Word: localize
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Local chauvinism habitually thrives on the disparagement of rival places or areas. Thus Minneapolis enjoys writing off St. Paul as though it were a mill village, and Dallas takes malicious glee in depicting Fort Worth as the sticks. South Dakotans often pretend to believe that North Dakotans are an alien race, and northern Californians regard the state's southerly part as a land of incurable kooks. Chronic twitting, in fact, may be taken as a sure sign that provincial pride is robust...
...Yankelovich, Skelly and White poll of the general public, judges, lawyers and community leaders last year ranked public confidence in state and local courts below many other major American institutions, including the medical profession, police, business and public schools. Too much law, too many lawsuits and too many lawyers have all combined to overwork the judicial machinery. But the final responsibility for the courts rests with the people who run them: the 28,000 state and local judges, 1,083 federal administrative law judges who hear disputed claims brought to the regulatory agencies, and nearly 700 federal judges charged with...
Some sentences should vary, of course, according to the character and prior record of the defendant. The fact that shoplifters usually go to jail if they get caught in Charlotte, N.C., whereas they get probation in Albuquerque, may just reflect different local mores. As New York Criminal Court Judge Harold Rothwax says, "Communities have a right to view crime differently." Mandatory sentences set by the legislature, which several states use for at least some crimes, can be more heavy-handed than evenhanded. Such laws cannot distinguish, for instance, between someone who steals to feed his family and someone who steals...
This is especially true in state and local courts, where most of American justice is meted out. "In some ways we now function just as we did in the days of Charles Dickens," says Judge James Lynch, chief justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court...
...equipped with a videotape machine and television monitors. McCrystal does not need to bring all the lawyers, parties and witnesses into court at the same time for a trial. Witnesses can be questioned by lawyers and have their testimony video-taped at their convenience. One local law firm has fixed up a large mobile van with video-tape recorders so the court can come to the witness, rather than the witness to court. Judge McCrystal edits the film in his chambers or sometimes at home and shows it to a jury at trial. Result: McCrystal tries about three times...