Norway's gods of guilt

In one of his recent novels, thriller writer Michael Connelly talks about the Gods of Guilt in the U.S. judicial system. For his lead character, lawyer Mickey Haller, these are the 12 members of the jury who assume the role of the Almighty and decide on the innocence or guilt of the accused. In the Czech judicial system, the gods of guilt are the judges, many of whom used to operate under the devil's rule book but made a fluid transition after Nov. 1989 to a new gospel. A few of them got together in recent days and chose a new head of the Supreme Court. In Norway, the gods of guilt currently under scrutiny by the Czech public are the child-services officials who had the divine power to take two Czech boys away from their mother, even though no crime was proven. Czechs are understandably upset. Perhaps something good will come of this if Czechs use the incident to take a closer look at their own gods of guilt.