Made2Measure

How should courts and partner justice institutions respond to the existential crises facing our society today? Peter F. Drucker, the dean of this country’s management philosophers, would give us this advice:  The important thing is to identify  the future that has already happened. Every hundred years or so, we experience a sharp transformation. We come to an inflection point and must cross a divide, writes Peter Drucker in  The New Realities , originally published in 1989.  “Within a few short decades, society rearranges itself – its worldview, its basic values, its social and political structure, its arts, its key institutions. Fifty years later, there is a new world. And the people born then cannot even imagine the world in which their grandparents lived and into which their own parents were born.” We are today at such a transformation: at the  confluence of existential crises that reinforce each other  – the coronavirus pandemic, ec...

In a yet-to-be-published article , my colleagues Sahira Abdool, Tricia Cameron-Anglin, and Jeffrey Newman and I wrote that  the twin crises of systemic racial injustice and the Covid-19 pandemic have caused unprecedented social and economic upheaval – including economic contraction and violent street protests -- that pose existential threats to society. The article is an urgent call to action for judicial leaders, both judges and court administrators, not only to continue to provide critical justice services but also to become active participants  in a  whole-of-society approach (WOSA)  to combat racial injustice and the pandemic. For example, we urge court leaders to close   the gap between the law on the books and the law in practice by asking tough questions about differences between what we would like to see happen and what actually is happening in the justice system, such as the fact that   pretrial custody account for roughly one-third of ...