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Show Gulag a startling eye-opener involved in building important Soviet projects, made simpler by the cheap work! ), or merely to keep the populace on its toes. Those wanting a powerful reading experience should read Gulag. It is filled with passages that almost literally make one's hair stand on end- from fear and anger. It's also an excellent ex-cellent study on a judicial system on the other end of the spectrum from where we sit. Reading Gulag has been a great experience for me, but it has also made me easy game for my lawyer friend. Hope he doesn't find out. I'm not a great fan of the American judicial system, much to the amusement of a lawyer I know well. We don't see each other often, but when we do, a vigorous discussion almost always results. There won't be much emotion in my arguments with him from now on, not hM?i WARNICK might have a prosecutor who likes to throw the book at even the most minor of offenders. Justice is more geographical than universal. (Boy, could I tell you stories about that.) The judicial system has come to the point where I now feel the "scales" of justice now unduly favor the accused, at the expense of the offended (individual (in-dividual or society). But thank God I don't live in the USSR and have to endure their wretched wret-ched judicial system. Solzhenitsyn tells us that "plea bargaining" doesn't mean six months or parole, but rather 10 or five years. (Yes, for those same offenses we would be debating for six months or parole in the U.S.!) The Gulag Archipelago is the chronicle of a judicial mechanism run rampant. It was one not only not held in check by other branches of government, govern-ment, but was spurred on in its abuse by those other branches. The judicial system was (we must use was for the author's events covered 1918-1956) a means for eliminating personal enemies, gaining great amounts of personal wealth and even "an outlet for fulfilling sexual lusts. (It was not unusual, if a judicial officer was attracted to a man's wife, to trump up charges against her husbund and ship him off to a work camp for 10 years.) Solzhenitsyn often terms the Soviet judiciary a "machine," one that needed to gobble up a certain quota of its citizens to fill the work camps (often after I've read Aleksandr Solzhenit-, Solzhenit-, syn's The Gulag Archipelago. First, what's wrong with the American system? (I've got a chance now to speak without my lawyer friend's rebuttal, anil I can't pass it ; up!) It's far too cumbersome, not anymore the swift execution of justice mandated. The courts are overloaded, thanks primarily to an ever-growing number of non-criminal cases heard. (Basically, everyone's suing everyone these days.) It unduly penalizes the minority and poor with harsher sentences than their more well-to-do friends, who can afford the best legal counsel. (Would you like to see figures on administration of the death penalty, for instance?) Is this equality? Justice is applied inconsistently. While the Iron County Attorney might "plea, bargain" on a majority of his cases, once you cross county lines, you |