27. What is the history of how judges and lawyers got so much power in America?

Understanding how judges and lawyers got so much power, may be a help to victims, in understanding their own struggles within the USA legal system.

Americans often used to say they 'love' their 'great Constitution', but were usually not entirely clear on what part of that document they loved - certainly not the parts that accepted human slavery as a legal reality.

What people probably love, most likely, is not so much the original Constitution that took effect in 1789, but more likely the Bill of Rights of 1791, the first ten 'amendments' or changes to that Constitution, that enshrined as law the basic freedoms that people think they have: Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion and so on. These first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, indeed contain some wonderful words, which sound as if they may help serve to protect people. Regrettably, USA judges no longer take the Bill of Rights very seriously, and will just twist and turn these words to mean whatever they want.

The original USA Constitution was regarded as defective even by some of the people involved in writing it - the Bill of Rights was the first 'bug fix', almost immediately after it was enacted, and just one sign of the problems that people would have with the Constitution over the nearly quarter-millennium since then.

Although US citizens might be very reverent in talking about the 'Constitution', if you read the original document, it is not very inspiring. It is not very nice about the full human rights of either black slaves, or native Americans, and these issues are still being fought today. But beyond that, the American Constitution basically is a diagram of government organisation, theoretically 'checks and balances' in bureaucratic machinery, that the writers claimed would help preserve freedom.

But this machinery had problems, right from the beginning, and has continued to show more problems with age. The people who wrote the US Constitution were actually afraid of democracy; they worried about the 'mob', the rabble, the general public, whom they thought might be manipulated into electing a tyrant - or perhaps vote for some kind of re-distribution of wealth, taking things away from the generally rich kind of people who were writing the Constitution as USA 'founders'.

Knowing that popular revolutions against government are likely to start in cities, the early US founders quickly developed a plan to set up the capital city in a then-remote region, far away from the USA's biggest and most important city of the time, Philadelphia, and even farther from the also-important New York or Boston.

The key problem in installing a vision of bureaucratic machinery of government, is that, whoever controls the machinery, controls the government itself. The people who wrote the Constitution were afraid of too much democracy, so they included some elements of monarchy and aristocracy in it. They made the President a strong figure, a little like a king or chief of aristocrats, independent of the Congress. And even stronger, they put judges and a Supreme Court in a very high position near the top of the machinery, as if they were a bunch of priests serving the aristocrats and merchants. A lot of the people who helped write the Constitution were rich lawyers, so they thought it was only natural to put lawyers, judges and the legal system near the top of the whole machine.

The danger that some people saw from the beginning, including Thomas Jefferson himself, was that eventually America would become a tyranny of the lawyers and judges, denying democracy to the people. And of course, that is what has happened today in the USA.

The USA 1789 Constitution did, rather weakly, make Congress in theory supreme over the USA Supreme Court Justices, allowing for their impeachment and removal by Congress for lack of 'good behaviour', with impeachment by House and trial by Senate. But in a country making such a cult of 'the law' whose leading figures were often lawyers, this proved to be a very weak, under-used provision, given that the Congress needed to be fairly united and not divided about removing such judges.

One of the delegates to the original Constitutional convention, Robert Yates, denounced the document and wouldn't sign it. You can find his writings from 1788, in the Anti-Federalist papers (quoted in various places on the web). Yates predicted that the American Constitution and its granting of ultimate power to un-elected judges, "created a dangerously unaccountable branch that would usurp power and ultimately grant itself more power" than the people's elected representatives in the legislatures. Yates turned out to be absolutely right, but it would be a while before the disaster became fully visible. In the final years of his life, Thomas Jefferson as well came to have the same view.

The great advantage of the USA in its early period, is that it was more like modern Europe. Between 1789 and 1863, the United States was only partly a single nation, because individual states were almost independent countries, each with their own culture and laws. People were loyal to their own states, more than to the USA as a whole. The power and influence and identity of the states, prevented the USA from becoming too much of a centralised power. The federal government was restrained, because the individual states had a great deal of power and identity, and the ability to secede was always there as a background possibility, even if the Constitution had made the mistake of not giving states that right explicitly, as exists in the treaties of the European Union which enabled Brexit to occur..

The USA civil war of 1861-1865 is now thought of a war to free the slaves, but what was really driving the war, was a big economic push to make America a centralised and expanding empire based in Washington DC. Abraham Lincoln himself made clear his priority was the united USA, and he would himself work to preserve slavery if that would help his imperial goal. When the tide of war turned at Gettysburg in 1863, and the states effectively lost their ability to oppose Washington, it was really the end of the original USA. A new national empire was born.

During the 1860s civil war itself, some basic Constitutional freedoms were suspended, whilst hundreds of thousands died. With states now unable to resist, old USA freedoms began to be more uncertain, and USA courts had greater authority to assert increasing control over the people.

In the late 1800s, in the new America, the traditional rights of the American jury started to die away. Judges began to limit the use and power of citizen juries in court cases. Judges began to give juries more 'instructions' which sounded like orders, so the citizens no longer felt they were as free to decide as they thought was right. Americans started to forget their old rights as citizens.

