Dear Jurisprudence…or why are there Lawyers in Mega City 1

Those of you who listen to the podcast might have heard Flint’s wondering about the role of lawyers in Mega City One. They are often referenced but in a society where your law enforcers are Judge, Jury and Executioner, what’s the point of them? Luckily Kehaar (who was also good enough to co-host the last podcast with me) has jumped in to try and make some sense of it all. Have a read, let us know what you think. Over to you sir…

Judge Dredd is the Law. He also works for the Justice Department.

Justice is according to the journal of record that is Wikipedia:

Justice is the concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, religion, fairness, or equity, along with the punishment of the breach of said ethics

Dredd as 1700+ Progs and 300+ Megazines show is mainly concerned with the punishment of breaches of Mega-City one’s laws. And so he should be as the Judges of Mega-City one are Judge, Jury and Executioners (as well as Cops) of the City.

Yet when we read the Progs lawyers, often robot lawyers turn up which has caused confusion to such august-Dreddheads as Flint and Rich. If the Judges are be all and end all why the heck to do you need lawyers? So what’s going on here? Well I have a theory and it’s based on three things:

• The legal system of Mega-City One’s ancestors
• The need for consistency
• The need for a safety valve.

The MC-1 Justice system is descended from the US legal system which in turn follows on from the Anglo-Saxon Legal tradition. So it makes sense that the Justice system Dredd operates in will rely on the two pillars that those systems do:

• The law – that is the actual legislation, whatever is in big books of the Law that you might see Dredd carrying in posters.
• Jurisprudence or Case Law – effectively the decisions of Judges and how they reflect upon the written word of the law and interpret it.

Now the law won’t just be the actual Acts passed by the Council of 5 (or is it the general Judge population?) it will also be all manner of secondary legislation like regulations, statutory instruments and the like which you bike gunning gun-toting street Judge is supposed to remember in his noggin while patrolling the mean streets.

Case Law will be made every time a Judge on the street makes a decision. That’s a LOT of decisions. Given that a Judge is often laying down law in life and death situations (well Dredd and the other judges we see regularly are) there’s capacity for a bit of error there.

To provide a famous case of real world case law/jurisprudence – Miranda v Arizona is a US decision where the Supreme Court held that;

 ‘an elicited incriminating statement by a suspect will not constitute admissible evidence unless the suspect was informed of the right to decline to make self-incriminatory statements and the right to legal counsel (hence the so-called “Miranda rights”), and makes a knowing, intelligent and voluntary waiver of those rights.’

That a quote from wikipedia. That’s why every US cop show you watch you’ll see the arrested perp told about their ‘right to remain silent etc;’

Now for well established laws such as murder or matters of commercial law where there is a lot of Pre-Justice Department jurisprudence decisions this might not be as important but where there are new laws (such as the ones produced for every craze that comes out) it becomes very important,

Dredd’s universe with helmet cameras, spies-in-the s-sky, psi-judges, reading brains during sleep machine sessions etc; has a large number of seasons to assemble those decisions by the street judges and collate them.  So with that all assembled there will be a huge body of case law to access.

Now the old skull-heads of the Special Judicial Squad, (SJS) seem to exist to ensure that excessive or inaccurate judges are weeded out as well as at a lower level there is the shift and sector managers but let’s face it they’re busy guys.

The SJS not only has to act as the Justice Departments secret police and address corruption. It also has to crush rebellions on off-world colonies and produce insane future Chief Judges. Judge Managers have to supervise actual police work in both supervising actual cases and provided day-day leadership and man-management.

Neither of these two parties have much time or resources to review decisions. This stuff is important – Mega-City One knows the costs of getting this stuff wrong they’ve experienced mad Chief Judges and they’ve been visited by the Dark Judges, who are from a world where jusssstice ran unchecked.

There is body in Mega-City One with the time and incentive to identify inaccurate sentences – the Citizens. This can happen if Perps can appeal against excessive sentences and decisions and victims (or their families) can appeal against lenient decisions and light sentences given out. As far as anything is in the confusingly circular Mega-City one economy it can be self financing and Judges unfit for street duty due to health can act as an appeal court. They can’t all go the Academy and it’s a damn site more efficient use of them than the Long Walk. The Long Walk remaining for poor quality Judges or Dredd-like hard arses that’d baulk at sitting behind a desk listening to appeals all day.

It’s also possible such a system and lawyers is used for such non-time critical areas of the law as commercial and regulatory decisions, helping make informed decisions and taking some pressure of the Street Judges. (It would explain why Dredd doesn’t keep getting grabbed by the elbow pad and asked to decide breach of contract disputes.) For example in the recent ‘potato-head’ case we’ve seen such a tribunal decide whether an entity is human.

Now Citizens are not well suited to consider the law and case law properly. They’re going to need help, much like modern day Citizens so that’s where the lawyers come in. They’d mainly be robots as it seems robots are the first port of call for any job that requires competence in the Mega-City (Judges being a notable exception.) Some Citizens might represent themselves (and the old cliché that anyone who represents himself has a ‘fool for a client’ being doubly true here) and there will also be odd human clever-dick whose found a niche for himself in some obscure area of the law.

Having an appeal decided against you might be a black mark for a Judge and that might explain why some Lawyers try and approach the arresting Judge straight away. They’re trying to short cut the process and save their clients money (hopefully for repeat business.) This is probably bad form and that would explain why they’re given short shift by the arresting Judge (i.e. Dredd) when that does happen.

Finally Mega-City One is a powder keg. From aliens  to fatties to Democracy campaigners to Ape rights groups it’s a messy city with many different constituencies all of which expect to be treated fairly (if firmly) by the Judges. An appeal system allows for this fairness to be demonstrated.

Admittedly the richest people will hire the best lawyer-droids but once a case is decided and the case law defined that benefits of that decision should trickle down. The pro-Justice Department media will make sure that is the message that trickles down, I’m sure. An appeals system with the attendant layers allows the Justice Department to show it’s fair and to show that over-zealous or too light judges are weeded out and addressed. Remember the citizens no only too well about the Dark Judges and mad Chief Judge risks – they’ll want reassurance that the Judges police they’re own if they’re to back the system and not listen to those democracy activists.

This should help make the Core that bit more manageable.

So there we have it. Mega-City One is a complicated place to police so the judges are going to use case law to help them enforce the law. Jurisprudence or Case law is part of the heritage of the MC-1 legal system. To test Case Law they can use an appeals system so Citizens can help them identify the right line to take. This has the added bonus of keeping Judges fair and of showing the Justice Department to be fair which can only ease the governance of the City.

Does this stand up? YOU decide – let us have your feedback either on the 2000AD forums http://www.2000adonline.com/forum/index.php?topic=26778.15 or email me at dissectingworlds@yahoo.co.uk

Kehaar

Kehaar’s is one half of the social science in Geek fiction podcast Dissecting Worlds that can be found here:

 http://geeksyndicate.wordpress.com/category/gs-podcast-network/dissecting-worlds/

His game related musings can be found here http://clarkythecruel.wordpress.com/ and his current RPG campaign here http://alfiesantics.wordpress.com/ he is also part of a mosaic novel project that is looking for writers, artists and freelance cartographers…here: http://cutthroatcreeks.wordpress.com