Legislation By Jury

By Ira Seidman — part eleven of twelve in the series decentralize

What is the most disliked part of our criminal justice system? Though some of you might say jury duty, I think few people would say the trial by jury part. This is actually one of the most sacred parts of our legal system where the state has to make its case before ordinary citizens rather than just carrying out verdicts, or even worse, decrees (except in criminal cases where defendants opt for a judge trial). How is it that we treasure the citizen’s role in our criminal justice system so deeply and yet we largely excise those same citizens from the law-making process? I am running for mayor of New York City to institute legislation by jury.

When I think of what politicians should be, I think of a prosecutor. Though prosecutors have immense power to bring charges before a court, they do not also have the power to pass verdicts as well. Their job is only to make the best case possible with witnesses, jurors, judges, and the defense all playing their parts too. Politicians however, have effectively vertically integrated themselves into the entire law-making process — they host forums like where the Big Tech executives testified before Congress (or at least the ones who showed), they carry out their own floor debates, and then they proceed to vote on these very same bills that only they were generally allowed to propose. Doesn’t sound much like separation of powers when it’s put like that does it? In a real democracy, politicians would be the prosecutors who bring bills before the people and though representatives should have substantial voting power, so too should the public.

It would be awesome if a few people in the DA’s office could prosecute the bad guys and the rest of us could be uninvolved. Even with the separation of powers that exist in the criminal justice system innocent people get locked up all of the time, and more frequently, we lock up people who we never gave a fair shake in the first place; people who grew up and live without mental health services, in unsafe neighborhoods, with poor education, and in decrepit housing. How can we trust a law-making process to fix these shortcomings that the criminal justice system so often exacerbates when government has even less separation of powers than the courts? I know I can’t trust it and that’s why I’m running for mayor.

Throughout my campaign several people have challenged the premise that power corrupts on which I have largely built my platform. I will immediately concede that if you do not think power corrupts, decentralizing government and Ira Seidman for mayor is not the way to go. These neighbors have argued that you can find corrupt people at every level of power — from the bus drivers who slam the door in your face and petty crossing-guards who blow their whistle 24 hours a day all the way to Wall Street executives and presidents. These folks have argued that corruption comes from a different root — for one example, poorly aligned incentives that lead politicians to benefit more from serving special interests than their electorate. Or maybe corruption is simply a result of being underpaid and that a higher salary would attract better candidates like in Singapore. I concede that these are both great tools that we should use to make politicians respect the public more and would likely be a significant part of the solution, but “gerry-rigging” a centralized power structure will never lead to a fair and equitable society but rather just the illusion of one. For example, as civil servant salaries go up so too does the cost of buying influence generally, like a police officer who is harder to bribe when they stand to lose a bigger pension; a similar increase in compensation for politicians will likely result in pricing out medium sized businesses from being able to buy influence but certainly Big Tech will still pay to play. In this scenario, we’ve merely moved the goalposts so that only the super-wealthy can afford to buy corrupt politicians rather than just the plain old wealthy. While higher salaries and more accountability will attract better candidates and mitigate distractions from serving the public, it will be decentralizing power that truly realigns government with the interests of New Yorkers.

When I talk about decentralizing power I literally mean moving more of the law-making process into the hands of more people through increased use of referenda, online voting to crowdsource the best ideas, and generally doing whatever it takes to inspire participation. It is possible to decentralize too far which leads to tyranny of the masses. Worse yet like in California, we can decentralize in a way that allows for both corruption and mob rule simultaneously. My one campaign promise is to send everything on my desk to referendum to unconditionally decentralize as much power in city government as possible, all while leaving protection for minorities safe and in the hands of our representative City Council. This creates an “and condition” where bills will have to pass both the representative City Council as well as the popular part of the mayor’s office to become law, and this will be a tremendous step forward for curbing corruption. Corruption is the issue of our time and unfortunately I am the only candidate in this race treating it that way. If you have another take on how to attack corruption, for the love of God please say something. Say anything you think might work to anyone you think might listen, but say it now — the juries and legislation of the future await. In the meantime, I ask for your consideration to advocate this cause as you finalize your picks for mayor between now and June 22nd. You’ll have to write me in but it’s better than waiting one more election cycle to speak out against corruption.