Under the rule of the judges as 'high priests' of USA life, Americans forgot that they had a right to let an innocent or good or righteous person go free at trial, regardless of what the judge said, or the way the law was written, they forgot the classic right of 'jury nullifcation' of the law.

Judges, ever seeking to increase their power which they could exercise on behalf of the oligarchy, worked to keep people ignorant of their right to give their independent verdict if they thought a law was unjustly written, or if they thought the judge was behaving badly.

The late 1800s also saw the rise of the 'robber barons', the really wealthy people, who wound up wielding enormous power in America. Some of the descendants of those original robber barons, are still among the wealthiest and most powerful people in America today. And the American courts became more and more active, in protecting the growing national financial interests of the newly powerful corporations.

Basic American democracy remained vibrant for a long time, despite the rising power of the wealthy people and corporations, and a certain high point was reached in the national election of 1912, where there were actually four major political parties involved, including one quite radical party that got a lot of votes. It was the high water of America being a multi-party democracy, before the two parties settled into their final comfortable control of American politics.

Around that time, there were more changes to the Constitution and the laws, which really sealed the dominance of centralised power in the new USA empire. In the 1910s, a national income tax was established, along with central government banking, giving Washington the greatest taxing-and-borrowing machine the world has ever known.

And World War I came along to jump-start America's armaments industry, what President Eisenhower would later call the "military-industrial complex", now able to be funded by the Washington money machine. Civil rights were again curbed amidst the war fever during and after World War I, followed by the radical extremism of changing the Constitution to ban all alcohol drinking in the USA during 1920-34.

As Washington became ever more powerful, the courts became more important for managing and imposing that authority. The old Constitution, where supposedly the federal government had 'limited powers' and the individual states had all remaining power, was really and truly dead, although few people admitted it. The old Constitution had died in the Civil War, along with extinguishing the rights of the individual states to rebel against Washington.

America's judges got used to bending and twisting the Constitution just to make things work, as a practical matter. Sometimes this was well-intentioned, as in social welfare programmes amidst the great Depression - the federal government had the big money, and seemed to be in a position to help people. So most people didn't worry too much about old words on paper, and the old ideas that went with them. Although other parts of the 1930s court-approved legislation - such as the USA government banning private gold ownership 1934-75, the new item of 'Prohibition' - made it clear that the USA was no longer quite the 'land of freedom'

As judges assembled more power, they also began to even take power away from individual lawyers. During the 20th century, the legal profession slowly changed from an independent body in each state, and instead became a group of people who were under the thumb of the judges, and forced to play along with whatever games the judges were playing. It was all part of the slow death of the old American freedoms.

The 'radical lawyer' making a bold case for a client or class of client, survived into the 1960s, but at the end of the 20th century had become essentially extinct, lawyers across the USA losing their right to practice, law, being bankrupted and even jailed, for daring to speak against judicial misconduct.

After World War II, with the USA now the richest and most powerful nation in the world, it was just natural to the big corporations to give increased power to judges and to the USA legal system. It was a way to control things, to keep radicals and socialists and populists from getting power, as was happening in other countries. It was a sweet deal for all the powerful forces associated with rich people - the judges got bribes, the lawyers got rich, and the corporations maintained their profits.

As the USA continued to get splash its world-historic wealth, the power of USA judges and lawyers expanded. As USA society changed, those changes were often imposed by the judges, instead of through political activity in the legislatures, because legislators elected by voters, did not want to do things their voters still hesitated about.

So, from the 1950s onwards, major changes in civil rights, women's rights, and abortion rights, for example, were often led by judges and court decisions, instead of by laws voted on by legislatures. The big corporations actually favored things like civil rights, women's rights, and abortion rights, because they helped make the workplace more efficient, and got more people into the workplace on a flexible basis - and helped to lower the wages of workers, given there were more people seeking the same jobs.

The big corporations likely preferred things to be changed by courts, instead of by legislatures. There is a problem with democracy: If you give people the idea that the legislature will pass laws they want, people might start asking for all sorts of things - like better wages and national health insurance and government-assisted child care. Such things were happening in Europe and Canada, where corporations made smaller profits but people received a lot more benefits out of the taxes they paid.

In the USA, however, where judges were in charge, corporations and rich people ruled the country like no where else, and made bigger profits. Americans started to get used to the idea that they were mostly helpless to change society, and should just wait for the judges to change things.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the USA seemed en route to becoming more like Europe or Canada, with more social benefits, though lesser profits for big companies and investors. But, in the end, America took a different path, and by the late 1970s, you could see the USA turning in a different direction than other advanced nations. After the USA lost the Vietnam War, and suffered through the early 1970s energy crisis followed by high inflation, the USA began to be managed by a climate of subtle fear, that turned it into a very different country.

America wound up being the only developed nation in the world, without a national health policy, so tens of millions of people could remain afraid of losing health care if they lost their jobs, or being bankrupted by medical bills. This fear helped the worker loyalty and submissiveness, and health care company profits, at the expense of the poor health of USA citizens. Other nations still find this shocking about the USA.

But the largest part of how the USA became a different place, is in its use of the law and the legal system. While other countries became kinder and gentler, America became a place of crime, lawyers, lawsuits and fear - and a place where huge profits can be made, from bending, twisting and bribing 'the law'.

