Word: legalism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...have been pending for more than three years in federal district courts, double the backlog ten years ago. "If court backlogs grow at their present rate, our children may not be able to bring a lawsuit to a conclusion within their lifetime," predicts Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe. "Legal claims might then be willed on, generation to generation, like hillbilly feuds; and the burdens of pressing them would be contracted like a hereditary disease...
...vague antitrust laws, for instance, have been a chronic problem for troubled courts since 1890 and produced a tangle of conflicting interpretations. The antitrust monster of U.S. vs. IBM is now ten years old and nowhere near resolution. Clarifying or simplifying labyrinthine laws would save millions of dollars in legal costs as well as free judges to work on other matters. Like regulatory schemes that do more harm than good by stifling competition, some laws might even be eliminated altogether...
...Eliminate juries in civil trials that are too long and too complicated for laymen. At the Conference of State Chief Justices last week, Chief Justice Burger strongly urged judges to consider this proposal, pointing out that it can take "not hours, but days" for the judge to explain the legal issues to jurors, who then cannot always be expected to understand or remember what the judge said. Burger noted that Britain, which has less delay in its courts than the U.S., has successfully abolished juries in most civil cases...
...Philadelphia, birthplace of American democracy, local judges are popularly elected. More accurately, they are chosen by the political party in power and then automatically voted in by apathetic voters. They are selected, says District Attorney Edward G. Rendell, not for integrity, legal ability or judicial temperament. "Instead," says Rendell, "these questions are asked: What has the lawyer done for the political party nominating him? What has he contributed to the party in time and money?" The result, say Philadelphia's lawyers, is "a sad bench...
...three different courts, Moran will change some child visitation rights, grant half a dozen divorces, hear pretrial motions on a first-degree murder charge, listen to motions on a complex home-construction case, sentence a drunken driver, a housebreaker and a cocaine peddler (90 days' probation). The legal issues and questions he constantly confronts hop from civil to criminal to constitutional...