a speedy and a public trial

     If a case has been tried in "private" in the United States, according to our constitution it may not have been tried at all. 

and let who will be clever

     This is supposedly a bit of Irish legal cleverness: if someone  runs over a farmer's pig, paying to replace the pig is not adequate compensation, because the pig would have had piglets, which would have had grandpiglets, and so on, so the farmer should be paid for all of these, as well as compensation for the original pig. Never mind that paying for a replacement pig would also restore the piglets and grandpiglets, Irish courts supposedly upheld this logic. Would the same courts, by the same logic, tell us what adequate compensation for the wrongful death of a person would be?

guns

     According to reports in the press, nearly everyone in the United States has at least one gun. I don't know whether that should make me feel nervous about possible gun violence, or secure that our citizens could protect our country if necessary.  It probably depends on what I've been reading or watching.

legal fees

    The Old Testament is some of the oldest written history on Earth. It describes the growth of a society, from a fairly simple group of herdsmen to a more complex arrangement of government. It was permitted to have an advocate to speak for someone who was being prosecuted--but it was not permitted to pay the advocate. This was considered an unfair advantage to the wealthy. Hundreds of years later, Alfred the Great of England promulgated the same idea--advocates were permitted, as long as they weren't paid.
     Next time you hire a lawyer, try telling him or her it's against your religion to pay legal fees.

crime and punishment

     The prison system has been called by several euphemisms over the years--the criminal justice system, the penal system, the penitentiary, the department of corrections--but most of them are awful. The names given the prison system show the philosophy current at the time they were introduced. The penal system is where we punish wrongdoers. The penitentiary is where criminals may repent of their crimes. The criminal justice system is where "justice" is meted out. The department of corrections is where behavior, and, to some, morals, are corrected. To me, none of these really describe or define what's needed if criminals are ever going to be a part of law-abiding, tax-paying, self-supporting society.  We need something more like a bureau of restitution.  While it's popular to say that criminals in prison are "paying their debt to society" this does not actually happen. Crime costs society money, and so does the prison system--along with  the probation and parole systems. Criminals might walk out of prison ready to lead law-abiding lives if they knew that they had, in fact, paid their debts. I'm suggesting a system in which prisoners or probationers are made to work, and some of the money goes to restitution for their crimes--including murder, as in the ancient legal custom of the wergild.  The wergild was a set price on the murder of a person, paid to the family of the victim. In medieval times the price was determined by rank, which we could alter to age, perhaps. A higher price could be set on the death of a child, with no notion of rank.  Burglary, larceny, and property damage  are obvious--the criminal would be free when the debt is paid. For other crimes, we could start out with what they cost--hospital bills, lost wages, and disability payments. A system like this could actually work--for society and for the criminals.

new copyright laws

     I don't understand why we need new copyright laws. The copyright laws we already have should cover the internet--without any alterations. Is there a set of people who don't want to admit that the internet is the same as the rest of the real world?

group morals

     If you could talk to a member of a criminal gang about philosophy, you might be told that no member of the gang is individually responsible for any action committed as a member of the gang. It's as if the gang members were officers or employees of a corporation, who cannot be held responsible as individuals for corporate wrongdoing. A person wronged by a corporation has to sue the corporation--not an officer or employee. In this sense a corporation is a legal person. Unfortunately, law enforcement officials have never managed to successfully prosecute a gang as a corporate entity.
     A gang is not a legal corporation. Someone who joins a criminal gang, or perhaps any organization, is not only responsible for his or her own actions as a member of that gang, but is also responsible in part for all of the gang's criminal activities, since each member has in some way profited by every crime. A member of a gang who does not personally profit through a particular crime still trades on the status gained by being a member of the gang, just as every employee of a corporation profits through the business of his or her employer. The same gang members who imagine no responsibility for themselves because they have abdicated all individual responsibility to the group, would be quick to blame any employee or agent of a corporation caught polluting, or using unfair hiring practices.