* This is the second reject of the three columns that I wrote to submit to the Washington Post be a pundit contest. I can't show the one that I submitted right now. I hope that I get into the top ten. But the essay below is of a subject that is near and dear to me - the judicial system. Does the Supreme Court need expanding? Duh! But this is an early draft and when I decided to submit the one that I did, I never did finish the others. But going back and reading it, I think it's worth posting.
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The average citizen just doesn‘t understand the law. A lot of lawyers don‘t understand the law. The everyday education system certainly doesn‘t teach it. We are just told to obey it. And most of us do, as best we can. But what are we obeying?

When thinking about the law in the U.S., just remember, “5 is the magic number.” It only takes 5 people’s opinions to interpret the law for everyone. Five is a majority of the 9 Supreme Court justices - what it takes to issue an order in the Supreme Court. (except for granting “cert,” or deciding to actually hear a case, which takes only 4).

In my opinion, that’s not enough. Maybe it was enough way back when the country was young. But now we have 300 million people from around the world. The Supreme Court needs to have additional members - probably at least 6, to come close to representing the 21st century U.S., but that probably won’t happen.

In reality, the U.S. needs a lot more judges at all levels of the judicial branch. It is ridiculous not only the lag time between filing and disposition of each level of court, but so are the costs and truncated rules of evidence, especially when you are suing a governmental agency. And isn’t it better to try and solve all of our disputes with a fair, non-violent system? That's civilization, isn't it?

Over the course of a year, thousands of cases that had filed for review by the top court get rejected simply by not getting 4 people to agree to hear the case. That means the ruling below stands. Most of the time it’s a U.S. Appellate Court.

Appellate Courts have three judge panels that decide cases usually. But the entire courts themselves can have more than a dozen members. On occasion the entire court votes on a case. And there are a lot of combinations and permutations of judges on these courts. Which particular mix is assigned to your case makes a huge difference in the ruling. And if the Supreme Court won’t review it, it stands.

Our system of justice isn’t that much different than other systems of justice around the world. It is based on sound and fair principles. But it is the degree to which those principles are practiced which determine whether or not the system translates into reality. There is a lot of humanity in that. People need to understand that the law is not black and white at all. It is much more ad hoc than it is black and white. And human nature is what makes that true.