The 1970s saw the beginning of the big explosion of the USA lawsuit culture - lawyers and lawsuits filled the news and people's thoughts and lives, and the entire medical care system was transformed with all the endless malpractice lawsuits by lawyers. This led USA people to think that lawyers and courts are the only ways that things could be handled or changed.

Judges and lawyers created a big booming industry in divorce, child custody and alimony cases, so that tends of millions of working Americans would have their lives all tied up in knots in the courts. People would be drained of money, and be in courts for years and years fighting over children and money. The system was designed to drag down people's lives into endless legal battles that would prevent them from doing anything else, such as organising for a better and fairer life in the USA. Generations of children have suffered from the consequences of what their parents lived through in USA courts.

USA streets flooded with drugs - some even saying these drug-flows were secretly co-sponsored by government agencies. Crime skyrocketed, prison populations boomed, particularly after 1990, to the point that now the USA has the biggest prison gulag in the entire world. With over 2.2 million prisoners - 25 per cent of all the prisoners anywhere in the entire world - about 1 out of every 150 USA residents is in jail.

The USA has more crime, more prisons, the longest prison sentences, and more lawyers; they all go together. With something like around 1.3 million lawyers, there is one lawyer for every two prisoners ... although many in prison never had a real lawyer help them, and many of those people in prison are innocent, not the actual individual who did the crime.

The court and prison business became a giant industry - lots of work for slimy, dishones lawyers, helping send poor people to prison. The public has become afraid both of being a victim of crime, and also subconsciously afraid of getting arrested for some false or trivial reason, and sent to America's awful prisons. Fear and more fear, which is very good for inhibiting democracy, for abuse of power by a dictatorial oligarchy.

A significant symbol of the different USA path from other developed countries, is the practice of the death penalty. Much of the world no longer allows the death penalty; outside of the USA, most other developed nations consider it barbaric and cruel. It has been outlawed in the European Union for a long time.

Many people don't know that the USA actually ended the death penalty, too, for nearly 10 years, from 1967-77, when the USA put no one to death judicially. The USA was on the same track as Europe, thanks to USA judges back then who could no longer stomach what they saw as barbaric cruelty, often imposed with racist bias, and more against poor and working people than against the rich.

But the USA oligarchy began taking steps to change the kind of people who were appointed as judges, and to intimidate remaining judges into bringing the death penalty back, and so it was restored, with the USA now one of the leading cultures of executions and death in the world. Being put to death is after all, the ultimate terror of law and lawyers and judges. What better way for a judge to feel powerful than by ordering a killing, with 'murder in his heart', as some ancient religious texts have warned?

But perhaps some USA people, made so fearful in their daily lives, and so full of anger, feel a great need to take the blood of some of their prisoners, whereas other nations have let this pass into history.

The monster of American judicial and legal corruption, however, gives a special perspective to America's many executions, its thousands of prisoners waiting for death. Once you realise the deviousness and corruption of America's judges and lawyers, it is frightening to give such gangsters the power of imposing death. The abuse of this power is proven by the significant number of innocent people, who have been sentenced to die in America, and later shown to be innocent, some of them only after being killed.

In perhaps the most disgusting USA Supreme Court decision in history, in 1993 that court satanically declared that it was perfectly all right to put to death an innocent man - with the evidence of the man's innocence right in front of the judges - so long as the man was sentenced to death following 'proper procedure'. Laws in some USA states absurdly block court appeals based on new evidence, if presented after brief time limits, such as 30 days after the original trial. In this case of Latino US Navy Veteran Leonel Herrera (1947-93), witnesses had come forward to say another man was guilty of the murder, and had even confessed it.

But the USA Supreme Court 'Justices', claimed they could not 'find' any Constitutional right not to be put to death, just because you are innocent. They denied it was 'cruel and unusual' or a 'violation of due process'. Although 84-year-old Justice Harry Blackmun led the angry dissenters, suggesting his colleagues were 'murderous', the court voted 6-3 to order that Herrera be sent to his death, and Texas governor Ann Richards seemed to relish putting this Latino to death too, despite the evidence he was innocent.

Bear in mind that these are the same USA Supreme Court Justices who seem to be able to twist and turn the Constitution to 'find' all sorts of alleged things that were not even remotely discussed by the Constitution framers - the Supreme Court has 'found' that the Constitution grounds abortion rights, gay rights, and so much else. Yet these same Justices could not 'find' a right to not be put to death when you are innocent?

As the new 21st century began, America is a bizarre nation compared to others, its legal and prison system and gangs of lawyers, the biggest of all. Its legal system dominates USA political life like almost nowhere else, even though nearly all who know this system well, find it disgusting, dishonest, and full of horror.

America's legal system is what replaces its stagnant politics, where not much happens in Congress aside from what is wanted by the big corporations. What people worried about in the 1780s, has come true. The judges and lawyers in America are the tools of tyranny, democracy now a fading ideal in the USA, trampled upon by the judges in black robes, making tyranny 'legal' because they said so.

