Texas Professor Lucas Powe predicted the justices would skip the State of the Union next year because their feelings were hurt that the mere President of the United States said, rather more concisely, what their own most senior colleague had just said about the Onion-worthy campaign finance decision. (See post 424.)
And, sure enough, Chief Petty is threatening to watch from home next year so he can keep his finger on the mute button.
Incidentally, the President's annual message to Congress, which the chief ridiculed as juvenile stuff - "a pep rally" - is actually required by the Constitution. Unlike, say, the campaign finance ruling, or indeed most of what the Supreme Court does with its days.
"Onion-worthy" isn't an insult. The Onion has high standards. For instance:
Why, after all, can't insurance companies hold political office directly, instead of buying their seats through intermediaries? We have it on the authority of Justice Whatshisname, the one with the glasses, that corporations are persons. How can "the Government" (as he calls popular rule) be permitted to discriminate between persons based on nothing but their reality or unreality?
The constitutional logic of the campaign finance ruling is that the people of the United States aren't permitted to make decisions concerning their own democracy, unless any five members of the Pantheon think it's a good idea.
Compare this facade to this, make yourself forget that "facade" has a non-architectural meaning, and perhaps you can put yourself in the right frame of mind to believe the Constitution actually requires that result. But I doubt it.
Anyway, by ridiculing the very institutions of the Presidency and Congress, suggesting it's beneath the justices' dignity to step down from their friezes to mingle with that noisy rabble of elected representatives, Roberts underscored the anti-democratic essence of the decision, and indeed of all constitutional rulings. The Supreme Court exists to protect the United States from democracy.
Roberts' very public defensiveness, like Alito's (see post 424), reveals his lack of confidence in the legal merits of the opinion he joined. The opinion does speak for itself, but unfortunately it sounds like a young Jerry Lewis.
And by mixing it up on the political stage in this way, Roberts confirms his enemies' point: he's a political actor, and the ruling was a political act.
His point is that it's not just power without responsibility. It's without accountability, too. And don't you forget it.
]]>I changed the pronouns in that excerpt just to allow you the surreal experience of imagining a male judge facing suspension on account of arrogant, belittling behavior. The judge in question is named Judith Eiler.
In my book I tell the story of Judge Earl O'Connor of Kansas City, Kansas. After his death, colleagues and proteges lovingly described him as someone who was always "in control," who had "a gruff persona on the bench and put lawyers through their paces."
He didn't face judicial discipline for his rudeness. On the contrary, the Tenth Circuit's website includes a long adulatory profile of him - which omits any mention of the single most important datum in his biography, which is that he was a murderer. But then, Judge O'Connor "only" killed his wife before shooting himself - the pathological control freak's signature form of suicide.
In just in the last few posts we've had one judge twice twice convicted in connection with incidents in which his female companions appear to have been treated ungently (see post 430) and a second judge who maliciously withhheld the protection of the law from female victims of abuse unfortunate enough to appear in his courtroom. (See post 429.)
Neither of them was suspended from office for 90 days without pay, as the Washington Commission on Judicial Conduct recommends be done to Judge Eiler.
Across the country, it will be recalled, the Pennsylvania Judicial Conduct Board declined to investigate a detailed complaint about male Luzerne County judges selling children in exchange for kickbacks. When it decided to give the male judges a pass, it was relying on them to provide evidence against their colleagues who was alleged to have a bad attitude, which the Board considered a more pressing matter. Want to guess the other judges gender? (See post 258, keeping in mind that the allegations against Ann Lokuta were made by black-robed psychopaths and their sycophants.
]]>The current economic environment presents significant employment-related difficulties for all law schools, and I am cognizant of the anxiety that many of you face in confronting the near-term career-related uncertainties.
Frightening, isn't it? - the thought of "employment-related difficulties for all law schools." I mean, if even a law school can't land a job... Then again, "career-related uncertainties" are a lot less worrying than career uncertainties, and facing anxiety is better than feeling it. Then again again, how can you face anxiety and at the same time confront ("to face in hostility or defiance") uncertainties? - by being two-faced, I guess.
The law school recently offered a "an alumni-oriented career webinar" (pronounced uh-oh) and the university-wide alumni association is chirping about "encore careers," presumably for those shown out the door to a prolonged standing ovation.
