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Portland judge says she’s too busy running for reelection to oversee trials (www.oregonlive.com)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world
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[–] 1 point 7 months ago (7 children)

In reference to the totality of votes and support of not electing judges and prosecutors clearly.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    i haven't even taken a position dude, i was just trying to see where you were.

    one side of my family, they practice law. my opinion is nuanced. there are definite positives from citizen review of judges but most judicial decisions are opaque, most citizens know so little about law as to not understand what judges do, honestly if we could properly address the issue of regulatory capture first (which would solve a hell of a lot of problems in government, but that's another can of worms and it's one i'm legitimately not sure how to solve) i would have very little problem leaving it to appropriate government appointees. because if regulatory capture is addressed, (and that's a huge, glaring red flag assumption) then nonpartisan legal experts would be doing the judicial appointments and review.

    judge elections are where the citizens get to step in and say, as a random example out of nowhere "hey, judge who gave rapist brock allen turner no sentence? you don't get to be a judge anymore" so like, that's their only legal recourse. Remember, "There are four boxes to be used in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and cartridge. Please use in that order." We absolutely do not want to be shooting judges (that's a complete failure of society), and we really don't want to be putting them on trial for making stupid decisions (they have what is called sovereign immunity for their decisions made legally from the bench, specifically judicial immunity if the AI summary on the search i just ran didn't lie to me. sounds right and i think that's what my lawyer siblings taught me i don't know years ago) so what we have left are soap box and ballot box. Soap box isn't great, because turning the populace against the justice/criminal-punishment/whatever-euphemism-you-want-to-use/legal system such that they lose faith in the ability to obtain justice is not good for society altogether. So the ballot box theoretically remains as a viable outlet/pressure valve for the public to be able to get a small measure of justice it is unable to get in the jury box. Even when actual justice remains out of reach, allowing the public to vote against the judges who presided over the courts that denied them justice lets the public feel they have recourse.

    Do you see the theory?

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  • [–] -3 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    I don't agree with any of that. First of all, lawyers are a cancer on society. Parasites.

    My point is unanswered here, I claim electing them is better, because we could take it back, even if the system is corrupted now, you are saying/not saying to give that power to politicians and their appointees.

    It's a simple argument. You trust them, I don't.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    You trust them, I don’t.

    Okay, so you didn't bother reading anything I wrote did you.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    Kinda a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.

    Elected, you get this judge.

    Unelected, you get the current US Supreme Court...

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  • [–] -1 points 7 months ago

    With elections we can take back control, without them we cannot. The process is corrupted now, but in the hands of politicians we are powerless with the way things are going.

    Judges and prosecutors run unopposed more often than not, there is next to no information about them, and both parties' candidates being the same is never more true than with them. But it doesn't have to be that way, and we've gotten a few reform DA's elected, and they've gotten viciously attacked by their State's old boys their entire terms.

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