Only the naive and uninformed, those who haven't yet been victims, still believe in the old fairy tales about the American legal system. Only the naive and uninformed, still believe that American judges are calm, serious people like in those Hollywood movies and TV shows, when instead they are often perverts, grinning and smirking at their lawyer friends serve the oligarchy just like the judges.

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28. Is the problem of legal and judicial corruption really different or better in other countries, or is it just the same as in America?

USA people tend not to travel very much outside the USA, and often do not even own a passport - so they often assume other countries have the same kind of crooked, rigged, oppressive legal system, even though it's actually much better in every other developed nation.

In terms of corruption, bribery and oppression of the innocent, the USA legal system is as bad as what you can imagine occurs in a sleazy and totally corrupt country in the developing world. The long period of wealth and USA imperial power, seems to have encouraged USA judicial corruption past the point of no return. It is a giant monster of a system, fuelled and funded by the richest resources of any country on earth. There is nothing like it.

It is truly better in all other developed, advanced nations, than it is in America. Americans are more oppressed by the law, by lawyers, and by crooked courts, than in any other developed economy. It's a funny equation - in America, more lawyers equal more crime, more prisoners, and less justice.

In comparing other Western societies, it can be argued that the Anglo-American type of legal system, with its roots in English law, and where lawyers can make lots of money arguing about 'precedents', is really the inferior one, because it tends to overly enlarge the place of law in people's lives. And the USA has taken the defects of this system, to an absurd extreme.

On the European continent, with its differing system with roots in the Roman and French civil codes, the law is a lesser part of social life, and there is less general fear of law, of lawyers, and of abuse by the legal system. In Western Europe, there is hardly anyone in prison compared to the USA - 1 out of 1000 in many Western European countries, versus 1 out of 150 in the USA. And there is much less fear of assets being seized through police seizures and judicial extortions conducted in the courts.

Although it does seem that Europe is now falling under the influence of all those Hollywood movies and TV shows with USA courtroom scenes, and is starting to be influenced by USA-based legal trends - including judges taking a more 'activist' role in trying to shape public policy.

In the English kind of system, there is a legal culture that is based on lawyers arguing at great length about precedents and historical cases, every time they are in court. The lawyers like this because they make more money from rich clients, and can just argue endlessly about this and about that. It makes for more money and more of a cult of lawyers.

In Great Britain, Canada and Australia, for example, which all share the same roots in the English legal system, you can see a fraction - of the American cult of law and lawsuits. The British, in particular, are starting to develop a little bit of the American-style zest for lawsuits, maybe after watching so many American movies about lawsuits, and realizing they could play the same game. And sometimes, from these countries, you can read and hear about cases of lawyer corruption, that sound like the typical American corruption. But it is not anywhere near as widespread a problem in the other Anglo countries, as in the United States.

Even though they share the same English-based common law legal system, none of these countries has the same degree of American-style legal disease. In all of them, there is less crime, a smaller percentage of people in prison, fewer lawsuits, and much less oppression by lawyers and judges.

The situation is even better on the continent of Europe, where the legal systems with roots in the Roman and French legal codes, function in a simpler way. Living in Europe, many people hardly think about the law in their lives. There's quite little crime, by USA standards, and very few people in prison. Prison sentences are usually pretty short, too, especially for a first offense.

In Europe, lawsuits have been relatively rare; things like that have been often handled informally. Lawsuits are actively discouraged, especially silly or nonsensical ones; and there can be heavy penalties for those who file nonsense cases. And there is no similar cult of lawyers as in the USA. Lawyers are just other working professional people, and often don't make as much money.

In Europe and elsewhere, the law and courts are just not as big of a factor in people's lives. Overall, people more often trust the courts, and expect justice when they go to court. They expect the judge to be fair, and not political at all, even though the judge might have some private and very strong political opinions.

In Europe, you tend to hear very little of American-style complaints about legal and judicial corruption. The judges tend to very explicitly stay out of politics. They have traditionally tried to avoid 'inventing new law from the judicial bench'. The classic European idea is that laws and policies are for the parliament or legislature, and the judges very specifically have tended to defer uncertain matters to the legislators, who have long been more considered the voice of the people.

Europe has always remained much closer and more sensitive to the idea of popular revolution, ever since the events of France in 1789. In countries that are significantly smaller than the USA, it is much easier to have 'people power', people in the streets - although as we have seen in various 'colour revolutions' linked to the CIA and various oligarchs, such 'revolutions' can also be manipulated events as well.

The wars in Europe and their aftermath, have also been the source of revolutionary circumstances. In the USA, the judges are more arrogant, feeling themselves the high priests and kings of a giant empire that has seemed like it would last forever. In Europe, the judges have more humility ... huge wars and revolutions and societal upheavals have taken place, witnessed by people still living. People are more aware this can happen again. Although now in the USA as the 2020s begin, the United States seems to be edging closer to revolutionary circumstances as well.

There are a number of more particular reasons why other advanced nations, in Europe, Canada and elsewhere, have better legal systems than in America. One thing is the fact that in all these other countries, lawyers are an independent profession, which is not as much under the control of anyone else, whereas in America, lawyers must be somewhat more like slaves to the judges, or else lose their right to practice law.