In the midst of this attack of insufficiently-opaque euphemisms, the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth announced plans to open the state's first public law school, setting its tuition and fees at "about $23,500 for in-state students and $31,000 for out-of-state students."
Actually it's taking over a non-ABA accredited law school (remind me again how the ABA, a trade group, acquired such authority in the academic world) and proposing to double its size. That appears to be a trend, according to the AmLaw Daily:
Want to know where it all leads? Big Debt, Small Law explains it all for you. (Hat tip, Ben Barlyn.)
One convincing explanation was offered by the former president of the University of Puget Sound, Susan Resneck Pierce, explaining the university's 1993 decision to sell its law school to Seattle University for what the website discreetly calls "an undisclosed sum." At the time of the sale in 1993, President Pierce disclosed that "the law school was generating nearly $700,000 per year for the university’s operating budget."
Now, for a university administrator to admit that a unit of the institution produced a positive cash flow is as rare and remarkable as a Hollywood accountant admitting that a movie turned a profit. The figure named, while not princely, nonetheless probably put Puget Sound's law school in a league with the library's copy machines as a profit center.
A law school's economics of scale are awesome. A single lawyer equipped only with an overhead projector connected to a PC can teach a class of 100 students each paying "about $23,500" and northwards. And there's never any shortage of lawyers eager to land a teaching gig, with all that implies about downward pressure on salaries.
Jeff Jacoby buys the claim that the law school will require subsidies. The funny thing is, he thinks he's being hard-headed and cynical.
]]>We already learned the lamentable results of Judge Rehkamp's ill-advised sip. (See post 417.) But the domestic violence charges against him were dropped when -- all together now -- his wife declined to testify against him at preliminary hearing.
According to the Scranton Times-Tribune,
The testimony of an eyewitness isn't enough to establish probable cause?!? Let that be a lesson to all you young judges out there: always be nice to the magistrates, even if like Pennsylvania's magisterial judges they're not necessarily lawyers, because you never know when they'll be in a position to return the favor.
18-year-old Lee saved his mother when the judge was strangling her, according to this Wilkes-Barre Citizens' Voice story, which also contains the magistrate's charmingly fatutous metaphysical flight and the prosecutor's untoppable comeback:
The Citizens' Voice adds this interesting detail about the first prelim:
We can do this divorce the easy way or the hard way. It's up to you, Valerie. Is testifying at the prelim really worth years of hellish litigation?
Anyway, nothing daunted, the prosecutor refiled charges, adding a bit more detail and asking for a new magistrate (a real one this time, please):
It all happened on the couple's first anniversary, sweetly enough.
The judge was able to see the silver lining in this dark cloud: he used his suspension from office as an excuse for skipping alimony payments to his first wife.
The judge reportedly shelled out $218,000 to pay off his daughter's tax debt, which might show admirable familial loyalty, though if I were the first wife's lawyer I'd be very suspicious. Maybe where the daughter lives it's customary for tax officials to require first-degree relatives to pony up in cash rather than establishing a payment plan with the taxpayer herself. Then again....
Nonetheless, there is a somber side to the story. That Porsche. That $28,000 in jewelry bought on a single day during the months before his second marriage. I'm afraid the diagnosis is unavoidable: late-onset midlife-crisis clichedom.
But the judge isn't taking the refiling of charges lying down: today he filed a motion to dismiss, claiming selective prosecution. After all, other husbands in Luzerne County are allowed to choke their wives, so why's the prosecution picking on him?
]]>But what if the judge goes one step beyond re-victimizing by knocking off the "re-"? Consider Cleveland Juvenile Court Judge Joseph Russo:
There was no fight, officer, but she started it. So he's a liar as well as a batterer (sorry - disorderly conductor).
And as a result, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled sternly, he would be allowed to stay on the bench. However, the high court decreed, the meaningless six-month suspension of Judge Russo's law license recommended by the disciplinary board wasn't enough. After all, it was a purely symbolic suspension so long as the judge remained in his full-time juvie court position.
"A sanction more rigorous than the board's recommendation is required." So the court sternly upped it to a meaningless twelve-month suspension of the judge's law license, and then suspended the suspension, restoring the status quo. Take that, Judge Russo!
]]>The case stalled, in the usual way, as everybody waited for the lab results to come back. (The U.S. Supreme Court last year ruled that drug cases weren't delayed enough, and sought to address the problem by requiring technicians to spend more time on the road between courthouses, but it must be said that the problem of excessive celerity was not universally recognized.)
