Word: less
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...bench is obviously the worst possible place to encounter that kind of prejudice. Nothing is so damaging to the stature of the judiciary as the common perception that punishment depends less on what a criminal did than on the biases or whims of the judge...
Laws that spew from legislatures at the rate of over 100,000 a year inevitably mean more lawsuits. Too many lawyers use their skills to drag out cases. The object may be to wear down a less well financed opponent, or put off an unfavorable judgment. Sometimes it is simply a matter of greed, of contriving any excuse to keep fees rolling in. Favorite devices include making endless pretrial motions on one or another point of procedure, obtaining postponements (continuances) from the court, requesting huge amounts of information from the other side in the pretrial discovery process, or just burying...
...Less law. Complex law makes for complex litigation. The hopelessly 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...
...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...
...unique spectacle of a public investigation of the state supreme court. At issue is whether some members of the court delayed announcing politically controversial decisions before an election in order to save Chief Justice Rose Bird from being ousted by the voters; so far the inquiry has shown less evidence of conspiracy than pettiness and distrust among the court's seven justices. In many other states, accountability commissions exist in name only. Sanctions can be very mild. Massachusetts Judge Margaret C. Scott was reprimanded last February by the state's highest court for "violating the rights of indigents and others...