When America's founders created a government of checks and balances, they did so out of consideration that government has an inherent capacity to become corrupt and tyrannical, and that imposing accountability to the public and separation of powers was the only way to defeat the problem. The problem is, the official government is far from the only entity capable of tyranny and corruption, and the same scrutiny and accountability is not imposed on many other entities that are likewise capable of the same thing. I am writing now about corruption in a branch of the government that, as a result of all sorts of self-serving legislation, has in many cases avoided accountability. That branch is the courts. In America, the judges have the right to edit records of court proceedings before releasing them in order to suppress their fraudulent actions. In many countries, the family court system is outside public scrutiny and its records are kept secret in order to hide the corrupt dealings that take place inside. Many legal proceedings place a gag order upon the participants. All this breeds corruption in the legal system. I know somebody whose three relatives were murdered in American medical system. The corrupt doctors enlisted corrupt lawyers to bury the case, or influenced corrupt coroners to remove the affected organs prior to autopsy. They even attempted to claim in court that she had murdered her relatives. Meanwhile all three relatives - and the woman - have all worked hard all their life for the benefit of the country in such capacities as teachers, inventors and journalists. And this is what they get from their country for their service and goodwill. I know a woman who ran a public project in New York. A Christian Right lawyer kept litigating against her in total absense of evidence against her; and without any evidence gathered he kept litigating her all the more. He had an endless source of public money to waste on this witch hunt, whereas she had to exhaust her life savings to defend herself. The taxpayer kept paying for this persecution; the woman who'd given her life to public service had to use all her personal money to defend herself from a case that had no evidence against her. I know another person who had a court rule that she was "overly law-abiding." Needless to say, the judge removed that little bit of brilliance from the official court documents when they got released. This person had five attempts on her life in the genteel state of Virginia, and in all cases the court has protected the perpetrators. I know someone whose husband got murdered in a nursing home, and the body got cremated before an autopsy could be performed. I know a man whose wife's ex was allowed to escape with their children to another country even though he was molesting these children. I know a woman - emplyed as an engineer - who is living out of a truck because her violent ex-husband not only got the custody of the children but got the court to rule that she give to him all her money. There have been many people in many times who have challenged the government or the system from all sorts of directions. Having lived for the first 12 years of my life in then-Soviet Union, I know what bad government is, and I haven't challenged the governments in the West out of a consideration that they are far better than most other governments. Instead I've challenged the unofficial, unelected, unchecked and unbalanced organs of oppression such as communities, societies, families and religions - all out of a rational consideration that power that is unchecked and unbalanced is power that has nothing to keep it from becoming tyrannical and corrupt; and this tyranny and corruption takes place in such entities all the time. The court system, with its "immunities" and "discretions" that place many decisions outside public scrutiny, likewise carries such a potential. And it is a potential of which many in the court system avail. There is only one solution to this problem. It is to force on the courts the same kind of transparency and accountability that is forced on official power such as the President and the legislative branch. The courts - all courts, including the family court - must be made open to public and media presence, and laws that allow judges to alter records must be repealed. Only real accountability can stop corruption; and the effective lack of accountability that we see in many courts now is a breeding ground for crookery of all sorts.
