Connecticut Law Tribune

August 11, 2003

SECTION: NEWS; Vol. 29; No. 32; Pg. 23

LENGTH: 583 words

HEADLINE: Terrified Of This Gamble; Juries Should Be The Future
T

BYLINE: By Norm Pattis
Law Tribune Contributing Writer

BODY:
Talk about fiddling while Rome burns. - A friend and I were at lunch the other
day. He was describing to me how the Terrorism Futures Market would work. I am
notoriously gullible and am forever the butt of hoaxes. I played along and then
told him to knock it off.

"Look, David. You got me. Hook, line and sinker. I believe you, OK?" I said.
Much though I enjoy, and now write, fiction of questionable value, enough was
enough.

"No, I am serious," he said. "It's been in The New York Times."

Oh, yeah, the former gold standard of the news. All the fiction that's fit to
print?

Other sources were promised. We dropped the topic and enjoyed our lunch.

An hour or so later, I sat before a computer terminal transfixed by the crazy
logic of it all. It was capitalism gone mad. A proposal of cunning genius. Let
savvy investors assess risk and pledge their funds on the basis of their
assessments. What our intelligence agencies can't do, the market can.

The proposal was dizzying. Imagine the ethics problems.

Question: What do you call insider trading in such a market?

Answer: A smart terrorist.

I know I am a rube about finance and, in fact, most things quantitative. I am
scarcely able to log on to my computer without a glitch. Transferring files is a
big deal. I generally pay as I go and understand little of loans, finance and
the concept of leveraging. Friends tell me I pay far too much in taxes as a
result of my lack of sophistication.

But a futures market for terrorism?

God, or chaos, or lingering self-respect--whatever it is that holds the world
together, I implore you--save me from ever being tempted to hedge my financial
future by betting on terror.

Isn't there anything better to do on Capitol Hill?

Here's a suggestion for congressmen and senators. Try keeping the courts open.

In case you missed it, the federal courts are going dark for the remainder of
August and possibly September. The chief federal judge in Connecticut, Robert N.
Chatigny, sent an email to his colleagues last week. All noncritical civil
trials are suspended for August and September, he said.

Why? No money to pay jurors. The federal coffers are dry.

Criminal cases and non-jury civil matters are still presumably on course. And I
am aware of one garden-variety civil case that was not postponed. But for the
next two months there will be no civil juries in the Connecticut federal courts.

The federal judiciary was mighty keen and awfully determined this year to win
salary increases for their lifetime employment. Were the bean counters too
preoccupied with calculating cost-of-living adjustments to keep their eye on the
care and feeding of jurors, the most important people in the courtroom?

I am a cynic, I know it. But here we are losing a solider or so a day in Iraq.
The cost of the war is still not clear. Our reasons for waging this war are
still unfocused and unstated. Weapons of mass destruction? OK. Where's Waldo?
The nuclear threat? Oops, no yellow cake after all. Well, roll out the rhetoric
and just call it a war against evil. Saddam is gone, and we're paying a premium
for the bones of his two sons--$30 million for the man who dropped the dime on
the now dead tyrannical progeny.

How about a few dollars for jurors and the civil justice system? Is that too
much to ask? I thought we were fighting terror to maintain our way of life. Who
would have gambled on juries as the first thing to be disbanded in the new
authoritarian futures market? ****