But the biggest overall reason why other developed nations have much better legal systems, is because they have somewhat more genuine democracy, and governments that are more in fear and awe of the common people - an aspect of being closer to revolutions and the revolutionary heritage, as noted above. Democracy that is not just a word, but a real, effective, multi-party democracy, where people feel they have representatives who really speak for them. And democracy is at the top of the political system, not the judges, which makes the courts a better place.

In a typical European country, you have a thriving multi-party political system in the parliament - not like in America where there are the somewhat phoney 'two parties' who mostly both get their money from the same corporations and wealthy class of political donors.

In Continental Europe, there might be a few large political parties, but also several smaller ones, thanks to 'proportional representation', so even small parties have seats in parliament. If your party gets 10 per cent of the vote, you may get 10 per cent of the seats in a parliament. Whereas in the USA, a political party can get one-third of the vote, and have no seats in Congress at all.

In Europe, the political parties cover a much bigger range of views, and it is much easier to start a political party. It takes much less money to start a party or campaign. So there are left-wingers, right wingers, socialists, ex-communists, animal rights advocates, people who like big business, people who hate big business, people who want more rights for working people, people who represent immigrant-heritage citizens, and so on. It is lively, and even fun. So even the smaller political groups, get a voice, and get heard. Most people get to see some elected representatives yelling and shouting on their behalf. It is rather satisfying, even if you don't have the biggest party, because even the minority point of view influences the law-making or at least has its voice heard.

Also, the government is often a coalition of various parties. And the prime minister, is herself or himself, very close to the elected representatives, and can lose her his job tomorrow if he does something wrong. The parliament can vote, and call a new election; you don't need an impeachment.

The parliament system seems to work better, than the big USA two-party political machine. In Europe, if the public is concerned about an issue, it is often debated quickly in parliament. People do not wait for years for some judge to decide something, after a long string of lawsuits, as happens in the USA.

In Europe, people do not worry so much about the politics or appointment of judges, as they do in the USA. In Europe, judges come from the full range of the political spectrum, but they have limited powers. No one worries about appointing some high court judge, and then being imprisoned by that judge's decisions for the next 20 years because he has been allowed to exercise lifelong political power over the country, as in the USA.

People in Europe expect the judges to be professional and not twist the law to suit their purposes. If there are changes needed in the law, the parliament will do that itself, not the judges. The judge can protect the innocent, but he does not have the USA-type ability to manage the political life of the country. In Europe, people look to the parliament, not the judges, for making changes in law and in society. And that is always available. They never feel trapped, like Americans do with their Supreme Court. The parliament can change things right away, if change is needed.

Of course in Europe things are changing, and many things can be criticised. To a certain degree, Europe's supra-natonal structures, the EU and Council of Europe and the international courts of European justice and human rights, have been setting policies through judicial rulings, that are not always well-received by individual European nations and groups of citizens.

From a certain, more superficial point of view, Europe can seem 'less free' to USA citizens who focus on a few particular social practices. Although tens of millions of European civilian citizens own handguns, shotguns, and rifles, Europe does not have the 'gun carry' laws common amongst USA states. Some of the commentary on historical and social issues you find on USA websites, is judicially considered 'racist' or illegal under European national laws, and there a few people jailed in Europe for things that in the USA don't raise criminal-law issues. Although the USA internet tech companies such as Google, Twitter, and Facebook, now censor and erase much material from the internet now without even suggesting the material is non-legal.

But in the big picture of how free your life and personal freedom and property is, Europe is the better place, simply because it does not have the huge machine of legal injustice and human life destruction, that one sees in USA courts and lawyers.

Yet in the USA, there is this whole cult of the law and lawyers and judges, promoting their power and hiding their tendencies to corruption. There is a USA fiction that the law is 'above' politics, plus 'supreme' like the Supreme Court, when actually of course, USA judges are supremely political. The false image of judges in America, promotes them as a kind of 'priesthood' of law, at the same time that judges are given all kinds of absurd power, which really should belong to the people themselves.

In Europe, it has long been understand that it works better the other way around. In Europe, they don't pretend the judges are gods, so they haven't been putting courts higher than the democracy. They have historically understood the danger that judges might start to get political - so that precisely has kept the judges from being political, exactly because everyone understands the danger, and there are multiple political parties to keep an eye on things. In Europe, if some judge starts getting political or twisted in his decisions, then it is likely that someone in parliament will start complaining about it, and steps may well be taken to restore fairness and modesty to the judge's role.

Instead of a cult of law and judges, there has been more of a genuine respect for voters and democracy, which ends up being better, even for the courts and the judges, who wind up being more truly of service to the public.

In a nutshell, there's no substitute for true, genuine popular democracy, and in the USA the smothering of democracy has long been underway, in part by the judges, and the cult of the law and lawyers, taking its place. Big corporations and the wealthy prefer judicial dominance, because it helps them to maintain power and profits, along with the 'two-party system' which quashes all other parties to help maintain the whole scheme. In Europe, corporations and rich people must be more socially responsible, because there are usually several political parties in parliament who are not afraid to question them.

In the USA, democracy has, sadly, just become a shadow of itself now, despite all the USA boasting about the 'land of freedom'. Big corporations and oligarchs in the USA, pay for both of the two political parties, which both support the cult of lawyers and judges as a way to serve the wealthy against the commoners.

