Our nation's judicial system has its share of problems and injustices, but an independent judiciary remains one of the crowning achievements of our relatively free society. Authoritarian countries have judicial systems, but citizens in those benighted places lack due process because they are playing a game with house rules. And the house always wins.
Yet the federal government and states operate a series of quasi-judicial systems that function like a rigged card game. The stakes are high, but the player doesn't have a chance. I'm referring to the way that powerful state and federal regulatory agencies enforce Byzantine codes through an administrative process that has many trappings of the traditional court system.
