This is at the root of a broader problem with the judicial system, which is that it systematically fails to do its job in a timely manner. But that's okay with

This is at the root of a broader problem with the judicial system, which is that it systematically fails to do its job in a timely manner. But that's okay with the actors, because they bill by the hour. That's not exaggeration or hyperbole; I've never seen a class of people do less for more than attorneys and judges, who go out of their way to be pleasant and accommodating to each other, with total disregard for the matters at hand. And so we have even simple matters drag on for months or years. At the end of the day, "justice" is what we buy with our conformance to society. When nations fight over systems of government, it's really a fight over what justice means. The current system is broken, but it's owned by old, rich, intelligent people who know what power is and how to use it, how to keep it, how to rationalize it. Even the good ones fall, when they see how goodness and self-restraint is rewarded by their peers, lest they lose their power. I do not think there is a realistic path to reform. The US justice system should be replaced, entirely, with something closer to the German system, which is far less concerned with where evidence comes from, for example, and far more concerned with whether its true. Things happen much faster, and most argumentation is done in writing. Attorneys are forbidden from advertising - which used to be the case in the US, too. But of course they got that changed. It's also remarkable how often a German attorney refers to the law - they treat it as a rulebook as for a board game, whereas in the states the judge, in practice, has absolute power over all participants and is free to ignore the law, or invent new law. (Well, they aren't supposed to be, but the process for holding a judge to account is, if you can imagine it, even worse than the rest of the system. Gee whiz, I wonder how that happened?)