CBA Record January-February 2025

creating a lively atmosphere. Plato compared the behavior in courts to a theater audience, hooting and clapping. (Like watch ing The People’s Court , except with more shouting and no com mercial breaks.) Post-Trial Although trials supported the legal rights of litigants, once the gavel came down, there was no means to enforce the award. If the losing party refused to pay, another trial would be held to exam ine the original case and obtain the legal right to forcibly collect payment. This secondary trial, called ephesis , was the ancient ver sion, though much narrower, of an appeal. If the plaintiff won the ephesis , he and his supporters had to handle the collection effort themselves. Still, many plaintiffs got stiffed. (A tradition that remains to this day.) An Engaged Citizenry Most remarkable was the Ancient Greek legal system’s emphasis on ordinary citizen participation in all aspects of legal proceed ings. This was deliberate. “In Athenian eyes, expertise in the law was inherently suspicious; amateurism, the mark of democratic control, was for them the system’s chief virtue.” www.stoa.org/ demos/intro_legal_system.pdf at 24. Indeed, “[A]t any one time,

nearly a sixth of the citizens were engaged in public activity of one kind or another.” Matthew A. Pauley, Athens, Rome and England: America’s Constitutional Heritage, Intercollegiate Studies Institute 2014, at 43. The success of the Athenian courts informs us of the crucial engagement and responsibility required to preserve democracy, and, with it, the promise of freedom and justice. History informs us of what happens when civic commitment is forsaken—democracies falter, their spirit wanes, and the legiti macy of the courts deteriorates with each injustice. For More Information For additional source materials and information on classical Athenian democracy, visit https://generales.uprrp.edu/humani dades/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2018/09/AthenianDemoc racy.ABriefOverview.pdf.

Justice Michael B. Hyman is Editor-in-Chief of the CBA Record and a former CBA president. He sits on the Illinois Appellate Court, First District. Bailey Wieland, a junior at the University of Chicago, assisted in the preparation of this article.

Volunteer Opportunity The Virtual Legal Clinic of the Illinois Coalition Against Domestic Violence (ICADV) provides one-time virtual pro bono consultations between attorneys and survivors, relating to family law, orders of protection, immigration, landlord/tenant, employment, etc. There is no attorney/client representation beyond the one-time consultation. The survivors are referred by ICADV’s member organizations outside of Cook County (where there are much fewer legal aid resources), but the pro bono attorneys may be located anywhere in the state.

For more information or to volunteer: https://www.ilcadv.org/virtual-legal-clinic

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