Ideas to Save
Richard Salbato, 5-3-2010
When we think
about the massive debt in
One of our completely unnecessary costs is the cost of
justice – the legal system. The two largest special interest lobbyists in
Federal and State governments are Lawyers and Unions. The two largest special interest
contributions to Federal and State politicians are Lawyers and Unions. Why
would lawyers spend so much money buying politicians year after year?
The reason is that lawyers have a license to steal and
they know it can be taken away so very easily.
They can get a law degree without ever going to college and then make a
minimum of $100 to $300 per hour for every second they can log in a book, even
answering a phone.
A lawyer makes money if he does well or if he does badly.
He will be paid the same if he wins a case
or looses a case. In fact, he is paid in
advance just for taking a case. In most cases lawyers make millions for not
even going to court because most cases are settled out of court.
To run a business today of any size you almost have to
hire a full time lawyer and many of my friends do just that and pay by the year
even when nothing happens. When figuring
business costs (as compared to other countries) a huge part of your budget has
to be insurance and legal fees against law suits.
Why do lawyers spend so
much money in lobbying and campaign financing?
It is not for what politicians can do for them but what politicians can
easily do to destroy them.
Government
and Personal Costs
Lets look at the cost of the
legal system for the government, for the business, and for the individual.
Let us assume a man robs a store and shoots the vendor,
and there are many witnesses. He is
arrested, sits in jail for months at $48,999 a year to tax payers. He is given a lawyer for free (paid for by
tax payers), goes through a three month court trial, with a judge, jury,
lawyers, DA, etc, and all paid by tax payers.
He is found guilty and sentenced and spends 15 years in jail with a full
time lawyer all paid by tax payers. He
gets out in 7 years for good behavior and goes home where he still has hundreds
of thousands of dollars he made on all the times he was not caught robbing
stores.
Let us assume you have a man that just does not like you
for whatever reason. He makes up a
reason to sue you in civil court. You
know the law suit is stupid but you have to hire a lawyer. In the end you win
the case but you are out hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees.
Let us assume a man slips on the floor of a coffee shop
(being his own fault) and has a minor injury. He hires one of these per-bono
lawyers to write up a massive law suit. The owner and his insurance both know
the law suit is stupid, but because of the cost of defending it, they settle out
of court. Even when not guilty, it is cheaper to settle than to pay the legal
fees for defense.
Now let us assume you have a very legitimate law suit
against a very wealthy man or company and you can afford the legal fees to
bring it to court. Because of his money
he can bomb-barb the court with thousands of pages of documentation and
hundreds of testimonials to stall off the case for 5 to 10 years until you just
run out of money.
Disregarding all the above problems with the system, a
clean civil case will take 2 to 5 years to get to court and a criminal court case
can take 1 to 10 years to be tried.
All these problems with the system tack on huge costs to
business, personal life and the government and these costs are not necessary
since they can easily be fixed.
Fixing the
system with three (3) simple laws
1. Pass law stating that “the looser of any judicial case (criminal or civil) pay all the costs”.
a. That means in a criminal case if the defendant is found not guilty, the state pays all
the costs of the defendant’s lawyers and trial expanses (legal fees fixed at a
national average)
b. If the state wins the case and the defendant is found guilty, he is charged with all
the legal fees, court costs, judge, DA, witnesses, investigation, and police
department. These charges owed shall
never go away in time. Damages shall be first taken from existing assets and
later from income. This is already the
law in
2. Pass law stating that “no government can pass or enforce a law protection someone from himself”.
a. If you study the constitution carefully, governments
have one job to protect you from me and me from you, but they do not have the
power to protect me from me. However,
over the years starting with FDR and Social Security they have invaded the “me
from me” area. For example, under
constitutional law the government cannot require me to use a seat belt. An insurance company can require it, and
maybe common sense also but not government. The government uses all kinds of excuses for
passing these laws, like they have to take care of you if you are hurt anyway,
but that is not true, they do not have to take care of you and if they do, they
can charge you for it.
b. Why would this law help the cost of court
systems? Because they could not arrest
someone for growing, making or using any drug for personal use on one’s own
property. Now I am very against drugs,
even legal drugs and I think they are harmful and stupid but I have no right to
demand my thinking on you. I think
anyone who sells a harmful drug to someone else is within the constitutional
law and should be prosecuted to the extent of the law because this is the job
of government – to protect you from me and me from you. Again if someone drives a car under the
influence he falls into the government’s business. How many people could be let out of jail with
just this one law? It is based on the
same logic as the right to keep and bear arms.
3. Pass law stating that “all precedent case law is outlawed”.
a. Precedent cases and binding precedent case law are the
use of previous cases to influence the court by showing what some
judge ruled in a previous and
similar case.
Binding precedent as we know it today simply did not exist at the time the Constitution was
framed. Prior to 1910 the only law a lawyer or judge needed were constitutional
provisions, relevant statues and underlying public policies. All this was married to the natural law. The rule of law was the law and not present
or past judges.
Judges saw themselves as merely declaring the law which
had always theoretically existed, not making it. Therefore, a judge could reject
another judge's opinion as simply an incorrect statement of the law, like how
scientists regularly reject each other's conclusions as incorrect statements of
the laws of science.
The contemporary rule of
binding precedent became possible in the
Somewhere
around 1910 a lawyer used the decision of a judge in a similar case to
influence the judge (this similar case was not even from
Where
the court had its power in the constitution before, today’s decision does not
even pretend that its opinion is demanded by the constitution, and yet imposes
its Court-made code upon the States. If this was part of the law before 1910,
the Supreme Court could not have reversed the stupid law that had stated that
This is not the
system that was established by the Framers, or that would be established by any
sane supporter of government by the people.
I can offer other changes that I am passionate about like
the removal of Psychiatry from the
system but this is enough for now.
Saving
billions per year
If the above three laws were passed we could drop the
cost of the court system to almost nothing and free the innocent from any
expense. This would also drop the cost
of liability insurance for businesses, doctors, homeowners, and drivers by
billions. It would take 30% of the people out of jail. There are also simple
ideas to save the cost of prisons. But that is for another day.
Richard Salbato