Rent-a-Judge

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The private jurist program resembles arbitration, a widely used procedure that calls on a non-judge to resolve disputes typically involving labor contracts. But the California procedure has some features that arbitration does not. Examples: the judge must adhere to regular procedural and substantive aspects of law, and decisions can be appealed.

Critics of private justice programs contend that they have two great faults. One is the secrecy of the court proceedings, which disturbs many champions of press freedom. Another is that private courts are inherently discriminatory, since the swift justice they offer is available only to those who can afford to hire a judge. On the other hand, says Preble Stolz, a law professor at Berkeley, "if the cases that this system takes out of the pipeline are the ones that take several months to try normally, then that amounts to quite a bit of time saved to try many other cases in the normal court system." Because private judges can help unclog court calendars, justice can become somewhat swifter for everyone.