The National Center for State Courts, a non-profit dedicated to “Helping Courts Anticipate Change and Better Serve the Public” has released a comic book that aimed at educating children on how the courts work by ripping a case right out of the headlines: piracy! Sadly, the tale is so fantastical – most cases end up in Civil court, not State, and are rarely tried with a public defender – that it loses most of its educational value. As BBG points out:

The strip also confuses federal with magistrate courts and presents a courtroom scenario that would never occur in real life.

It’s the Pascal’s Wager of antipiracy arguments: who cares about the truth when you might burn in hell? I submit that the war is lost when you’re reduced to publishing Chick Tracts.

I also submit that the NCSC didn’t know what it was doing when it released this comic and has ultimately failed on a pedagogical and a mission level, failing to prepare students to understand the courts and failing to “anticipate change” in getting their message out. But dig the pathos, man!