What We Can Learn From The Ancient Greek System Of Justice

We sometimes forget that the American judicial system as well as common law systems in Great Britain and many former European colonies stem from the system of justice first employed in Ancient Greece, particularly Athens, nearly 3000 years ago.

Along the way our justice system has become complicated and crowded with procedure, rules and bureaucracy to the point of incomprehensibility.  Odd as it might seem, a look back at the ancient Athenian judicial system is refreshing because it offers us positive alternatives to our current overburdened procedures:

A larger jury

The Athenian jury pool consisted of 6000 jurors that enlisted to serve in court.  The jurors were assigned to specific courts and specific cases with the usual size being 501, the smallest jury pool being 51 and the largest being 1501.  The Athenians evolved an astonishingly complicated system to avoid bribery or partiality (described more fully in Aristotle’s Constitution, chapter 61). They wanted to make sure it was impossible for anyone to know who was going to be on the jury until the last minute.  Someone looking to bribe the jury would be left with effectively having to choose from among 6000 potential jurors.  (You dont devise such a system, of course, unless many people were thinking of cheating - the Greeks were just as prone to cheating as modern day Americans).

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Amid a Turbulent Year, a Rare Sign of Hope in Pakistan

Repost of my original Muftah.org piece on the Pakistan Lawyer’s Movement four years out, on Huffington Post http://huff.to/fV9qFz

The History and Continuing Influence of Pakistan’s Lawyers’ Movement

The summer of 2008 brought the usual blistering heat to Pakistan. President Pervez Musharraf, an army general who had become president through a coup d’etat eight years earlier, led by edict in a country little used to democracy and often subject to the heavy yet firm hand of military rule. Despite the predictable heat, the streets of Karachi thronged with thousands of lawyers clad in the traditional black robes of Pakistan’s judiciary. Some chanted slogans for the release of Supreme Court Chief Justice, Ifthikar Mohammad Chaudhry, who had been under house arrest since 2007. Others maligned Musharraf, their white banners of protest distorted by the shimmering heat.

In March 2007, Chaudhry, who had been bolstering the judiciary’s independence and severing its traditionally close ties with the President, had been removed from office by Musharraf, after resisting army pressure to resign. The event led to nationwide protests, inspiring a 24-month movement led by the lawyers of Pakistan that successfully returned Chaudhry to his position as Chief Justice and restored over fifty other judges who had sided with Chaudhry to their previous offices. For many Pakistanis, the movement’s success represented an important sign of increasing judicial empowerment in a nation where courts had long followed the dictates of either the ruling elite or the military…

More at Muftah.org

Extremist Concialitors: A progressive, grassroots website that attempts to build bridges in the Middle East

I was led to Mideastyouth.com by a colleague over at Muftah.org.  Mideastyouth forms the core of a network of sites which seek to build bridges, increase tolerance and encourage cooperation throughout the Middle East.  You can see that founder Esra’a Al Shafei (24), a recent TED Fellow, hasn’t skimped on design or content.  Even the About Us page is classy and uniquely designed.  I’ve yet to see any other grassroots, youth-driven MENA (Middle East & North Africa) site quite site like it.

In a time where the Middle East and surrounding regions are often marginalized and/or misunderstood by the rest of the world, Mideastyouth.com is a refreshing turn of pace.  Check it out.

Mind the Gap.

In 1960, hitting the “bigtime” for the ordinary European was owning a Volvo.  At the same time for those nearly 1 billion of the world’s poor it was stable shelter, three square meals and warm clothing.

Fast forward fifty years.  Today the middle-class European has “made it” when they can afford expensive yearly vacations to remote destinations.  Nowadays owning a car is considered a right, not a privilege by almost all middle-class teenagers in the western world.  Yet the world’s now nearly 2 billion poor still “make it” when they are finally able to obtain food, clothing and shelter.

Poverty keeps your expectations low.  The gap between the rich and poor continues to grow.

Read more on Huffington Post »

Flood Victims in Pakistan Still Need Help

<This is a partial reprint of my article on the Huffington Post>

Big, burly, ferociously committed and said to resemble an “American football coach more than a health worker,” Todd Shea is a surprising contradiction of a man who still seems to belong in rural northwest Pakistan.

Beloved by the locals since his arrival in 2005, Todd’s good-natured persistence underlies his belief that in spite of floods or earthquakes, health care for Pakistanis in rural parts of the country is an attainable goal.

Much like today, in 2005, another natural disaster in Pakistan was making the headlines. That’s when Todd Shea, went to help earthquake victims in Pakistan and ended up staying. Now Todd and his U.S.-based nonprofit, Sustainable Healthcare Initiatives Now Empowering (SHINE) is in the region again assisting flood victims in Charsadda Children’s Hospital in rural Pakistan.