Because there has been much less effective political opposition allowed in a system rigged both politically and judicially, the USA cult of judges and lawyers is out of control, and there is almost no restraint on their power. This is the background of the endless particular cases of legal and judicial corruption in the USA, with so many tragic victims.

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29. So what can I do to fight my personal battle against judicial and legal corruption - or is it just hopeless?

This FAQ has tried to help victims understand, what typically is going on as people look for help in fighting against USA judicial and legal corruption. These web pages have tried to show what is behind the frustration and agony of victims of American injustice, as they look for help from new and different lawyers; from the Bar that supervises lawyers; from the judges who receive complaints about other judges; from law professors; from police and prosecutors; from politicians; from 'civil rights' and 'civil liberties' groups, and other non-profit organisations; and from news media and journalists.

Very commonly and tragically, it all often comes to the same dead end. No one will help you as a legal system victim. People who know your plight avoid you, and it seems hardly anyone even knows how to advise you.

And furthermore, as a victim you sense how you face grave dangers if you try to fight back or challenge judicial and legal corruption in the United States. You face harassment, threats, lawsuits and bankruptcy, and false criminal charges, and illegal jailings. You face slander by news media, by websites and social media accounts run by your tormentors, and by the fraudulent internet 'reference encyclopaedias' and 'fact-checking' sites, and all the various venues of the rich and powerful, making all sorts of attempts to discredit you.

People may even threaten to murder you, and you might have to leave the country in the end, like other victims, such as the author of these pages. In the end, if you have rock-solid documentation of your position, and place it widely on the internet, their final tactics may range from bribing judges to order your websites shut down and you to be banned and censored from internet search results ... or just to ignore you and pretend you don't exist, whilst the establishment-friendly web search engines push your own web postings so low, almost no one can find them.

You can likely feel very lonely, as perhaps even old friends abandon you, not wanting to associate with someone like you who has now become a target and a victim. Most people in America just try to continue leading a normal life, in quiet subconscious fear of the big ugly legal machine they sense is there behind the façade, people just hoping that they won't get attacked and destroyed by that machine like you have been attacked.

Ancient Greek writer Thucydides summarised the philosophy of power as, "The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must." This is a phrase that applies to life in the modern USA. As a victim of American legal corruption, you find yourself among the weak and powerless. And that is painful, especially in a culture like America that values and prizes power and strength.

Obviously you just must try to survive in some way, as best you can. As far as your particular legal case goes, you are at least better prepared, if you understand the forces that you are up against, and this FAQ has hopefully given you some of the tools of understanding, and being mentally ready for the next disappointment or attack by the gangsters who surround you.

Although it is unlikely you be able to find a lawyer. who will directly fight USA judicial and legal corruption, you may be lucky enough to find a good hearted lawyer who will, somewhat timidly, try to protect you from having too much harm done to you. Just remember that the lawyer has his own reasons to be afraid, and will tend to be very timid and limited in what he will do.

Also, remember that many lawyers will tell lies and make false promises, when in fact they are thieves and criminals who will sell you out to other lawyers and to the judges. Be careful what you say to them, or how much money you give to them. Maybe you will find a lawyer, who can bribe or talk a judge into softening or diminishing what happens to you. But beware of lawyers' promises; they often lie to little people, seeking to just steal your last bit of money and do nothing for you.

Remember that the system wants you to appear submissive to what they are doing to you. Trying to fight back with anger is dangerous, as they tend to take much bigger revenge on you. So you need to weigh your strategy carefully. Sometimes you can gently fight back a little, while also appearing to be submissive for example. Every case is different, and the risks are high. It is quite regrettable there are not more resources, or people, or lawyers to help.

If you become a target of American legal or judicial corruption, it is natural to think about whether escape is an option. If your situation is a more minor one, you can consider a path of escape to some other region of America, where you are not in the immediate neighborhood of the same criminals. Or you may be one of the many people for whom it is time to escape the USA, there being now some millions of us US citizens living abroad. It may be better to just leave America and struggle to survive elsewhere, than to hang around and think you will accomplish something within America's crooked and near-hopeless legal system, if you have become a significant target of USA judge-lawyer mafias.

The US media doesn't want to tell you the stories of people who have been forced to leave America, the so-called 'great land of freedom'. But actually, of the millions of USA citizens living outside USA borders, many of them are not coming back.

If you do not have a criminal record and a little bit of money, and some skills, you can consider countries like Canada or Australia, who have been actively looking for immigrants. If you have a parent or ancestors who were born overseas, you may qualify for citizenship in the countries of your heritage.

Political asylum in other countries can be a difficult process, and a last resort, but for special cases of people who have been human rights victims in America, it may be necessary to ask for this. This is not easy, and most countries in the world are not seeking to openly oppose the big USA bully. With evidence you are a victim, countries may indeed let you stay, but on a somewhat 'informal' basis without explicitly giving your name to media as someone who merited the right to asylum.

