Enough to drive anyone crazy
Child custody determinations can mean as much if not more to the parties involved as criminal proceedings, and yet they’re made not by a jury but by a single judge, who may or may not be “Honorable.” This mere man — no better on average than other men — sits in judgment over a broken family and by his decree parses out the parents’ rights to their children — rights which are natural and fundamental and more real than the fictional authority which an unthinking and complacent populace concedes to the government and its functionaries. In some counties, it’s commonly known, at least among attorneys, that child custody decisions in contested divorces have as much or more to do with who knows who as they do with the best interests of the children. With the stakes (including the financial stakes) so high and the results so amenable to influence and manipulation, is it any wonder that corruption, either the (more…)
