By the Justice Department.

Have you taken a really good look at the Patriot Acts lately? We are all in far more danger of being accused of criminal activity by law enforcement officers than by each other, and of being thrown into a secret prison with no access to counsel. Not looking Arab is not sufficient defense against such power.

The accused still have legal remedies in the case of frivilous lawsuits brought by fellow citizens. And, honestly, if this woman never takes Cosby to court, she has already had a damaging effect on his reputation, by public accusation and even just by innuendo. Nobody has to go to court to have that kind of effect, but the victim of such an attack would have to go to civil court to defend his reputation.

We are all innocent until proven guilty in criminal cases. For the time being. We'll see if the Patriot Acts can erode that concept as well as the notions of a prompt hearing in a court of law and the opportunity to face our accusers.

I hear a lot about the evil lawyers, and how we are threatened by our legal system, which we take very much for granted. Let's not forget how many of the people who wrote our Constitution were evil lawyers, that two of the Amendments in the Bill of Rights deal exclusively with trial by jury, and that explicit mention was made in the Declaration of Independence of the importance of access to justice by the people as a complaint against George III.

When people don't have access to legal means of seeking redress of wrongs done to them, or wrongs they believe have been done to them, they seek it through other means. The threat of being charged or sued by someone with a shaky accusation is nothing compared to the threat of being shot or beaten by someone who thinks he has a complaint but has no official way to seek recognition and be heard.

There is also no way outside of the courts to settle such complaints in a public forum with accepted methods and rules of evidence. Without the courts, and without the right to petition the courts, we also have no structure to mediate cases in which the accusations are the result of misunderstanding, mental instability, or fraud.

If there is a complaint, and there is sufficient extant evidence to support its prosecution, it should be filed and prosecuted at the discretion of the victim. As time grinds forward, evidence tends to degrade and disappear and witnesses tend to suffer the ravages of age and to die, and so even in capital crimes such prosecutions are rare in old cases. Yet justice has no time limit. Murderers and other predators among us deserve to be held up in public court for rebuke, if only so that we can demonstrate we value our laws in a timeless way and we have compassion for the predators' victims.

What you suggest is that we abandon these principles because we are afraid of them.

Again: be careful what you wish for.