Judge Agnes says 12- 20 courthouses will close
Maybe your courthouse in North Adams, or Ayer, or Fall River or Gardner, or Concord or Palmer or Barnstable will be the next one to turn out its lights. As the Courthouse lights go out, I think it makes sense to post the delays, gaps, and experiences on this Blog. The mainstream media is not great at covering events outside Boston, at least the Herald and the Boston Globe are rather spotty.
THIS is not how an “independent branch of government” should be treated – nor are “checks and balances” as designed by John Adams being safeguarded.
If your Courthouse in your town is scheduled to go dark, – let us know. Lets give one another a “heads up”. Also, if there is a big hole dug in your town with great fanfare because a Court was schedule to be built, and like the Great Filene’s Basement Hole in Boston, or the Symmes Hospital rubble-pile in Arlington there the hole sits – let us know. Lowell has one of those holes for a great big courthouse, with nothing except dirt piles and blowing papers happening at that site. Where else are these dark holes?
As a citizen journalist, I happen to believe that what happens outside Boston is just as important as what happens inside Boston. I realize that may be a downright rabble raising, radical statement in THIS state.
I believe as you and I write letters to the Editors of various papers, or post to various blogs online, some of which like BlueMassGroup, Red Mass Group, and the like have a wide and influential audience – WE can make a difference. If YOU are inclined to write a letter to the Editor about your own experiences with our demoralized, shrinking judicial branch and a particular court, this link Mega letters link to most papers has links for sending “Letters to the Editor” to the 256 or so newspapers in our state.
Please note I am speaking for myself. I am not representing a particular organization at all.
But, yes, my clients are suffering. It can take weeks to have the so-called “temporary custody hearing” after children are taken (come might say “snatched”) by the Department of Children and families on the thinnest of legal standards. No wonder there is a lawsuit going on about that that filed on April 15, 2010.
Disclosure: I represent both private litigants and indigent litigants in family law cases in both the Probate and Family and Juvenile Courts as part of my private law practice and have seen both my clients, myself not just inconvenienced, but subject to risks and dangers and increased costs of many kinds as the lights go out. Deborah Sirotkin Butler
I mean this in all sincerity, but I’m trying to figure out what is really needed to have our judicial branch running at full capacity. Do we need the courthouses themselves? Is geography important? Is it possible to make more efficient use of the remaining courtrooms rather than have them empty (which I have no idea if happens now)? Does the state have the equivalent of the federal Judiciary Act which mandates the number of judges who are supposed to be on the state benches at any given time? Are judicial vacancies not being filled? What can we learn from the federal government, which runs into political confirmations and occasional threats to strip jurisdiction, but you never hear about not being adequately funded? I’d appreciate your thoughts.
Our state courthouses are a den of hackocracy. From the judges down to the clerks. Lets see them and their mommas and poppas, who got them their jobs, support the governor now. It is well known that justice has a price tag. If you can afford a lawyer, justice can have a price tag. It is called propagating the system.
http://www.boston.com/news/loc…
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p>Does anyone think this is not happening all over the state?