I can’t help but wonder how fair, honest, and repeatable, our judicial system is when I read articles like this one.
In federal racial harassment cases, one study (PDF) found that plaintiffs lost just 54 percent of the time when the judge handling the case was an African-American. Yet plaintiffs lost 81 percent of the time when the judge was Hispanic, 79 percent when the judge was white, and 67 percent of the time when the judge was Asian American.
And when a judge quoted in the article says this:
Judge Carol E. Jackson of U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri said she was heartened that diversity has crept into the federal court system, where today 20 percent of judges are women and 15 percent are members of minority groups.
"It’s important that different voices are being heard," she said.
I view the law as a bunch of if statements. Judges should come to the same decision assuming the same evidence.
That they don’t makes me wonder if we have rule of law or rule of whim. I don’t want a my freedom or my pocketbook affected because I drew a black, white or Latina judge. It just shouldn’t matter.
February 12th, 2010 at 2:20 pm
Spoken like a true technologist who lives by the absolutes of the laws of physics (at least in the macro-world). But human relations is subject to human judgment about intent which is why we have mostly juries of twelve and not a computer make judgments. It’s not surprising that different formative experiences yield different adult judgments about such things.
February 12th, 2010 at 2:56 pm
I knew you would have some bogus crapola on this. But I’m right and you are wrong about this. Unpredictable judging = no rule of law.
February 13th, 2010 at 9:21 am
The judicial system is only as good as the law. Judges can be male or female, of different race, of different intelligence and of different background. The same is true of parties and lawyers. Unless the law is good, concise and clearly written we shouldn’t expect the judicial system to be applied fairly. Don’t forget that a judge is a political animal, i. e. part of the government. At one time the circuit judge was the citizen’s ONLY contact with government!
February 13th, 2010 at 9:41 am
i suspect some of these “diverse’ judges would corrupt even concise, clear, laws. They really just have interest in outcome not process.
February 13th, 2010 at 3:07 pm
Don’t look for such a high degree of exactitude in laws and their application. Laws are about humans’ duty to their neighbors, not about gravity. It should be no surprise that cases where judgment is required will be decided differently by different judges and juries. It happens all the time, and when the decisions would have national import, the Supreme Court makes a national decision among the different judgments by both petty courts and appeals courts. And then we argue that even supreme decisions are political.
As to whether judges are political animals, it usually depends mostly on whether the judge has a lifetime appointment or has to be re-elected to keep the seat. The fact that a judge had some political or other philosophy before appointment cannot be avoided; God does not send down wise virgins for the courts. To avoid extreme cases of judicial philosophy, we have an elected executive nominate and an elected legislature consent. It’s hard to do much better than that.
February 14th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
Two Words: “Wise Latina”
These “ethnic” judges have made their bias clear. And believe you me, white judges are just as biased in other ways.
Lets say that 100,000 cases are randomly assigned in equal numbers to 10 judges of different ethnicities and genders. You can tell me our system is fair and I have justice when my case is equally likely to be upheld or dismissed in any of the 10 courts based on the law. Until then, all we have is robed oracles.
And YES the supreme court is politicized! Ever increasingly so in the last century when it started grabbing its own unconstitutional powers!
February 15th, 2010 at 10:33 am
But according to Commenter Carl we should accept variability so we can occasionally have the Wise Latinas wisdom shared with us.
February 15th, 2010 at 6:50 pm
Until we find a perfect Constitution generating perfect laws to produce complicated cases for saintly perfect judges to make robotically perfect decisions, you will have to put up with imperfect variability. Look around the world and find yourself the nation(s) in which you would be willing to be born to a random pair of parents.
I once heard one black at a fast food emporium tell another in Baltimore: “You want justice? You should be glad you have laws.”
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