Everyone is a victim of the law, not least citizens whose taxes pay the wages of untrained judges, police, legal bureaucrats, lawyer-politicians who have blocked real change since the middle of the 14th century, court cleaners etc, etc.
Journalists, academics who teach law, policing, journalism, and history, high school teachers of legal studies, etc thus have a duty to examine and discuss the law with unflinching rigour. It helps to know the answers to four basic questions:
What is justice?
Where did the system in England and its former colonies come from?
Why do judges let barristers spin the process out and lie to witnesses, jurors and judges?
Why does the system used in Europe and elsewhere deliver more justice at less cost to taxpayers?
The answers are in the 1600-word Preface to Our Corrupt Legal System. (The title echoes Yale law professor Fred Rodell’s assertion that the system is a “racket”.)
The book fills a gap left by law schools; it details the origins of the two systems and how they work. Dr Robert Moles (LLB Hons Belfast, PhD Edinburgh), an international authority on miscarriages of justice, said it “is one of the most important books I have ever read on the common law legal system [It] should be required reading on Introduction to Law courses in all law schools”.
In a small nod to the public interest, the book can be downloaded free from netk.net.au/whitton/ocls.pdf, and extracts can be republished gratis. Also available from Amazon and books.google.com.au/ebooks.
Evan Whitton was a reporter, editor and journalism academic. I became a legal historian after seeing how the two systems dealt with the same organised criminal, Sir (as he then was) Terry Lewis.
Web. netk.net.au/whittonhome.asp
