All Family Law, All Around the WorldSM

Not enough judges to go around – the rest of the story.

On Behalf of | Nov 8, 2011 | Judges

It’s too late to say anything in depth or start any new diatribe.  But I’ve heard from several parties implicated in last night’s blog post that my post was not complete, and they are correct.

When I’m discussing Child Support Services with a client, I often say that they are good people with way too little staff and way too much to do.  The system is not set up for them to do a consistently good job.  This is a typical civil service problem which is now exponentially heightened by the current American zeit geist of increasingly defunding the government so that all of the services and all of the infrastructure which make society work eventually crash and burn.  And when the services and infrastructure crashes and burns, society doesn’t work anymore.  

I was reminded that the judges are in the same trap as the good people at Child Support Services.   There are far too few of them. they have far too much to do and their budgets keep getting slashed.  What will we do when our politicians successfully so underfund our courts that we haven’t any courts left?

So, the argument goes, judges took the job for all the right reasons and they mean well, but with so few of them and so much to do, they are just trying to find some way, sometimes any way, to keep up, to deliver some form of justice on some level.  There is merit in that argument.  It is sound.  I have watched judges’ budgets get slashed.  I have seen their staff furloughed.  I’ve seen them worry about things such as having enough copy paper.

If we, the people want more and better justice, we need more jurists.  If we want more jurists, we the people are going to have to change the current American zeit geist.  We are going to have to reinvest in our country.  We are going to have to fund our society to make it the place we want to live, where bridges don’t fall apart, where street lights can stay on, and where we have many quality jurists who have the aptitude and the time to deliberate and deliver quality justice.

From my assessment of the state of our judiciary we need many, many more jurists.  From my assessment of the state of our American political mindset, we need many, many more patriots willing to invest in the country to which we swear allegiance.

May it be so.

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