We are in a time when more and more of the world is realising that the USA has a corrupt, unjust and politically perverted legal system. Extradition requests by the USA are already being denied and halted, as other countries realise there is no guarantee of a 'fair trial' in corrupt and rigged USA courts. In the not-too distant future, asylum requests from USA citizens, who are victims of the USA courts and government, may become much more normalised, given the lack of justice in American courts.

But for those who stay in the USA, or who feel they cannot leave, and where the legal system mafia does not threaten death as they did in my case, the people who stay just often wind up submitting to the rape of their lives by American courts and lawyers. These victims, and you may be one of them, just accept the separation from their children, the prison terms, the financial destruction, the payment of extortion money to lawyers, and then live always with the inner sickness of knowing that they are helpless victims, and that there is no justice in this life for them, until perhaps after a USA revolution so complete it will even displace the judge-lawyer mafia.

You may find some comfort on the internet, as you wind up reading about, and connecting with, other victims of the legal system. Many of these stories and websites are very hard to read, however, as the anguish of the victims comes through in what they write.

Joining a web forum where other legal system victims are telling the stories, can be a bit depressing, as you see victims try and try again, all the avenues discussed above in this FAQ. One sees too often, how lonely and helpless people feel when they are the victims of American judicial and legal corruption, given the lack of support, how no one will help them, and how almost no one even wants to hear their stories.

 Psychologists can identify a 'legal abuse syndrome', where the victims of law and injustice, show the awful trauma of their experiences, which tend to include a major shock given that the degree of corruption and abuse is nearly always somewhat unexpected, until you yourself become a victim.

You may be tempted to tell your own story on the internet, and put up some of your own websites telling what happened to you. As you try to tell your own story, so vivid in your own mind, try hard to realise how easy it is to sound angry and hysterical. That is part of the nature of being a traumatised victim. But it can be very fulfilling, and liberating to tell your story, to name the criminals and gangsters, and call them by their true names. Indeed, the truth does set you free in some ways, and speaking it has therapeutic value for your suffering.

But also, be aware of just how dangerous it is to tell your story. Innocent people have suffered false criminal charges and jail, just because they dared to speak the truth on the internet. What about freedom of speech, you ask? Well, freedom of speech is dead in the USA, if the judges will not enforce it, and if the lawyers will not fight for it. And now of course we have social media and internet search engines censoring people outright, including legal system victims, because those sites run by billionaires, want to help other rich people with whom they partner in running the USA.

And judges and lawyers are especially eager to stamp out those who criticise the American legal system, giving 'court orders' to search engines to hide the truth and help spread lies favouring those bribing the judges. This FAQ itself, had to be written from a safe haven in Europe, after I escaped over the border from judge-backed criminals threatening to end my life.

One does wish there was more to recommend, for particular cases, for the many victims of America's horrifying legal system. But it may be a comfort in itself to you, as well as save you much time and money, to realise there is often not much you can do, from inside the USA. So many other people have tried, and too often failed, and even died, in the same endless battle.

You are not alone as a victim of America's crooked judges and lawyers. There are many others like you, "more than you know", some of whom you can meet on the internet. But regrettably, there is likely no clever strategy you can use to salvage your own situation, there is no white knight 'someone' who is out there to help you and save you. A few people have had a good turn of luck, a little miracle, or just people forgetting about them with the passage of time, as they moved on to new victims. The odds are against this, but it does happen. Every case is different, every story of survival is a different one.

Good luck to all who read this amidst the trauma of being a USA legal system victim ... may the divine spiritual powers protect you if you are one.

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30. What is the best thing happening to fight judicial and legal corruption in America?

When this FAQ was first composed in 2005, there was a very noble active grass-roots organisation bringing together many legal system victims and their supporters, called 'JAIL 4 Judges', the word JAIL also being an acronym for 'Judicial Accountability Initiative Law'.

This organisation, founded by the Rev. Ron Branson, was the last best hope for judicial and legal reform inside the USA. Its basic, simple and appealing idea, was that judges should be able to be held accountable by the people, instead of non-accountable like they are now, where judges cover up for each other.

The mechanism for popular supervision over judges, was at core an adaptation and revival of the 'citizens grand jury' concept. Although it is near-universal now that grand juries which issue criminal indictments, are called by prosecutors, in the past, common USA citizens have been able to convene a grand jury on their own, to weigh in on crimes committed, to which the regular police and law enforcement are not paying attention.

JAIL 4 Judges had the brilliant idea to restore this practice, as a basic mechanism of democracy and justice, by which judges can be called to account by citizens themselves, even if the judge-lawyer-prosecutor-politician mafia was ignoring the judicial misconduct. Judges, lawyers and politicians hated this idea with a passion, precisely because it is so beautiful and instantly appealing to the public.

The high-water mark for Jail 4 Judges was getting its proposal on the ballot in an election in South Dakota in 2006. Many of us had hopes, that this wonderful proposal in South Dakota, could be the beginning of destroying the wicked arbitrary power of America's judges and the abuses that resulted from that power, once similar initiatives spread across the country. Jail 4 Judges, if passed nationally, would go a long way toward remedying one of the most serious missing elements in the framework of America's 1789 Constitution.