Then surprise, surprise - the "white powdery substance," in universal cop-speak, turned out not to be cocaine, after all. So the drug charge was dropped. Unfortunately, the video of the arrest contained numerous mentions of the apparent cocaine. The prosecutor and defense attorney agreed the video needed to be edited to delete those references. But as they hadn't done so yet, they agreed that the case should be continued -- or (for those of you who insist on speaking the common tongue) that the trial be postponed.
The judge denied the joint motion for continuance, which is pretty crazy already. If the people involved in the suit don't mind, why should the judge, who supposedly is neutral? Maybe they don't have enough to do in misdemeanor court in the Orlando exurbs and Judge Eriksson was afraid of getting bored.
Mr. Watson, though, thought he detected another source for the craziness. He asked his attorney to move for a recusal -- that is (for you lingua francans), to allow a different, less emotionally-involved judge to preside. That's where the clip picks up:
Yes, that's right, Judge Eriksson jailed a man to punish him for asking the judge to step aside. You have to admit Mr. Watson had a point about the judge's unfairness.
The judge, it must be said in his defense, has perfected the demeanor of a self-satisfied creep. Many self-satisfied creeps retain tell-tale marks of former personhood, but Judge Eriksson is way past that. He could play a movie alien without makeup.
Anyway, Mr. Watson was just one person. Then there was the time Judge Eriksson presided over a whole docket's worth of abused women seeking injunctions against their abusers. Most of the women appeared without a lawyer, a pretty good indicator of their financial status. The judge decided to give himself a little amusement:
Judge Eriksson: Patrice Taylor, who will be your first witness?
Patrice Taylor: I was unaware of that, your Honor.
Judge Eriksson: Well, I wasn‘t the one who was supposed to give you advice.
Patrice Taylor: I filed a petition.
Judge Eriksson: Did somebody suggest it to you?
Patrice Taylor: No. I filed it because he was having some depression issues with —
Judge Eriksson: No, not why did he —
Judge Eriksson: Did they tell you that you would need to bring a witness or two —
Judge Eriksson: —testify so the other side could crossexamine?
Patrice Taylor: No. I thought that the arrest would be enough. My son was in no shape to be here.
Judge Eriksson: If you are arrested, does that mean you‘re guilty?
Patrice Taylor: No, your Honor.
Patrice Taylor: Not quite, your Honor. He was arrested for stalking.
Patrice Taylor: [cell phone rings] I do apologize, your Honor. I‘m scheduled to be at work.
Judge Eriksson: All Right. Are you too busy to be here?
Judge Eriksson: Just stay on course. Will you be presenting any evidence today on your petition?
Judge Eriksson: Will you be presenting any evidence on your petition?
Patrice Taylor: I have –written documentation, if that‘s what you mean. I don‘t know.
Judge Eriksson: If it‘s written, no. He can‘t cross-examine whoever wrote it.
What makes that all so delightfully amusing is that the clinically depressed victim of repeat violence could have testified on her own behalf. Ho, ho, ho!
And he told her to "stay on course" immediately after jerking her around with bizarre questions about who told her to file the petition. Ho (etc.).
At his hearing before the Florida Judicial Qualifications Commission, Judge Eriksson defended himself by saying he thought it would be inappropriate for him to become involved in the proceedings to the point of advising the women they could be their own witnesses. But, evidently, he didn't consider it inappropriate for him to make a preemptive hearsay objection on behalf of the abusive man.
In short, Judge Eriksson deliberately withheld the protection of the law from some of the most vulnerable people in his community.
At least he was hauled (or "haled", as the Supreme Court insists on saying) before the Florida Supreme Court. That takes us to the punchline: his punishment was a public admonishment.
Which just goes to show the judge was right. The people he considered too unimportant for his time -- too female, too victimized, too depressed, too poor -- were confirmed unimportant by the Florida Supreme Court, which viewed re-victimizing them as no more than an unfortunate breach of judicial etiquette.
]]>If cops can follow you to a protest, or a meeting, or a political meeting--and I hate to break the news, but they can, which might explain that strange uncanny feeling you've been having--then cell phone data isn't telling them anything they couldn't acquire with the expenditure of shoe leather.
