickly after January 6. That was the second impeachment. Very fast, ending in acquittal, and we now know that only a tiny part of the story was available at the time.
Leaving Trump twisting in the wind for a few more years, responding to grand juries in different states, learning that people he had trusted are testifying against him, and spending his fortune on lawyers and always needing new ones. looks to me like a good thing. Way better than an acquittal or hung jury. And let's face it, if 30% of the country still supports him, a conviction by a unanimous jury, even in Manhattan or DC, is unlikely.
l
Sure, this one insanely complicated, unusual situation should be carefully planned. What about the 2000 times someone has filed suit because he stiffed them on their contract?
23: Trump doesn't make us choose. We have enough criminality that we can have a couple of quick trials and a couple of drawn-out inquiries.
In the Unfogged justice system, the temperature is represented by two equally important scales: the Fahrenheit that matches American expectations for what feels cold and what feels hot, and the Celsius, which is calibrated to the properties of water. These are their off topic stories.
Thanks for 21 heebie.
To answer Moby's 22 I think I might just say that even in that situation we'd still be better off. Especially if homeless people are allowed to choose their district for purposes of public defender.
24: Civil cases, not criminal. Usually ongoing businesses have two incentives to pay their bills: First, delaying or refusing to pay ordinary bills costs more in lawyer fees than it saves; and second, eventually you can't find anyone who will work for you. Both of these happened to Trump over the years, and probably contributed to his various bankruptcies. The reputation problem is definitely hurting Trump's search for competent lawyers now. The court system has trouble with irrational folks, and it's not obvious how to fix.
Both of these happened to Trump over the years, and probably contributed to his various bankruptcies.
Come to think of it, maybe this is another reason he evolved from actually building things to no-risk branding deals over the years.
32: So Trump-style tactics aren't widely used to prevent the legal system from functioning in general, aside from a few extreme players like him?
Did he engage in SLAPP lawsuits? The anti-SLAPP protections have recently been increased in New York.
In civil suits court costs mean the money paid to the opposing attorney. How about in egregious cases it means the amortized cost of the courthouse plus the judge and the bailiffs?
34 That fits my experience. Plaintiffs push, defendants delay -- it's not always true, but often enough; in most places you get a scheduling order, and that usually sticks. So the extent to which a defendant can really gum things up is limited. California is a special case, imo, because to the 40 year practice of underfunding the public sector.
I've had cases that last a long time, usually there's a decent reason outside the life of the case for that. I have an employment case that's been waiting for ruling on what was basically rule 12 motions for 9 or 10 years now. I have the defendants -- I haven't done a thing to create this delay, but I've also got no incentive to make it stop. (I was just thinking about this: I'll be retiring in a few years, so maybe I should get the court to rule, and then we all move forward with whatever remains of the case. Maybe wait another year?)
36 Uh, what?
35 Do they call it SLAPP in New York?
Do they call it SLAPP in New York?
Does it matter? We know what I'm talking about. At any rate, the NYC bar and CLU both seem to have called their version by that name.
I'd be interested in an objective assessment over whether anti-slapp laws add or subtract. Having state courts adopt Iqbal would probably have a bigger impact on case efficiency overall, A couple of years ago, Florida revamped its summary judgment procedural rules, hoping that by adopting a process much like the federal system they'd get a bunch more summary judgments. I think it's working, but my window on this has been narrow.
Our federal court requires a fairly extensive filing from each party in advance of the initial scheduling conference, including stipulation to facts that aren't reasonably in dispute. (This is not long after the answer, so suddenly you have to flesh out all that vague stuff you put in.) Plus you tell the judge what stipulations you proposed and the other side declined -- I've had judges wordsmith these proposals at the initial conference, to see if they can get agreement. You also explain the legal and factual bases for your claims and defenses, and cite the cases that control. The judge will have read the cases, and if you've got a weak ass claim, you're going to hear about it. They're not ruling on it, but they can say 'I don't see how you're going to prove claim X unless you can prove fact Y -- and then see if someone proposes limited discovery on that. It costs the parties a lot of money upfront to do this much work at this stage of the case: the judges are convinced that everyone makes it back by having discovery and the case focus on what's really in issue. It's also mostly the same 50 or 60 lawyers in nearly all the cases, so everyone knows who's full of shit, who's an asshole, who's trying to win based on facts and law.
They can do this because of the ratio of cases to judges. We have 2 judges (one a senior) and a magistrate and yesterday, 8.6 months into the year, civil case number 142 was filed.
teo, did you expect Mary Peltola (D) to hit 38.9% in the special? That's still versus GOP at 60% combined, but with enough Begich/Palin division I guess Peltola might win the tabulations?
teo, did you expect Mary Peltola (D) to hit 38.9% in the special?
Pretty much, yeah. That's in line with the polling, which has been limited but so far quite accurate for this election. She may even go higher as the remaining ballots trickle in; many of them are from rural areas that should be good for her. This article says 40% of first-choice votes is the target she's looking at to have a shot at winning, and it's definitely achievable. She did surprisingly well in the small update today, which was mostly early/absentee/questioned ballots from the Fairbanks area, which is generally pretty conservative. Palin and Begich ran really vicious campaigns against each other, so it's likely a fair number of their voters didn't rank the other second, and they barely mentioned Peltola so she's been able to run a very positive campaign with little pushback. She's also a phenomenal natural political talent who instantly impresses everyone who meets her. I don't want to get my hopes up too much at this point, but things are looking pretty good.
42: so you're saying that's a low case load? Does "senior" mean half-retired/less active? I'm interested but not sure I'm following.
Over here (at least in England) criminal defence barristers have just voted to go on strike indefinitely, so whatever you do, don't do what we've done.
47: fortunately the barristers have gone on strike at the same time as we've implemented a far-reaching experiment in incremental police abolition.
45 that's not very many civil cases. especially since a good percentage of them are pro se prisoner habeas cases -- a fairly low likelihood of merits category.
after a certain age, and time in service, a federal judge can take senior status. this lets whoever is president nominate someone else, but they can continue to work as they want, pay is the same if they work or not. many carry full loads for quite a while, scaling back only when they need to. judge lovell in helena was taking criminal cases into his 80s, and judge lodge in boise is still doing so. he's 88 and has been on one bench or another since 1963.
32: Yes, it seems pretty rare. The non-political Trump litigation tactic was simply to not pay sub-contractors, especially in large construction projects, and when they sued for payment to file meritless counterclaims, refuse to procue docuemnts, etc. These cases sometimes made the local news in my area, not far from Atlantic City. The plumbers and carpenters usually said somehting like, "30 years in the business, I've never seen any anyone do this,"