INJUSTICE FOR ALL

The short of it is that Ms. Strick would like to scuttle the entire judicial system as it now stands. ""Bipolar attitudes infect our culture,"" she complains, and ""fight ethics"" dominate the courtroom. The heart of the problem is also the heart of Anglo-American jurisprudence: the adversary system. Strick wants it abolished and replaced by a Citizen's Department of Justice which would function rather like a council of wisemen. Looking to China and Japan (where lawyers are fewer), ""harmony"" and social conciliation would be the goal. Needless to say, Strick is not an attorney and her own courtroom experience as witness, defendant, plaintiff, and juror seems to be her sole qualification for this utopian (or is it dystopian?) Modest Proposal. The legal fraternity will not be the only ones to blanch at the prospect of chucking the inviolability of lawyer-client confidences or doing away with the ""finicky formalism"" of evidentiary procedures. Most reformers--and this is an area where everyone from William Kunstler to the warden of Leavenworth is a reformer--would settle for the amelioration of specific abuses: congested court calendars, plea bargaining, inequities in bail and sentencing. Strick's jejune radicalism won't help.