As for “scare quotes”, somethings deserve them when they aren’t actually what the words seem to mean.

“It’s not that politicians have handed the keys to the system over to soulless administrators who ignore human dignity to advance their own interest, it’s that the American public wants “tough on crime policies.”

I’ll hold off the Red Queen while you go through the looking glass.

In the meantime even the relatively elegant civil codes have been swamped by a deluge of inelegant, artificial, and special interest legislation. The English common law has also been gradually submerged in a flood of state and federal statutes.

In any particular case at common law, what is the true rule? It is the rule most in accord with justice and sound policy. The search is for that rule. The appeal is squarely made to the highest considerations of morality and justice. These are the rallying points of the struggle, which is ennobling and beneficial to the advocates, to the judges, to the parties, to the auditors, and so indirectly to the whole community. The decision then made records another step in the advance of human reason towards that perfection after which it forever aspires.

But, when the law is conceded to be written down in a statute, the only question is what the statute means. This search is unspeakably inferior to common law. The dispute is about words. The question of what is right or wrong, just or unjust, is irrelevant and out of place. The only question is what has been written. What a wretched substitue for the manly search for the right principle!
=== ===

In addition, you dishonor thousands of public defenders and court-appointed attorneys when you say that they are all “in cahoots” with the prosecution. In many areas, Public Defenders a some of the most knowledgeable and experienced defense attorneys to be had. In regions where Court Appointed Counsel is drawn from the private bar, an indigent defendant is as likely to get one of the best local attorneys as he is to draw a “hack” who is angling for a government job.

Actually, I’d blame the *genesis* of that idea – in the USA, anyway – on the fucking lawyers, rather than the bureaucrats. Oh, sure, the bureaucrats jumped all over it because the essence of bureaucracy is & always will be ‘Rule #1 is maintenance & expansion of our fiefdom”, & making up new rules and punishing rulebreakers is a great way to do that. But it’s the lawyers who created that initial mindset, I’m convinced. Here in Amurrica, there’s no such thing as “an accident” or a “terrible tragedy” anymore. Fender bender? Kid breaks a leg playing Little League? Someone gets killed by an asshole in a movie theater?

First words out of everyone’s mouth – thanks to los abogados – is always “liability” or “negligence” or “punitive damages”. Hell, even on this ‘Libertarian’ website, about 15% of the comment threads degrade into legal chat. In a country where that kind of idiocy has become not only tolerated but encouraged, what’d you *think* government was gonna do?

I think you’re painting with an extremely broad, non-representative brush when you talk about indigent defense. There may be some jurisdiction, somewhere in the US, where public defenders front the costs of defense which they must then recoup…but I’ve never heard of it. Typically an indigent defendant will be represented by an attorney belonging to a public defender agency (most urban jurisdiction and federal districts) or a court appointed private attorney. In the former case, they are on salary, in the latter they will typically recieve a lump sum determined by the type of case.

Expert, investigator, and mitigation services are also provided at public expense. Before any of these costs are undertaken, the defense attorney moves the court to authorize those services at public expense. Put simply the attorney bears no monetary “cost” to provide these services. There is of course a cost in time, and to that end most states have adopted caseload standards dictating how many cases a public defender or contract attorney can handle at once. Some have not, and others do not enforce them; in some places the standards are taken very seriously and failure to provide adequate funding for indigent defense in the jurisdiction’s budget can be cause for dismissal.

Finally, you’re statement that these lawyers will more likely than not want to curry favor with judges and prosecutors, besides being unsupported by any data or argument, is applies only to a narrow set of jurisdictions, Montana comes to mind, where the trial judges determine which contract lawyer gets appointed. An attorney working at a public defender agency or a contract attorney paid by an independent agency has only one incentive to “curry favor,” namely helping their clients…throwing their clients under the bus to please the prosecutor or judge is illogical.

Progressives pictured a state in which wise, science-guided bureaucrats led a system that would replace the entrepreneurial, commerce-driven American society, placing administration into the hands of selfless “experts” who would “professionalize” various occupations and rid the economy and greater society of the messiness that presently engulfed it.

That is the purpose of occupational voting in Corporatism:

Members of Parliament would be elected on a vocational franchise rather than the present geographical basis. Thus transport workers would vote for transport worker candidates, engineers for engineering candidates and teachers for teacher candidates. In this way, a government of experts elected by experts would be created.

From Raven Thomson’s biography and expanded upon in his book The Coming Corporate State (MS Reader).

Of course if one were feeling mean one might observe that there is no better definition of the phrase “bureaucratic expert” than the Platonic ideal of silt….

There are all kinds of systemic problems in our criminal justice system: pre-trial detention, coercive plea bargaining (especially in the federal system), overworked and/or incompetent defense attorneys and unethical prosecutors unchecked by spineless bar associations all harm our society. Police, prosecutors and prisons have subverted the regulators (judges and legislatures) that were mean to control them. But to blame this on Progressives or bureaucrats is absurd. It’s not that politicians have handed the keys to the system over to soulless administrators who ignore human dignity to advance their own interest, it’s that the American public wants “tough on crime policies.”

Couldn’t have said it better….”loopholes” used to be reserved for clerical
errors and blatant oversights in the law but is now used to refer to cases in which people get acquitted. The horror!

Of course that doesn’t apply to the individual bureaucrat or the bureaucracy as a whole in question.

http://whoresofthecourt.com/

An Indiana man was recently sentenced to five years(!) for criticizing the judge and custody evaluator in his divorce.

http://www.fathersandfamilies.org/?p=24077

The most destructive experts in criminal justice are “mental health” practitioners.

http://whoresofthecourt.com/

(In case anything thinks my post is simply sour grapes, despite some laughable nonsense, the custody evaluator basically came down on my side re the big issues.)

What is your metric for good? One could easily make the argument that artificially low water rates has encouraged growth in dry regions, resulting in inefficient use of water, and eventually rationing of water that would probably would not have occurred if the price of water was able to respond to market forces.

This doesn’t mean government is good at regulating non-monopolies like a housing market.

their life . . .

I am so ashamed.