Legal Stupidity

Governments provide a professional judiciary to apply laws unjustly. There was a time when people were judged by trials of combat, fire and water.1 These were all based on a belief that trials were moral confrontations. If a person was judged favorably, it was because he was right relative to another individual or neutral nature.a Those who deride such judicial mechanisms might take a good look at our modern jousting list—the court of law—where hired wits do battle2 to determine the morality (guilt or innocence) of the person or system on trial.