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Is the United State Court system bad, and if so, why

Submitted:Jan 4, 2013    Reads: 5    Comments: 0    Likes: 1   

The basis of the United States governemnt system was taken from Ancient Greek and Rome, as well as many of the political philosophers. This includes Machiavelli. The philosopher Machiavelli wrote a book titled 'The Prince'. One of the main points of his book include that politicians must act trustworthy but not necessarily be trustworthy. The public must only have the perception that the politician is trustworthy.

The court system is part of our government. People believe that even if a defendant admits to a crime to his attorney, the attorney still attempts to free the defendant. His guilt barely comes into play. So is this proper administration of justice? Many would argue that no, it is not. The guilty man walks free. The job of the jury was to acess his guilt, and if they found him innocent, the attorney obviously did a good job. The job of an attorney is to create the perception that the defendant is innocent, even if he is guilty.

Is it a fair jump to say that our court system and administration of justice is based on perception? Most likely. But where did the thoughts that these lies were okay come from? Niccolo Machiavelli. This identifies the cause. A very basic concept is cause and effect. We have found the cause, and we have found the effect. Machiavelli is the cause, and the lying government and courts is the effect.

If we were wanting to take perception out of the court system, it would be taken out of the Supreme Court, and furthermore the Judicial Branch. Based on Baron De Montesquieu's discovery of checks and balances, it is probable that elimination of perception of one branch would eliminate perception of the other two.

What would happen if the president stopped lying? At the best, there would be miniscule effects. But at it's worst? People would panic. They wouldn't trust that our Congress could handle potential threats. Our country could spiral out of control as the people take the military and such into their own hands, instead of following the representative system.

So perception in our court and government isn't that bad. It is not ideal- the guilty man could walk free. But it is also keeping the rest of us from turning upon a democracy that took years of effort to creat.e


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