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legal profession

What Is In Control?

July 2, 2025 by Peg Leave a Comment

One of the first lectures I received in law school was about how jury trials had changed over about 2,500 years; they hadn’t. According to my law professor, if we budding attorneys had walked into the courtroom in Athens for the trial of Socrates in 399 B.C., we would have easily understood the proceeding. Socrates was charged with corrupting Athenian youth with his views on the prevalent religion and government. He was convicted by a jury of about 500 citizens. Socrates was prosecuted by three senators and he defended himself. In other words, that court of over 2,000 years ago functioned like most courts of the 21st century, until the advent of smart telephones, artificial intelligence and rapidly changing electronic technology.

Unlike the practice of medicine, according to our law professor, that a physician of modern times would not even recognize, until recently the legal profession stoically struggled to deliver justice about the same way our Stone Age progenitors did. As science reached for the stars, the Star Chamber was right at home with the law. Most lawyers, judges and juries sought just verdicts, but often did so with quill pens, arcane fixtures and cloistered proceedings. Well, those honored, if often questioned, days have recently crashed upon the shoals of instant and ubiquitous information and misinformation. And much as the art world and the defense industry are wringing their hands and racing to keep up with machines gone mad, the legal profession is struggling to preserve the First Amendment’s guarantees of Freedom of Speech and the Press along with the Sixth Amendment’s guarantees of Due Process and a Fair Trial.

For thousands of years societies have confidently relied upon jurors to hear cases without being influenced by prejudicial information from outside of the court. Today, judges cannot just order jurors to not read newspapers, or listen to radio or television stories about a case. Jurors in 2025 are just like virtually every other child, teenager, adult and elderly person; everyone has a smart phone to which they are addicted. All the judicial admonishments judges can think of will not defeat the deep-seated need by jurors to “tune in and turn on” and, most likely buy into, the often incorrect information about practically anything, including “facts” about an on-going case.

The Founding Fathers most feared centralized governmental power and believed the best defense to it was for the public to have almost unfettered Freedom of Speech and for the media to be almost immunized from governmental restraint. Of course, America’s legal system has adapted many times to changes in our society. It will surely find ways to deal with the internet. However, the age-old reliance on the omnipotence and wisdom of the trial judge’s instructions has already become as much of a relic as the pyramids. And, just as the pyramids still inspire us, our historically provident legal system probably will too.

However, we in the legal profession must face the reality that Facebook and its ilk have to be dealt with because the populace will not stand for them to be destroyed. Surely, if I were back in that first law school class today, the professor would evince a different perspective on 2025’s legal system.

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Filed Under: Democracy, Gavel Gamut, Judicial Tagged With: due process and a fair trial, First Amendment, Founding Fathers, freedom of speech and the press, impartial and unprejudiced jurors, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, jury trials, legal profession, Sixth Amendment, Socrates

Unlocking The Courthouse

January 27, 2017 by Peg Leave a Comment

Dr. Weaver, a Posey County, Indiana physician, and Judge Parrett, the Posey Circuit Court Judge when our courthouse was built in 1876, were friends. If Dr. Weaver could step into an operating room of a hospital today he would be unable to function. If Judge Parrett walked into the same courtroom he presided over 141 years ago, he would not miss a beat. Medicine has progressed. Law remains much as it has been for centuries. However, starting in April 2017 citizens in Posey County who need legal services will see a change much like Dr. Weaver’s new operating room.

No longer will one need to be chained to a courthouse to file legal documents or check on the status of their case. E-Filing and digital pleadings will soon take the place of musty old file folders. The legal profession has often seen changes in the law as a dangerous meddling with carefully and slowly developed procedures that are based on years of experience, good and bad. Lady Justice has always worn the same blindfold and toga for good reason. She carefully guards the courthouse portals.

This attitude has sometimes led to arcane mysteries that stultify the system and result in slow or incomplete legal outcomes or even unjust ones. Perhaps modern technology will help staunch the flow of inordinate amounts of legal documents, much of which are irrelevant to just resolutions, and will reduce the time between when cases are commenced and resolved.

Instead of citizens getting their knowledge of their legal system at the coffee shop or from television, much as patients used to turn to home remedies and wives tales, now one will be able to go right to the actual source.

Of course, changes in trappings and procedures do not guarantee justice. We might be able to increase access to the legal system while we reduce costs and delays. But justice must still come from people, not just the staffs of the Clerk and the Court, or the attorneys and judges, but also from the lay people who come to or are brought to the Bar.

Regardless of legal procedures and technologies, a desire in the participants to fairly resolve controversies always has been and always will be the best safeguard of justice. Truthful testimony and pre-trial exchanges of accurate information mean far more than scanning in pleadings or printing out court decrees over the Internet.

On the other hand, if one cannot access justice easily and economically, a proper spirit of honest compromise is of little help. Soon Posey County’s legal system will address the access portion. Citizens and those who operate the system will still need to address the rest.

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Filed Under: Circuit Court, Gavel Gamut, Judicial, Law, Posey County Tagged With: blindfold, courtroom, digital pleadings, Dr. Weaver, E-Filing, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, Judge Parrett, Lady Justice, legal procedures and technologies, legal profession, musty old file folders, operating room of a hospital, Posey Circuit Court Judge, Posey County Indiana physician, toga

© 2025 James M. Redwine

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