Americans Have Less Access to Justice than Botswanans … And Are More Abused By Police than Kazakhstanis
Posted on November 28, 2012 by WashingtonsBlog
U.S. Scores Towards the Bottom of All North American and Western European Nations
Justice is a key value for Americans.
After all, one of our key mottoes is:
“Liberty and justice for all”.
But the World Justice Project – a bipartisan, independent group with honorary chairs including Supreme Court Justices Kennedy, Breyer, Ginsberg and O’Connor – just released a report saying that Americans have less access to justice than most wealthy countries … and many developing nations.
The group’s “World Justice Index” ranks countries’ faithfulness to the rule of law based upon 9 factors (we’re paraphrasing so that they’re easier to understand):
1. Whether there are checks and balances on the power of government officials
2. Absence of corruption
3. Order and security
4. Due process, freedom of speech and other fundamental rights,
5. Transparency of government operation
6. Due process in regulatory enforcement
7. Access to civil justice
8. Access to criminal justice
9. Availability of informal dispute resolution systems
Among high-income countries, the U.S. ranked near the bottom in access to civil justice … behind Estonia, United Arab Emirates, the Czech Republic and other countries:
Indeed, the report ranks developing countries such as Botswana and the former Soviet nation of Georgia as having more access to the civil justice system than the U.S.
Americans have experienced more unfair physical abuse by police than in Kazahkstan, Russia, Chile, the Czech Republic, Romania and other countries.
When compared to other countries in North America and Western Europe, the U.S. ranked third to last in checks and balances on the power of government officials and absence of corruption, and second to last in protection of due process, freedom of speech and other fundamental rights, access to civil justice, and access to criminal justice: