A question may be asked: what can the Bill of Rights mean in a socialist country where the judiciary is not independent, all lawyers are state employees, and the means of production, including the means of cultural production such as the media, are all directly or indirectly owned by the government? -- Yoshie
^^^^ CB: Are you saying that the judiciary is independent of the state in the U.S./Bill of Rights system, where it is one of the branches of the state power ? Judges are paid by the state. The force of court orders is in police and military backing. Yet, we trust the judges to be impartial between the state and criminal defendants, and to enforce the Bill of Rights. Why not under a socialist judiciary ? Also, public defenders and house counsels under the U.S./Bill of Rights system are paid by the state, and this is not considered a conflict of interest. Socialist state employed criminal defense lawyers might be equally trusted to adovocate vigorously for their clients. The rationale of the press/media from the bourgeois state seems ultimately undermined in the U.S./Bill of Rights system since the basic means of cultural production are owned by the ruling class. Since the purpose of independence of media from the state is independence from the ruling class, U.S. press freedom seems largely moot. So, it seems the Bill of Rights in a socialist system could mean at least as much as it means in the U.S. system.
