Government courts seek to stay in power and maintain their influence. They depend on other parts of government for their budgets and have no incentive to go against the general agenda. Once this relationship is established, it is easy for politicians to pass laws that go completely against any rational sense of justice and have the courts behind them. Courts become part of the machine, convicting us of victimless crimes to keep police busy, keeping the politicians and their sponsors happy, and providing a flow of bodies to the prisons.
Courts justify their existence to the politicians by doing their bidding, but they need the help of police to do it. Police officers are routinely called to testify against defendants, and courts try to make people think they are protected from false testimony, but police are routinely allowed to lie. When police are accused of misconduct, they are often punished with a slap on the wrist, if at all. This is partly because police protect their own, like members of any gang, but also because most prosecutors and courts will only seek accountability when the misconduct is so bad that it threatens the credibility of the racket.
Government courts often refer to themselves as part of a “justice system,” but more importantly, they are punishment systems. It’s absurd to think any part of an institution based on theft and violence could provide justice, but many people still seem to believe this. Justice requires respect for self-ownership, and courts are more concerned with upholding the law than providing justice. Because courts have a monopoly, they have to provide some approximation of justice, (holding violent criminals in isolation, occasionally ordering restitution for damages) but taken as a whole, courts provide a justification for government agents to punish people for behavior the government doesn’t like. The greatest tragedy of government courts is that when someone is wronged, if the perpetrator is caught and punished, the victim is punished again as a taxpayer, rather than compensated.
Courts are a critical part of the protection racket because they give governments cover for using force against peaceful individuals. When courts appear to go against the rest of the government program, they still serve an important purpose. They want us to think the court is there to keep the government in check. A very brief look at almost any country’s history will show that is not the case. The court can also serve to tap on the brakes of runaway statism while maintaining the credibility of the racket.
In a free society, courts would depend on the recipients of their services to fund them, rather than governments. They would be accountable to the people, rather than politicians. They might be bundled with other legitimate protection services. We could pay someone to protect our rights, rather than having a monopoly forced on us based on violating our rights. Increased freedom always results in greater efficiency, but this will be especially dramatic in the area of dispute resolution. No longer will a monopoly service provider abuse its customers with inconveniences that would be intolerable in any other industry. No longer will people with no responsibility for their decisions make important rulings. No longer will people be unaccountable for the great injustice of all the productivity stolen and wasted by false imprisonment. Dispute resolution services, unsurprisingly, will be much better when organized without a violent premise.
Chapter 4 Section IV From FREEDOM! by Adam Kokesh
)I am the author of FREEDOM!, a book endorsed (I mean banned) by the US Department of “Justice.” You can get a copy here. I’m running for Not-President in 2020 on the platform of the peaceful, orderly, and responsible dissolution of the United States federal government. You can find out more here. I am currently on my #TaxationIsTheft tour! You can find an event near you here. Whoever has the top comment on this post after 24 hours can claim a free signed copy of FREEDOM! by sending me a message with their address.