Today I was called for jury duty. It was an interesting exercise in applied civics — and may continue to be, as I haven’t yet been excused from service.
When you observe the judicial system from “the inside,” you realize what a human process it is. Politicians, pundits, and political preachers like to rail about “activist judges,” filibusters, and such, as though justice ordinarily is meted out on ideological grounds. It isn’t. Usually, facts in court are judged by ordinary folks like you and me, sitting on juries in the dusty, stuffy courtrooms of our towns and counties.
The “big” issues are important — qualified judges shouldn’t be kept off the bench because of political grandstanding, as is happening in Congress now — but they aren’t nearly as important as ensuring that everyday citizens have the educational and moral grounding needed to judge their peers fairly and correctly. Those of us who are concerned with broader concepts of justice should spend 99% of our efforts on these “individual” concerns and a far smaller percentage of our energy on flashy filibuster rallies and overblown fundraising rhetoric about a supposedly “out of control” judiciary. We are the judges, and the finger of blame about “doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with [our] God” points squarely at us.