Having recently watched The Patent Scam, I wish more companies would follow suit here and exit EDOT, maybe then people would wake up and demand that these corrupt judges are removed from the bench!

edit: correction made per child comment.

Federal judges are appointed by the President and serve for life. There are possibly corruption problems in the Eastern district of Texas, but the root problems are the patent laws themselves, and its the elected members of congress who can fix that.

I'm curious about another root problem: why are corporate civil cases heard by a jury in the first place? Never mind that juries are bound to be influenced when billions of dollars are at stake[1], how about the fact that these cases are both technically and legally complex?

I'm not an expert in this stuff but as far as I can tell the USA is unique in allowing juries to hear this sort of trial, even among countries with a right to jury in a criminal trial.

1. E.g. the Samsung skating rink in front of the Marshall Texas courthouse

It's the seventh amendment to the constitution.

Amendment 7 - Rights in Civil Cases In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States than according to the rules of the common law.

(wearing my project management hat)

Fix the easy problems first, then fix the hard ones.

The only people who can vote federal judges off the bench are 67 senators.

Federal judges are nominated by the President and confirmed (majority) by the Senate. Technically judges serve during Good Behavior, Article III, but that's been interpreted as lifetime. Removal is by impeachment in the House (majority) followed by conviction (two thirds) in the Senate.

Federal judges aren't the sort that get voted out. They're appointed for life.

The degree and direction of corruption within a judge bear a striking resemblance to the president who appoints them.

Leaving the political opinions aside (especially since I don't vote in the USA), I believe that USA has one strong/clean/independent Justice system. There is transparency. I don't believe that in many other modern/western countries there is so much attention to the top judges.

I understand that people don't like either "Barack", or "Donald", and others before them, especially calling them by their first name as if they are friends or cousins. But just for fun, let's see if anyone from Belgium, UK, Greece, Spain, etc can name 5 top judges. I, for one, cannot :)

Sidenote: I'm not a US citizen, nor live in the USA.

If the chief executive of a water company or an electricity company became a household name, my first assumption would be that there was some kind of scandal. Infrastructure is supposed to be boring.

Britain has a supreme court, but I couldn't name any of the judges. They don't tend to make particularly controversial decisions, nor are they divided along partisan lines. I vaguely recall The Daily Mail describing some high court judges as "enemies of the people" due to some sort of Brexit-related shenanigans, but it all blew over within a couple of days; the overwhelming consensus was that the headline was crass and slanderous. Other than that, I don't recall the last time the judiciary were particularly newsworthy.

While this is true, also remember how powerful the US supreme court is. Due to a combination of common law (binding precedent) and an old, difficult to change, ambiguous constitution, the US Supreme Court is arguably even more powerful than the president.

> While this is true, also remember how powerful the US supreme court is. Due to a combination of common law (binding precedent) and an old, difficult to change, ambiguous constitution, the US Supreme Court is arguably even more powerful than the president.

To me, this is an amazing aspect of the American justice system. Nine individuals, chosen over a broad range of years, are the last bastion of hope in keeping the current politics du jour from running amok. Nine individuals who were most likely all not chosen by the same person, have multitudinous alignments and bring their various perspectives to the table. When they come together in agreement, it is undoubtedly just given their diversty over the decades.

Or at least in theory.

There are interesting parallels there to the House of Lords in the UK, which more often than not holds the government to account better than the Commons. It does seem that sometimes pure democracy needs tempering.

(Curiously, the House of Lords was the top court in the UK before the Supreme Court was created recently)

SCOTUS is quite restrained, meaning that a lot of the power is in the lower courts.

> But just for fun, let's see if anyone from Belgium, UK, Greece, Spain, etc can name 5 top judges. I, for one, cannot :)

I wonder how many people can name Norman Borlaug and what he did vs Adolf Hitler and what he did.

Well... They CAN be voted out... Its a vote that's not regularly held, you have to be personally nominated for being voted out, and you need a 2/3 majority of the Senate to vote against you...

Are people really ashamed of their code? How are they even able to assess the quality of their code especially when they are just getting started? It feels sort of a Catch-22. Also, how does making private repos free help here?

I think a more encouraging move would be to have people with all experiences share as much of their progress as possible so that people who are getting started can find inspiration and learn to overcome their "imposter" feelings.

I couldn't agree more.