Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Today is another sunny day. Everyone is going to have to begin watering their plants, and drought again looms, but most things loom right now. I am deeply touched that Supreme Court Justice Breyer is retiring, and giving the court a chance to balance more equitably. I presume the right wing will create as much pain and suffering as possible during the process, if there even is a process. Merritt Garland never got his chance. But right now, with everything unknown, many of us like to envision a Black woman as the nominee as the President promised. Let us have our few moments of hope. Why is it so hard to have a jury of our peers? Class and priviledge play a role, as only those who can afford to take eight dollars a day for jury duty and have childcare or are not caretaking can manage this civic duty. The truth is, our judges are overwhelmingly white and male and upper class. They judge people to whom they have no affinity or understanding. I'm reading a terrific book, "Noise", by the Nobel prize winner in Economics, Paul Kahneman. He and two other economists have done extensive studies that prove there is no consistency or fairness in judges' sentences, and judgements of exactly the same crime can have widely varying sentences. Judges are not fair and impartial, but then I think we all knew that. The research gives us insight into how irrational and biased humans are, even when they feel confident they are. So the Supreme Court is just as emotional and biased as the rest of our citizens. Even factors like climate temperature, tone of voice and appearance play a much bigger role than judges think. Random AI does a better job of sentencing but not by much. Simply put, the courts do a terrible job of impartiality. This illuminates why debates in Congress and among our citizens become so heated and blaming. As my Buddhist teacher says, we are not so evolved as we wish we were. Human fraility and failure is evident everywhere. Let's hope for the best with his nominee process but I think we'll all be unsurprised if it does not turn out to be a pretty picture.