The biggest shortcoming of the US: The laws and judgements handed down vary GREATLY from state to state and jury from jury, and therefore in my opinion this takes away any feeling of 'rule of law'. Don't agree yet? Let me give you an example for the rule of law in America today: Morton Berger, a high school teacher gets 200 years for the possession of 20 lewd images of children. This happens in Arizona, where the 200 years is exactly the MINIMUM MANDATORY sentence for this crime of possessing 20 lewd images (10 years per count, each image a different count, to be served consecutively). Berger took this to the Sumpreme Court, which threw his case out without even hearing it. Why? because in America you dont discuss such taboo subjects, or else you will look bad. Not to mention that in a state like Hawaii this would not even result in his incarceration AT ALL, and even in neighboring states he would have gotten off with a suspended or a 1-2 year sentence. The federal law dictates 5 years maximum. Yet against all this, his quasi-life term was not ruled unconstitutional or cruel by any higher court.

Talking of which, let's now skip to 2013, when Terry Peters, the husband of the Bush era Transportation Secretary was sentenced to 14 years for raping a 7-year old girl. Arizona also, even the same county if I got it right. Have a look around, where can you find reports of either of these two? Google news will bring up 1-2 American reports on them.

This above example illustrates the rule of law in america where laws are made to please the masses, and if so need be, the media will do as told - just like in the so called worst communist regimes of the world. America, where downloading lewd images gets you life, while raping an actual child 14 years.

It could be a great country, and it sure was built on great values. However, as the above illustrates it has drifted far from those values in the past couple decades especially.

in short, justice system is a joke, and so is the media. I would rather live in a place like singapore where laws are as tough as they get, yet you KNOW what you will get or not get for a given offense.