Thanks, LB...That was an excellent essay. To a lesser degree, I've been thinking about our current jury system. In one way, the jury system is like a mini-Supreme Court.
Charles Fried explains why one doesn't have to have been to law school even, nor been even a judge. He says a Supreme Associate needs "strength of mind, and the skill to explain his/her decisions in an understandable and compelling prose"
And yet, in the ordinary affairs of man, from civil to criminal, we have people on the juries that are not intelligent enough to get out of their own way. Should we have a litmus test on juries of intelligence?
I've been transcribing old letters from the early 1800's, and again, none of them had the advantages of a single person today who has public education, or private education. But, all of them were smart enough to learn how to read, and write a coherent sentence... Perhaps that could be the litmus test. What being an American means to them in two or three paragraphs could be a sample essay, for instance.
>>>>>The courts are the only organs of government whose job it is not only to decide contentious issues but to explain those decisions. Its most important product is those explanations, on which the enduring effect of its decisions depends.<<<<<
>>>>>The hearings must convince us that she has the ability to understand both sides of a question, to reach sensible conclusions connected to established law, and to explain those conclusions in words that we can understand, whether or not we agree with |
