Behind the rhetoric of «transparency» and «inclusion,» CPS under the administrators appointed by Rahm Emanuel's Board of Education are going out of their way
to deny the
public access to key
information and
to make sure that reporters — especially those with cameras and video cameras — are
denied access to the growing mass movement across the city that is demanding no cuts this school year.
Firstly, the Supreme Court in Mentuck held that once
information has entered the
public domain of the courtroom,
access to disseminate this
information should be
denied only where its publication would present a real and substantial risk
to the proper administration of justice (e.g. a risk
to the accused's section 11 (d) Charter right
to a fair trial), and where the salutary effects of
denying access outweigh the deleterious effects.
Both solutions will occur because the power of the news media and of the internet, interacting, will quickly make widely known these types of
information, the cumulative effect of which will force governments and the courts
to act: (1) the situations of the thousands of people whose lives have been ruined because they could not obtain the help of a lawyer; (2) the statistics as
to the increasing percentages of litigants who are unrepresented and clogging the courts, causing judges
to provide more
public warnings; (3) the large fees that some lawyers charge; (4) increasing numbers of people being
denied Legal Aid and court - appointed lawyers; (5) the many years that law societies have been unsuccessful in coping with this problem which continues
to grow worse; (6) people prosecuted for «the unauthorized practice of law» because they tried
to help others desperately in need of a lawyer whom they couldn't afford
to hire; (7) that there is no truly effective advertising creating competition among law firms that could cause them
to lower their fees; (8) that law societies are too comfortably protected by their monopoly over the provision of legal services, which is why they might block the expansion of the paralegal profession, and haven't effectively innovated with electronic technology and new infrastructure so as
to be able
to solve this problem; (9) that when members of the
public access the law society website they don't see any reference
to the problem that can assure them that something effective is being done and, (10) in order for the rule of law, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the whole of Canada's constitution be able
to operate effectively and command sufficient respect, the majority of the population must be able
to obtain a lawyer at reasonable cost.