TO-WIT: HOW SPECIAL
by S. Sponte, Esq.
If there’s anything I’ve learned in my many years of practice it is that when it comes to keeping up with societal changes the law moves with the speed and facility of a glacier towed with dental floss. The protracted application of the law’s equal protection to African-Americans, women and gays readily jumps to mind as does its as yet refusal to do the same for the clinically silly.
Thus it is with more than a modicum of pleasure and approval that I note the emergence of the so-called specialized courts to deal with certain particularly complex and intransigent societal issues for which employment of traditional legal solutions have proved largely ineffectual. In my own little backwater county, for instance, there is now a nascent interest in the implementation of both a drug court and a veteran’s courts to provide non-traditional resolutions for these highly complicated problems.
As much as I applaud the progressive attitudes embodied in such endeavors, I don’t think the movement has gone nearly far enough. There are so many other alternative and vicissitudinous manners of living worthy of the law’s compassion that I think we have just scratched the surface.
I have identified two other examples of divergent living which would undoubtedly benefit from the creation of their own specialized courts, and I present them here forthwith in the hope that someday all creatures, great and small, may enjoy the full and free-flowing majesty of the law.
FURRY COURT – Oh those furries, huh? Who can account for a human’s desire to dress and act exactly as a cat or dog or, as in one case of which I have knowledge, a humpback whale? When such folks have been leash-led into court for humping a stranger’s leg on a downtown street or for spewing hairballs onto unsuspecting fellow movie going patrons, what is a judge to do? Sending, for instance, pseudo-felines to jail fails to appropriately honor a lawful lifestyle choice, would surely incur the wrath of the ASPCA and would impose upon an already overburdened penal system the expense and bother of purchasing cat litter in bulk. Instead Furry Court might impose a thirty day yard arrest, taking the miscreant off the street for a term and further assuring that the appurtenant residence might for a while be free of certain kinds of vermin.
FAT COURT – The avoirdupois challenged also present the courts with a weighty problem. Consider the recent case of the guy and a half trucked into court for throwing a fit because he missed the two o’clock Chinese luncheon buffet cutoff time when he got winded in the parking lot.
Putting a guy like that in jail makes no sense; no cell could hold him. A referral to appropriate organizations for weight and temper management seems to be just the ticket, but if that fails a dietary injunction of two thousand calories a day coupled with the use of a monitoring gullet collar could always be imposed. Unfortunately recidivism waddles rampant in such matters but one can always hope.
Those are just two examples for which a specialized court may prove useful but there are many others. Drunk Court, Hussy Court, Stupid Court and Obnoxious As Hell Court loom as possibilities. As always when society lumbers towards compassion, progress will be slow and laborious. I will be long retired before such things come to pass, and its just as well. I’d hate to still be around when Smart Ass Court convenes.
©2016, S. Sponte, Esq.