1. Discuss Bonneau's findings in What Price Justice?
In "What Price Justice(s)? Understanding Campaign Spending in State Supreme Court Elections," Chris W. Bonneau discusses campaign spending for elections to State Supreme Court, indicating the varying factors that lead to the often wildly different spending budgets for each of these candidates. Depending on the campaign, state supreme court races will often involve a lot of campaign spending, given the circumstances. Bonneau's study is conducted to determine what exactly fuels this campaign spending for these positions.
In his findings, Bonneau determines that "state supreme court campaign spending is driven by the characteristics of the race, institutional arrangements, and the electoral and state supreme court context" (Carp et al., 2010). Depending on if the candidate is campaigning for an open seat or not, or if the term of office is longer, or many other factors, the campaign may throw in more money. Yet another significant factor is the size of the constituency, which often leads to a greater amount of campaign spending.
Bonneau's findings reveal a great many things about electoral politics in the judicial system. For one, it may be possible for an institution to influence campaign spending by limiting seats or reducing the number of available seats; they could change the term of office to encourage more spending. Bonneau's argument is that, if the system can arrange itself to influence more campaign spending, that may inspire candidates to put forth that effort to get their message across to voters more clearly. As state supreme court elections are often not given much consideration in the public sphere, these strategies to boost campaign spending might make potential voters more informed about who means to represent them on a state supreme court.
2. Neither sword nor purse.
The concept of 'neither sword nor purse' revolves primarily around the judiciary branch's relative innocuousness when compared to the other two branches of government. According to Alexander Bickel in The Least Dangerous Branch, the judicial branch neither has the 'sword' of the executive branch (namely the ability to give commands) or the 'purse' of the legislative branch (the ability to allocate funds and provide money to services and individuals). This idea was originated by Alexander Hamilton in his Federalist Papers, and warned of the weakness of the judiciary given its lack of power or resources when compared to the other branches of government.
This concept deals majorly with the notion of "countermajoritarian difficulty," which emphasizes the dichotomy between a democratic government and the power of the judiciary. The judiciary must not be allowed to overturn legislation that is approved by the majority, as that would completely undermine or contradict the basic tenets of democracy. Ostensibly, this is a good idea - the judicial branch must not be given enough power to potentially undermine the will of the majority, lest it become its own authoritarian government in and of itself. The legislative branch's access to financial resources and the executive branch's total, broad supervision of the actions and strategy of the government provide the appropriate checks and balances necessary.
However, by making the judiciary the weakest of the three branches, it threatens tremendous loss of resources on their part due to the need for monetary support and greater power to do its job. The other two branches must be careful not to underfund the court systems too much, lest it restrict access to justice due to lack of resources.
3. How would you evaluate the effectiveness of plea bargaining?
Plea bargaining, in terms of criminal cases, involves offering a defendant a lesser sentence in exchange for either information or other terms of a case settlement. This would preclude or stop an ongoing trial, as the defendant would receive the lesser charge and/or sentence in exchange for pleading 'guilty.' Plea bargaining effectively settles a case in exchange for leniency in sentencing, financial compensation, and less time/energy spent on a trial.
The concept of plea bargaining, when managed well, can be a very effective tool in the judicial and criminal court system. The client benefits immensely from a reduced charge, both in terms of potential jail time, fines or punishment and in future job prospects (a client with a trespass charge looks more favorable than one with a theft charge, which is construed far more negatively among prospective employers). Furthermore, that plea bargain can either shorten or make unnecessary an extremely lengthy and expensive trial process. In cases where plea bargaining is leveraged for information on other crimes, an often more dangerous or high-profile criminal can be prosecuted against because of the plea bargain provided by counsel or prosecutors.
In effective plea bargaining, the defendant's good record is emphasized, as well as other adequate justification for a reduction in charge or sentence. If handled well, and attorneys are smart about how far and who to plea bargain with, the judicial system can be spared substantial court costs, can spare more room in prisons for more serious offenders, and can provide the state and their clients, respectively, with fair and equitable treatment during a time of prosecution.
4. What are the issues surrounding digital age jurors?
In today's world of smartphones, Google and Twitter, the selection and conduct of jurors in a criminal case has become infinitely more difficult to do. First of all, the open information that is available instantly to people via the Internet makes it much harder to find jurors who are unbiased about case. Often, jurors find it far too easy to conduct improper research about the case they are trying - they can poison their own understanding of the case by learning facts and conjecture from outside the courtroom. The prevalence of blogs and social media has also made it far too easy for jurors to spill facts and information about the case to a greater swath of people. This interferes greatly with due process and the right of a defendant to a fair trial, and counsel's right to disseminate information as they see fit during the trial.
Another issue with jurors in the digital age comes from inside the courtroom - jurors often tweet while inside the courtroom, and having their smartphones handy enables them to potentially record audio or video from inside the courtroom. All of these things lead to tainted juries and an outright violation of due process. With a constant connection to the Internet, juror's opinions are no longer private, and can even be transmitted while on the bench. These issues are extremely serious, and must be addressed if information about trials is to be kept private and controlled.
References
Carp, R.A., Stidham, R., & Manning, K.L. (2010). Judicial Process in America (8th ed.). CQ
Press.
