Justice by Exhaustion: How Nashua’s Courts Protect Power and Punish Dissent

Part V - What Justice Should Look Like

It’s Time for Civil Discourse

After five years in Nashua’s courts, I no longer believe the system fails by accident. It fails by design through silence, delay, and loyalty to power. Yet the damage isn’t irreversible. Real reform is still possible if New Hampshire decides that fairness matters more than familiarity.

First, case assignments must be truly random and publicly auditable. When the same judge handles nearly every municipal dispute, confidence in impartiality collapses. Transparency in scheduling is the simplest fix.

Second, both judicial and attorney oversight systems must earn public trust. The state’s Judicial Conduct Committee and Attorney Discipline Office operate with little transparency, producing few public outcomes and frequent dismissals of citizen complaints. Without independent review and meaningful enforcement, accountability becomes a performance, not a safeguard.

Third, conflicts of interest should be disclosed before hearings, not uncovered afterward. Judges must acknowledge professional or social relationships with attorneys appearing before them. Nashua’s bench is too small to pretend those ties don’t exist.

Fourth, implicit-bias training, particularly around gender and self-representation, should be mandatory. When women who question authority are dismissed as “emotional” or “difficult,” it’s not about maintaining order; it’s about maintaining power. Equality in civic life requires equality in voice; women must be free to speak firmly, even caustically and vehemently, without fear that tone or etiquette will be used to silence them.

Fifth, attorney misconduct must be reported by the courts themselves. Citizen complaints are often dismissed outright, but a report from a judge carries weight. Courts must place higher value on truth and candor and stop tolerating the exaggerations, misrepresentations, and omissions routinely used by City attorneys to obscure facts and skirt the law.

Finally, courts must remember who they serve. The law belongs to the public, not to a class of insiders fluent in its loopholes. A citizen fighting for records should not have to spend years or hundreds of thousands of dollars to enforce a right guaranteed by statute.

Reform will not come from the top. It will come from citizens who refuse to accept exhaustion as justice. It is time for Nashua’s residents to demand accountability from their government. Civility does not require submission. City leaders and boards have grown openly hostile to citizens who question their decisions. They have earned not silence, but sustained, informed, vocal, sharp resistance.

Every petition filed, every appeal pursued, every public record obtained without permission chips away at the culture of quiet collusion. File complaints with the Judicial Conduct Committee and the Attorney Discipline Office. Hold judges and attorneys accountable to the same standards they impose on the public. Sitting back in silence will not preserve our rights.

I’ve learned that courts don’t need to rule against you to defeat you; they only need to make the process unbearable. But I’ve also learned that persistence exposes truth.

Transparency isn’t a nuisance; it’s the law and right now, the law is not serving the people who fight for it. Let’s speak collectively, courageously, and convincingly to call this out, remembering that our First Amendment rights protect not only polite conversation but also passionate dissent.

Civil discourse should not mean quiet compliance. At times, caustic, vehement, and sharp criticism of government officials is both justified and necessary. Citizens cannot be the only ones expected to absorb hostility and restraint while power speaks freely. Real democracy demands courage from both sides and honesty from those who serve.