The current corporate powers of America, used to corrupt judges as their servants, were fully against this proposal, of course, and a great deal of money was spent to defeat the proposal, with adverts that confused the public, and a hostile media also smearing the proposal on behalf of their friends in the judge-lawyer mafia. Only the people supported the measure; all the money-mafias were against it.

The vote total was ridiculous, and smacked of ballot fraud ... it was reported that almost no one voted to try to end judicial corruption, and that the number of people voting for JAIL for Judges, was even less than the number of people who signed the original petition to get it on the ballot!

Jail 4 Judges continued as an active web presence for a few years, but its communications were hounded and harassed by the tech censorship tools which have now become much worse, and nothing quite has replaced it as a major anti-legal-corruption movement.

Every now and then you will see a request come out, that either some Congress-person, or some reporter or producer in the media, would like to know about specific cases of legal corruption. That person then gets flooded with material, supplied by people around the country, and even from ex-Americans in other countries. And then, the big fizzle and fade-away, as the politicians or media reporter realises that for their own good, they better stay away from this hot potato. 

There continue to be various websites trying to do things in this area, but it is difficult for anyone to get much off the ground in this field, given the lack of funding, lack of lawyers, and lack of support from media and from internet search companies, which all themselves seek to get favour from judges for their own corporate purposes, plus fear judicial and legal revenge.

Many sites on legal corruption, although perhaps suggesting an 'organisation' or 'movement', are really just an extension of one particular situation, or sometimes are a group of people all hit by the same evildoer or in a local context. Other sites serve to share ideas via newsletters, people hearing something of what others are doing and trying to do. Still other sites try to hit upon strategies that will finally get major media or politicians to 'do something' about this legal-judicial hell into which so many Americans have been put. People have also attempted to make films, and sometimes have posted some videos of various usefulness in certain legal areas.

Yet it seems that, ever since an un-funded, un-lawyered Jail 4 Judges, was harassed and hounded into non-activity - its noble founder getting elderly, his brave wife passing away - there has been something terribly missing, with no great central voice about the US judicial corrupton monster.

That perhaps is on the verge of changing, as the social and political upheavals of 2020, make it clear that, however unknown the future, the USA is entering a new phase of its existence, with a revolutionary level of changes in the air. This tide of change must inevitably come to include the corruption of courts and lawyers.

Not far beneath the surface of issues of racial tension, is the fact that many tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of minority people of colour, have been jailed although innocent, by a horrifically unjust legal, court, and prosecutorial system, with victims often most hellishly damaged and threatened by their very own lawyer supposedly representing them, in many cases the alleged 'public defender'.

Although there is a great deal of urban crime in the USA, the middle classes are seemingly blind to the affect that the people jailed for these crimes, have often been innocent, railroaded patsies for the real criminals, whom authorities found it too much trouble to find.

For the middle classes of USA citizens of European heritage, the false criminal charges are less of an issue, but their own lives are often devastated by legal and court corruption of a different kind, often in family court or in lawsuit depradations stealing homes and assets, this latter particularly affecting small businesses, who do not have the big-corporation ability to buy politicians and bribe judges through their white-shoe law firms, like the big companies can.

And sadly, the nature of USA discourse and life - not aided by an often-corrupt, malicious media seeking to create chaos and division - has blocked the minority peoples of colour, and the European-heritage middle-class, from seeing that they have both been mauled, and continue to be in grave danger from the legal corruption monster.

But now, with the older fabric of USA social life being torn to pieces before our eyes, eventually the gaze of people may well turn on what really needs fixing, and is a common enemy of all non-oligarch USA citizens - the corruption amongst USA lawyers, courts and judges.

If there is a multi-millionaire who really wants to change the United States of America for the better, who really wants to give America a pro-democracy revolution that it badly needs, broad funding for media and activism on judicial and legal corruption, would be the way to do it.

Something like Jail 4 Judges tried to do in the 00 decade, needs to succeed, if the USA is to turn productively away from the disastrous road onto which it is now tumbling.

Currently, the USA mass media is firmly hostile to exposing court corruption, and thus its many victims have no large public voice in the USA, even though the number of victims is huge. That could change overnight if corporations wanted to change it. By publicising a few of the major clear-cut cases of legal and judicial corruption, media would create an unstoppable tide of public opinion in favor of reform of the judicial and legal system. People would start to call for the hanging of many judges from the lamp-posts of America.

But such a revolution would involve actually expanding American democracy, giving power back to people, and ultimately risking that USA workers would want more social benefits and protection, as in Europe. This would come at a price of profits and power that are currently maintained by America's largest corporations and wealthy investors.

But we are perhaps nearing a time, where some sections of the oligarchy, are seeing the need to create a system much less rigged and corrupt, economically, politically and judicially.

If there is a major USA revolution, or USA secession and break-up into pieces, the old judge-lawyer mafia will need to be dealt with, rather aggressively. In any new USA formation, the sleazy lawyers of the courthouse mafias, will try to re-assert themselves in whatever new frameworks take hold ... and that cannot be allowed to happen.

The horrors of USA judicial and legal corruption, need dramatic relief, if freedom, peace and justice are to be restored in its lands and amongst its peoples.

May heaven bring comfort to all of you, who have come to read this FAQ because you were a victim of that system.

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