Black Unicorn[SMTP:unicorn@schloss.li] wrote

From: "Nomen Nescio" <nobody@dizum.com>

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Black Unicorn wrote:

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A legal education is the ultimate dose of practical cynicism. It quickly becomes apparent not that the law isn't perfect, but that it is often pretty damn screwed up. American jurisprudence is about _fairness of process_, not justice, or right, or wrong.

Come now, surely justice, right, and wrong are lurking in there somewhere?

Frustratingly, not in my experience. Sure, the good guy (whoever you define that to be) wins occasionally, but, as one supreme court justice put it, while declining to free a clearly innocent convicted murderer because there was no material error at trial: "The Constitution doesn't guarantee a correct verdict, the Constitution guarantees due process."

[...] This sounds an awful lot like an institutional version of the Nuremburg Defence" <klink>"Ve vere only followink orders" </klink> If a Supreme knows that the system is f*cked up enough that he can't free an innocent man, there are two things he should do: 1. Call the President and request a pardon. 2. Call Congress and get the process changed so this doesn't happen again. There is no 'due process' if the system knowingly jails innocents. If they don't do this, they can't call themselves a 'Justice'. Heck - I'd consider the title 'human being' also in dispute. Peter Trei