Justice Delayed

Weekend Update

We’ve all heard the phrase “Justice delayed is Justice Denied.” When I tried to find the source of this phrase, I found that there is no agreement about who actually coined it, although there is a lot of information about various people who have expressed this sentiment. In his Letter from the Birmingham Jaill, Martin Luther King wrote “justice too long delayed is justice denied.” In a 1970 address to the American Bar Association, Chief Justice Warren Burger said:

“A sense of confidence in the courts is essential to maintain the fabric of ordered liberty for a free people and three things could destroy that confidence and do incalculable damage to society: that people come to believe that inefficiency and delay will drain even a just judgment of its value; that people who have long been exploited in the smaller transactions of daily life come to believe that courts cannot vindicate their legal rights from fraud and over-reaching; that people come to believe the law – in the larger sense – cannot fulfill its primary function to protect them and their families in their homes, at their work, and on the public streets.”

As the entire politicosphere has been absorbed by the sleazy actions of Jeffrey Epstein and his pals, I thought it was worth exploring exactly how long this case has been kicking around the court system. The website “Just Security” did a deep dive into this in the middle of August of this year, and I’m going to summarize the timeline of events, including what has happened since the middle of August. Here’s the link if you want to read more.

NOTE: If you’re wondering why the Biden administration did not pursue this matter between 2021 and 2024, it’s important to recognize that the Maxwell trial and appeals occupied most of this time period. It is standard DOJ practice not to publicize materials that would have an impact on ongoing investigations, including the appeals process. I poked around this topic for a while, and found that it’s complicated (imagine that!). I’ll let you all follow through on this because I have, like, other stuff to do today.