Read this, it says very well that we have ceded our rights to the tyrannhy of the few. Like I have said before, the authority that we gave to courts was with the understanding that they would respect us. The tool that they were supposed to be using was the usage of "a political question, not a legal one," to avoid the traps that they have set for themselves.
Ah, but power corrupts, and quibbling over minutae corrupts the most.
For instance, I just had a case involving the right to a speedy trial. Picked the client up from a public defender, who did a good job up to that point. My client had been held in jail for 321 days before he would have gone to trial. As I was preparing my brief, I was talking to my non-lawyer wife trying to explain what was going on with the law. I told her that the analysis is triggered by 200 days without a trial, and that the burden shifts to the State to prove that there was no prejudice after 275 days. My darling wife asked the silliest, and at the same time most brilliant question; Well, if more than 275 days have passed, why is the rule not being followed?
I tried to explain how our Supreme Court had been diluting the right for so long, that it was meaningless. That all the State needed to do to disprove prejudice, was to say that there was no prejudice. And the case law supported their assertion.
But why doesn't the State have to follow the rules? The answer is, that it is inconvenient to provide Constitutional protections. So, the State which makes and enforces the laws, refuses to follow the laws. We are really gettin ready to get into a mess if we don't watch out for our individual rights, because no one else is interested.
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