Yes. Or just a few hundred years ago when courts were for nobility and the king’s men acted with impunity against commoners like you and me.
The point is that the courts and police, although vilified in this day and age, actually by their very nature do help the poor and destitute. Just maybe not as well as they could, ideally.
I’d go as far as say that for the lower class, the difference the modern court system makes is negligible. Whether you want justice or mercy, you better bring cash.
There was no old court system. The old system was life was harsh and brutal and there were entire classes above you that could treat you as literal property to be disposed of as they pleased without repercussion.
It's discriminatory purely as a function of money. The more money you have, the "more equal" you are and the more rights you can exert. It also means the less subject you are to criminal laws, as you can mount a powerful defense as opposed to someone who makes 20k/yr in the slums who is statistically likely to be black or hispanic.
But our society has spoken, that it's ok for poor people to get sent away and their lives destroyed as a primary function of money.
Very telling that you're being downvoted. So many people seem to have a very biased attitude against our foundational institutions, which is unfortunate because our institutions do a good job of protecting us and and safeguarding justice and order. By "good" I mean that most of the time these institutions do protect the common people.
I think much of this bias emerges for two reasons. First, the news we hear is usually bad news. One can only hear so much bad news before developing negative bias. In a large nation like the USA with so many people, abuses of power are almost guaranteed to happen once in a while. It's critical that a free press report on these incidents to keep institutions honest, but an unfortunate side effect of this is negative bias against those same institutions that so often work well and protect us.
The second reason is that institutions do have power over us, and look large in our lives. In comparison to them, we are very small. This can be disconcerting and uncomfortable for some.
I find it odd that you’re responding (multiple times, copied and pasted) about an article documenting a _pattern_ of injustice and corruption, bemoaning anti-government bias. How is this relevant at all? If you’re arguing the pattern doesn’t actually exist, citations are needed. Otherwise I think this is pretty clear reporting that the courts are not “working well”.
I didn’t downvote them, but if I had it wouldn’t be for the reason you’re describing, it would be because their attitude is defeatist. It’s like saying “at least there is a minimum wage” in response to “the minimum wage is too low.”
The point is that the courts and police, although vilified in this day and age, actually by their very nature do help the poor and destitute. Just maybe not as well as they could, ideally.