A discretionary state power stripped a poor community of appellate remedy

Evidence

The effect of this exercise of the King’s Bench power was to deny CRCQL any chance at an appeal. … Prior to making its final decision, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court held a hearing on the DEP regulations and the Thermal Pure permit. CRCQL was invited to attend the hearing and chartered a bus to Harrisburg. The group arrived with high hopes because, as Zulene Mayfield puts it, they believed that “the law is the law and whatever the law says is right. Everybody has to adhere to the law.” Sadly, for Mayfield and CRCQL, the community activists were about to confront yet another tangible experience of institutional racism. Mayfield recalls the look of “contempt” in the eyes of the justices as the group entered the courtroom. “I can’t say it was a look of hate,” she explains, but she “knew before we sat down in that court what the outcome was going to be.” — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 257

Categorization

• CANDY: The image of residents reading ‘contempt’ in the justices’ eyes before a word is spoken is a compact, tellable illustration of perceived institutional racism in courts.
• XREF: connects to: Fixed legal rules beat discretionary state power even when imperfect — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 135; Mystified arbitrary power becomes immune to legal restraint — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 628; Ad hoc adjudication breaks litigant participation and undermines its legitimacy — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 3312 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Fixed legal rules beat discretionary state power even when imperfect #contradicts (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 135
• Ad hoc adjudication breaks litigant participation and undermines its legitimacy #expands (0.80) — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process, 3312
• Mystified arbitrary power becomes immune to legal restraint #expands (0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 628
• A swarm of subsidiary authorities fragments judicial power to punish #expands (0.75) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 60
• The Supreme Court’s docket has shrunk dramatically while its discretionary power grew #expands (0.72) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 369