We Don't Need No Stinkin' Judges
Many family court practitioners in Northern Michigan were pleased when Michigan's last non-lawyer probate judge (whose second job was as a school bus driver) retired about eight or so years ago.
Today's New York Times report on tribunals in that state makes clear the hazards of low standards for justice:
"Some of the courtrooms are not even courtrooms: tiny offices or basement rooms without a judge’s bench or jury box. Sometimes the public is not admitted, witnesses are not sworn to tell the truth, and there is no word-for-word record of the proceedings.
Nearly three-quarters of the judges are not lawyers, and many — truck drivers, sewer workers or laborers — have scant grasp of the most basic legal principles. Some never got through high school, and at least one went no further than grade school.
But serious things happen in these little rooms all over New York State. People have been sent to jail without a guilty plea or a trial, or tossed from their homes without a proper proceeding. In violation of the law, defendants have been refused lawyers, or sentenced to weeks in jail because they cannot pay a fine. Frightened women have been denied protection from abuse."
Read the entire article, Click here: In Tiny Courts of New York, Abuses of Law and Power - New York Times on the New York Times site or click here.
The New York Times ran a second article on September 27, 2006, explaining how New York's justice system got into this fine mess. How a Reviled Court System Has Outlasted Critics.
To contact Jeanne Hannah with your questions or to view her Family Law website, click here.
