| If no major cases could go to trial because the information about the case was plastered all over the internet in such a way as to be unavoidable it would be a serious blow to the criminal justice system. If it became impossible to actually find your twelve impartial “angry men” for important and high profile cases then something would have to be done. Now I’ll admit that I do not know exactly how this might be accomplished—in terms of actually getting all this critical information distributed in such a ubiquitous way online—but it seems to me that this might be one of our main chances to actually change the system. After all, if you make a system, including the justice system, unworkable it will have to change somehow.
There are a ton of problems with this idea going all the way up to the issue of what the goals of such a movement would be. Would we demand changes to the problem of how easy it has become to subpoena personal information off the internet that a person did not realize was still extant, or any of the other issues we have discussed term? There is also the clear fear that instead of change, the organizers of a movement such as this will only get themselves in trouble and things will continue apace. My goal here was to try and start a discussion about ways that we can affect real change from our position as young law students and firebrands. The first idea that I came up with and wanted to put forward to this group was to use the internet age and an age that is beyond forgetting to reduce the efficacy and power, in whatever way, of the government and legal system that is slowly using those same tools to curtail and erode our rights, freedoms, and legal protections. |