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> A bit tangential to what I was referring to, but essentially we can sum your points up to labor shortage, right? In a sense, though there's also some interse

> A bit tangential to what I was referring to, but essentially we can sum your points up to labor shortage, right? In a sense, though there's also some intersecting concerns. E.g. judges and lawyers aren't economically productive in the "creating things that we can sell or export" sense. That presents an opportunity cost, because it means we are pulling people out of roles that are economically productive and into roles that are not. E.g. the general cost of labor would probably rise if the judicial system started employing full percentage points of the US population more than they currently do. Likewise, I suspect GDP would drop since we are pulling people out of "making things" and into "regulating things". We would just be literally making fewer things, since we had fewer people employed "making things". > Law school doesn't have to cost $250k. And pay doesn't have to be $30k at entry to a government job. One of the issues here is that the government (state or federal) is both the prosecutor and the source of funding for the defendant's lawyer. E.g. here's a fun tidbit for California: a prosecutor's average salary range is $98k-$132k while a public defender's average salary range is $89k-$119k. Even among jobs working for the government, it's about a 10% pay cut to defend people instead of prosecuting them. Across the country there are roughly twice as many employed in prosecutorial roles as there are in defense roles (funding roughly matches that, with prosecutor's offices getting funded at ~180% the rate of public defenders). In 2018, there were 372 arrests per attorney in public defender's offices but only 260 per attorney in district attorney offices. Prosecutors can afford to spend ~150% of the time on a case that public defenders can, and can afford to spend far more per case on expert opinions, lab results, etc. The government wants it that way, because it feeds into the "efficiency". People are far more likely to take a plea deal when they know their public defender is overworked, underpaid, and under-resourced compared to the prosecutors. Funding defense attorneys makes cases take longer to get through court, because people would be more likely to reject plea deals and the public defenders would have more time to formulate legal arguments. Anecdotally, you can see this first hand in video from court cases. It's not unusual for there to be 3 attorneys sitting behind the prosecutor's table, and a single attorney behind the defendant's. The prosecutors are just that much more well-resourced; they can afford to send a trio of attorneys to double-check each other. Meanwhile the public defenders are scrambling with stacks of folders trying to figure out which one is for their next defendant.

trimethylpurine 2y ago
And, the public defendant advises taking a deal anyway because he has very little incentive to take on more work. But still, it doesn't have to be that way, if there are more judges, better pay, a lower barrier of entry, and a lot of automation. I'm not saying I have it all figured out, I'm saying there's some low hanging fruit in that direction and there's a huge need for moving that way too. It seems likely that we will. Anecdotally, the high cost of education alone is the primary reason that many of my immediate acquaintances didn't go to law school and instead contributed to saturating the tech market. Myself included.
- everforward 2y ago
  I don’t think I have this all figured out either, and I would not want to be in charge of this. It’s a very complicated, dynamic issue with dire consequences for mistakes. Hats off to anyone making a genuine attempt at progress. > But still, it doesn't have to be that way, if there are more judges, better pay, a lower barrier of entry, and a lot of automation. I believe if you want more judges, the first issue would be creating more courts. I don’t think there are vacant courts for us to hire more judges into. Someone would have to do some napkin math on how many new courts are local, circuit, appellate, etc. Not a huge deal, just saying the current constraint there is courts rather than judges. I’m also not a fan of lowering the barrier to entry of being a judge. Remember that any judge can create binding precedent (our whole legal system would need an overhaul to get rid of that). That can be overruled, but it makes court cases a mess and erodes confidence in the court system when it’s impossible to predict what precedent will be applied. Also, I think there are virtually no barriers to entry. There are no binding requirements to become a judge short of being nominated (no law requires a judge to have been a lawyer or even to have been in a courtroom before). I believe the same is common for county judges. I’ve been to a few rural counties where the former sheriff was running for judge or something (God help us all). I don’t disagree that we can get better, but I just don’t think we can sustain this level of continued addition of regulations. Even beyond the costs, the lack of enforcement is teaching an awful lot of people that they don’t _really_ have to follow laws. The umpteenth time someone commits a felony and hasn’t been caught, they start to realize the laws are mostly a facade which emboldens them. People are buying full auto switches for Glocks off Wish. Nothing says “our justice system isn’t working” quite like people being willing to tie their purchase of an item that carries a decade prison sentence to their PayPal account. It’s not even a clever scheme or well hidden; people are just that confident that our justice system is too dysfunctional to be able to find out about it and file a warrant with PayPal. And they’re largely correct.

trimethylpurine 2y ago

And, the public defendant advises taking a deal anyway because he has very little incentive to take on more work. But still, it doesn't have to be that way, if there are more judges, better pay, a lower barrier of entry, and a lot of automation. I'm not saying I have it all figured out, I'm saying there's some low hanging fruit in that direction and there's a huge need for moving that way too. It seems likely that we will. Anecdotally, the high cost of education alone is the primary reason that many of my immediate acquaintances didn't go to law school and instead contributed to saturating the tech market. Myself included.

everforward 2y ago
I don’t think I have this all figured out either, and I would not want to be in charge of this. It’s a very complicated, dynamic issue with dire consequences for mistakes. Hats off to anyone making a genuine attempt at progress. > But still, it doesn't have to be that way, if there are more judges, better pay, a lower barrier of entry, and a lot of automation. I believe if you want more judges, the first issue would be creating more courts. I don’t think there are vacant courts for us to hire more judges into. Someone would have to do some napkin math on how many new courts are local, circuit, appellate, etc. Not a huge deal, just saying the current constraint there is courts rather than judges. I’m also not a fan of lowering the barrier to entry of being a judge. Remember that any judge can create binding precedent (our whole legal system would need an overhaul to get rid of that). That can be overruled, but it makes court cases a mess and erodes confidence in the court system when it’s impossible to predict what precedent will be applied. Also, I think there are virtually no barriers to entry. There are no binding requirements to become a judge short of being nominated (no law requires a judge to have been a lawyer or even to have been in a courtroom before). I believe the same is common for county judges. I’ve been to a few rural counties where the former sheriff was running for judge or something (God help us all). I don’t disagree that we can get better, but I just don’t think we can sustain this level of continued addition of regulations. Even beyond the costs, the lack of enforcement is teaching an awful lot of people that they don’t _really_ have to follow laws. The umpteenth time someone commits a felony and hasn’t been caught, they start to realize the laws are mostly a facade which emboldens them. People are buying full auto switches for Glocks off Wish. Nothing says “our justice system isn’t working” quite like people being willing to tie their purchase of an item that carries a decade prison sentence to their PayPal account. It’s not even a clever scheme or well hidden; people are just that confident that our justice system is too dysfunctional to be able to find out about it and file a warrant with PayPal. And they’re largely correct.