Courts of Law Aren't as Fair as They Seem

Americans value courts of law quite highly. While the other political branches may seem corruptible, the court system is supposed to be a beacon of fairness and impartiality. American courts of law stick to two, fundamental principals - everyone is innocent until proven guilty, and everyone has a right to a fair trial. At least that's what we like to think.

In reality, the court system is a mess. Courts of law are overworked, overburdened, and threatened. Fairness and justice fall by the wayside in order to simply get people through. It's ugly, and it's not what most Americans would want their courts of law to be. Social scientists have studied the changes to the courts, and have come up with a new model of thinking about how they function. It's called the dispositional model, and the picture it paints isn't pretty.

The ideal American courts of law - the adversarial model

This is the court system that is depicted in the likes of Grisham books and Law and Order TV series. In this model of thought, courts of law are a venue for a fight. The prosecutor and the defendant have at it, each unyielding and unrelenting to the facts they hold to be true. Above the fray sits the judge, a stern referee who keeps the facts straight and the fight fair. A jury is involved, scoring the fight. Somewhere in this battle, the truth comes out.

These are the courts of laws Americans value. Each side is an impassioned advocate for their cause. All is fair, all is done by the rules, and the truth ultimately emerges. There's always a jury in the court who is always fair and impartial. The criminals get convicted, and the innocent are freed. They are the best courts of law we can imagine.

The reality of American courts of law- the dispositional model

Remember the idea of guilty until proven innocent? It's a nice thought, but it's not the reality in today's courts of law. The sheer number of criminals and the sheer lack of funding have made the court system one of necessary evils. Now, every defendant is assumed to have done the crime they are accused of. With this in mind, the court's goal becomes to punish them - and get them out of the system - as quickly as possible.

Harried public defenders barely have the time to learn defendants' names, much less the facts of their cases. Aggressive plea bargains are offered, in the hopes that a defendant will accept and need no further services from the court. Judges impose what is known as a trial tax in order to encourage defendants to plead. This means if a defendant chooses to go to trial and loses, he will pay a much harsher sentence than he would have if he had just pleaded beforehand. There are very few trials and very few juries.

What can be done to get American courts back closer to the adversarial model? There needs to be more courts and more lawyers available. Public defenders need to receive more funding in order to have more of an incentive to support their clients, and in order to attract promising young lawyers to the field. Plea bargaining needs to be looked at in the legislative process, and judges who impose a trial tax need to be punished. Only if these things happen can courts of law become venues of true justice again.

Source:

Cole, George. The Criminal Justice System, Politics and Policies. Wadsworth, 2004.