By: Catholic Mom Blogs Ascension Thursday Religious Liberty Daily Examen | The Pulpit

Mon, 21 May 2012 17:08:08 +0000

[...] Unfair in Philly? Kudos to Journalist Who Exposes Trial Judge’s Bias – The Media Report [...]

By: Patty

Patty — Thu, 10 May 2012 22:53:12 +0000

Well there is at least one decent journalist out there.

By: Publion

Publion — Thu, 10 May 2012 21:48:39 +0000

I think the core derangement in American jurisprudence (and the legislation governing it) was the 1980s 'victim-friendly' shift of the framing of a civil or – especially – a criminal trial.
In the Framing Vision the criminal trial is a two-sided affair: the prosecutor (on behalf of the entire People of that jurisdiction) and the accused. The stakes are very weighty: the deployment of the Sovereign authority against any convicted accused-defendant Citizen sufficient (in a criminal trial) to deprive a convicted Citizen of liberty, property, or even life itself.
What happened in the 1980s, and from the Right-'conservative' direction, was an effort to counter the 1950s-60s emphasis on the rights of the accused-defendant Citizen (rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights by the Framers) by suddenly pressing for the role of the 'victim' (as if the prosecutor, working for the People, doesn't already represent the victim) a-n-d even asserting that the victim has 'interests' and even 'rights' in a trial that are separate from and free-standing-from what interests the prosecutor works to represent.
Under this pretext, many of the Framing Vision's rights of the accused have been consistently and increasingly eroded through legislative 'reforms' and 'reforms' to the jurisprudence and jurispraxis. And this started from the Right, the putative 'conservatives' (which says something about the 1980s version of the law-and-order approach, if you think about it).
It was only then – starting in the 1980s but really hitting it off in the 1990s – that the Left discovered the uses of this gambit (and thus it became 'bipartisan'): radical feminism found it a handy way of a) going after 'men' (especially in domestic-abuse and sex-offense matters); tort attorneys realized that a huge new field of endeavor and profit had opened up; law enforcement and prosecutors found a whole new politically useful and fiscally remunerative (government monies provided liberally for the victim interests) avenue of endeavor; and the government in general found a way to engorge and expand its intrusive police power – and with the popular support of well-intentioned folks who thought that there could be no downside to 'helping victims' by 'tweaking' the laws and 'reforming' them.
But nobody got much public attention by pointing out the lethal consequences to the foundations and first principles of the Framing Vision as the boundaries set up to protect Citizens from the Sovereign police-coercive power were increasingly overrun and taken down. And we can see the results of that all over the place in this country now, in domestic and foreign policy matters.

Nobody (since some writer whose name escapes me just now mentioned it in the mid-1930s) really expected the Left-'liberal' side to be the source of so lethal a derangement to the Constitutional principles, but that's what happened and continues even now.
I am going to share a discovery I recently made: in doing so let me say I don't know the author and have no connection to the book: I came across a superb brief history of the victim-interests movement in the new book "Sex Panic and the Punitive State" by a professor named Roger Lancaster. The whole book is worth a read (it's an easy read, but a meaty one) but if you're pressed for time, I would recommend his Part Two and especially his Chapter 7. I think that if once you've read it you will have a much clearer grasp at all the issues involved, and you will also be able to see what's going on with this seemingly endless Catholic abuse focus.
I have looked at that Philadelphia trial site and Mr. Cipriano is doing a very useful job and doing it well.

Comments on: Unfair in Philly? Kudos to Journalist Who Exposes Trial Judge’s Bias

By: Catholic Mom Blogs Ascension Thursday Religious Liberty Daily Examen | The Pulpit

By: Patty

By: Publion