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June 30, 2003
IANAA
(I am not an American) but this story is really scary. Go read it and then come back here. The premise is that the Supreme Court in the US would be more ideal if the decisions were completely random. In which case we could replace the justices with a random number generator! I would tend to think that judges clumping together (i.e. all voting the same way) would be a better indicator of idealism from the public perspective.
From the perspective of an outsider, I already thought the justice system in the US was strange (e.g. Microslosh being convicted of abusing it's monopoly and being given a light slap on the wrist). Add a perfectly random supreme court and it would make the US a complete laughing stock.
In out situation the courts (particularly the High Court) are only allowed to interpret the law, not make the law (although there have been a number of recent attempts to get around this, most related to native title) this provides a check and balance both against the government (who make law) and the judges (who are still answerable to the law).
I guess that a random number generator would be cheaper to run - just make sure that it wasn't created by Microslosh, they already control most of the court system.....
Posted by Ozguru at June 30, 2003 01:06 PM