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Killing The Billable: Balancing Accuracy Against Efficiency In Dispute Resolution

In the world of dispute resolution, the twin concepts of accuracy and efficiency remain in tenuous counterbalance.  Certain methods of resolving disputes are highly accurate, while others are highly efficicent.  Generally, the more efficient a dispute resolution process, the less accurate the result and the more accurate the result, the less efficient the process.

Before I go further, it helps to define “accuracy” and “efficiency” as independent concepts in the dispute resolution context.  The most accurate result would be the one achieved by an arbiter with knowledge of the essential truth of the dispute, i.e. if the judge or arbitrator knew all the facts in their truest form prior to making a decision (the nature of essential truth is a deep philosophical question for another time).  The application of the proper laws and regulations and the appropriateness of the punishment also play a role in the accuracy of a judgment. The more efficient a dispute resolution process, the less resources (time, manpower, money) are consumed in reaching a decision. 

The U.S. justice system is currently skewed in terms of accuracy.  This focus on accuracy over efficiency often leaves hundreds of thousands of low-income clients without the ability to afford even basic legal services.  For instance, civil court procedure encourages parties to “discover” all the information underlying a dispute through the use of written questions (interrogatories), interviews of important parties (depositions) and formal written requests for documents and related evidence. 

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Why Law Schools Should Teach Social Justice As Well As Legal Ethics

A horrible reputation takes a lot of work to change.

Whether it is deserved or not, lawyers in the United States have a horrible reputation which is a shame. Though the nature of the legal profession makes it easy to become a magnet for offense, lawyers are largely to blame for the way in which their profession is perceived because law schools and attorneys in practice have failed to emphasize ethical foundations and the inherent nobility of the rightly practiced legal craft.

Instead a patchwork of “professional responsibility” courses in law schools across the nation make it hard for lawyers to learn the value of human dignity much as medical students learn the value of human life through concepts such as the Hippocratic Oath and courses in bedside manner.

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How Domestic Healthcare Reform Effects U.S. Efforts To Reform Healthcare Abroad

Heard some startling statistics at a SIPA* event last Thursday:

• When women in developing countries are educated up to the primary education level (grades 1-6), we almost never see their kids achieve a lower level of education than their mothers. The same is true of secondary education.
  
  
• The incidence of natural disasters is increasing worldwide, and this is not because of the surveillance effect (i.e. not because pervasive news media just happens to document more disasters than in the past and not because modern voracious news consumers happen to learn of more disasters).
  
  
• Healthcare reform in the U.S. has a direct and negative impact on sustainable healthcare initiatives in the developing world.

For instance, after passage of the recent U.S. healthcare reform bill, the demand for medical professionals such as doctors, nurses and pharmacists in the U.S. is bound to grow. As in the past, the U.S. is unable to produce enough homegrown medical professionals to fulfill demand, so we recruit heavily from developing nations abroad. This “brain drain” and loss of talent from nations with weak educational systems stunts the growth of their health care infrastructure.

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Of Lawyers and Photojournalists

“Human Torch” Greg Marinovich

I had the opportunity to visit the Newseum in Washington D.C. today. As its name implies, the Newseum is a museum dedicated to showcasing the art and craft of newsmaking.  The shiny new exhibits and glitzy touch screens present information in an appealing manner compelling you to stay at the musuem for hours and explore every nook and cranny.  However, if you follow the instructions of the docents at the ticket counter and take the elevator downstairs to the main exhibits, you are likely to miss the most compelling exhibit.  Instead, take a right at the ticket counter to the Pulitzer Prize exhibit where some of the most compelling photographs from Pulitzer Prize winning photographers are on display.

I challenge you to walk away unmoved.

The photo above is one of the more popular ones on display.  Greg Marinovich’s “Human Torch” is a depiction of a Zulu man being burned alive by ANC supporters while a machete is driven straight through his skull.  The exhibit also features interactive displays with additional photos and video interviews of the photographers.  Additional photos of the horrifying events preceding “Human Torch” can be viewed at one such display in step-by-step detail:

 First, Marinovich begins taking innocuous photos of a boy walking down the street of a barren urban landscape on a stark, bright afternoon.  It seems entirely too suddenly that a group of men converge upon the victim with knives and sticks.  They drive the blades into his sides and slash at his unexposed head.  Though blood begins to stain the bright lavender of his shirt, he lives and attempts to walk away.  The men continue to attack and his blood continues to flow.  None of the photos show him fighting back.

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