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Report Comment
"Segregated justice
The Courts give us separate and unequal justice, depending upon who can afford a lawyer. They dismiss out of hand the vast majority of cases brought by those who try to argue their cases on their own, without a lawyer. Usually hanging the dismissal on any single error that gives a Court plausible deniability, like the old literacy and pencil tests that kept Black people from voting. It's not like the people they dismiss know enough to dispute the Courts' decisions.
People talk about banning guns and magazines as if "it could save just one life". It never seems to occur to them that one of the significant factors driving the high rate of violence in this country may well be the certitude that if we can't afford a lawyer, the Courts deny us any other path to justice.
If we can't pay for justice, we can't get any.
Not surprisingly, this falls hardest upon those with less income, opportunity and education, who make up the majority of the prison population - people of color. But not just them. It hits anyone who lives on the margins, like people with disabilities, mental illnesses and homelessness. The people that Judges care so much less about, perhaps because they think such people are parasites who don't contribute to society. And who generally aren't allowed to have proud and productive work, perhaps because those who can afford lawyers think such people don't have anything to contribute.
Thus, access to justice in this country suffers from segregation as fundamental as that addressed by the Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education case. Separate and unequal."
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