Quote of the week

“There is no better measure of the institutional impropriety of drug courts than their own proponents’ expressed ideas about their purpose. The chief district attorney assigned to the Denver Drug Court put it as bluntly as anyone by explaining that the purpose of drug court is ‘the cost effective curtailment of drug abuse.’ I respectfully submit that no court’s ‘purpose' should be to curtail a perceived social problem. Our function is to ensure that the rule of law is justly enforced. The job of curtailing a particular crime, or of achieving any other particular social end, is a legislative and executive function, not a judicial one. Only the legislative and executive branches have the imprimatur of public consensus. Judges, no matter the strength nor even the accuracy of our views about policy, have no right to make policy. Yet drug courts are the living embodiment of judge-created policy.

-Judge Morris B Hoffman, U.S. District Court