(But the weary tedium of a stake-out, and the delicate high-speed drama of following a car, both seem more fair, more sporting, than getting a business record from the phone company, don't they?--or at least better TV.)
Not the case itself but Judge Sloviter's questioning, as excerpted on CNET, achieves the status of "foolish or silly, especially in a smug or self-satisfied way."
Apparently believing in all earnestness that she was making an important point, she pursued this line of questioning:
The fatuous part isn't saying that if certain information would help the government of Iran oppress its people, comparable information must be kept from the government of the United States, given their similarities.
Nor is it proposing to decide a case on the basis of paranoid political fantasies rather than concrete reality--law professors spend whole careers training their students to think about the law in precisely such terms.
No, the fatuous part is the belief that abuse by "the government" could be prevented by requiring the government to convince a judge that it had probable cause for obtaining the phone records--that is, by requiring "the government" to receive advance blessing from...one of its employees.
Judges' paranoid political fantasies only go so far. The President and the Attorney General and all their faceless minions might be in thrall to Sauron, or Ahmadinejad, but even in the darkest days we will always count on the incorruptibility, the stern rectitude, of the Untouchables in black robes.
And, of course, when Sauron's and Ahmadinejad's minons take over the elected branches of government they'll do what judges tell them to do.
]]>
From Clay County, Kentucky (searching Google for it brings up a sad little sponsored ad for "File for Unemployment"), which wasn't named after the Great Compromiser but his cousin with the unfortunately easy-to-visualize name of Green Clay (unless Wikipedia, not otherwise known for its sense of humor, is pulling our collective leg), comes this story:
Why would anyone design machines like that except to allow votes to be changed? (Aren't you curious to know what company made them? Here's my utterly uninformed and irresponsible guess.) The machine seems designed not just to facilitate not just switching votes, but to make it easy to confirm a purchased voter stays bought. This is how it worked:
In Kentucky, the circuit court is the trial court of general jurisdiction, i.e., a real court. Former Judge Manicle - I'm sorry, but it just wouldn't seem right not to make some juvenile remark about that name - seems like he knew what was what, all right. But the real political boss was a-settin' over at the school district HQ:
Running for jailer? The politically powerful school board?
If the testimony is to be believed, they play for keeps in Clay County. A one-time drug dealing witness testified that "former Clay County Clerk Jennings White" - relationship to Kennon White unknown, and perhaps unknowable -- "once asked him to plant drugs in Adams' vehicle to get him arrested." Shades of Louisiana's Judge Bodenheimer. (See post 78 and post 12.)
That particular drug dealer claimed he had protection from the once and would-be future sheriff, Edd Jordan, a/k/a Unindicted Co-Conspirator - he's running to regain his old position - because of the zeal with which he bought votes for him. What makes it especially easy to believe are the comments from Clay County, uh, activists on Topix (e.g., here and here).
]]>For example, take a look at the dilemma facing the Pennsylvania Judicial Conduct Board. It had before it allegations against three judges from Luzerne County, and limited resources. Which complaint or complaints should it investigate?
Allegations against one judge were that she (significant pronoun) was "'impatient, undignified and discourteous' to her staff, created a tense atmosphere in her chambers, badgered witnesses and attorneys and arrived late to court sessions."
The allegations against the other judges were that they -- both of them male -- took kickbacks in exchange for sentencing juveniles who hadn't done anything subjecting them to detention to a private detention center in proceedings that didn't rise to the dignity of kangaroo courts, blighting the kids' futures while imposing devastating pain on both them and their parents. (See post 417 and post 400 and post 390 and post 389.)
It was a stark choice, as attorney George Michak pointed out. On the one hand, "a judge who was accused of having a bad attitude." On the other hand, "serious allegations against two judges accused of serious ethical breaches and even criminal conduct."
Given the limited resources of the board, which do you go after? Hint: the two male judges helped the board's efforts against the female one.
During the period of time that elapsed between the Board receiving complaints against gangster judges Conahan and Ciavarella and those two reaching the since-rejected plea agreement with federal prosecutor, "Ciavarella might have sentenced more than 2,000 juveniles to the for-profit detention centers he and Conahan were allegedly paid off to support."
That's 2,000 juveniles sold for kickbacks -- or what Ciavarella, with the chilling ingenuous of the true psychopath, called "finders fees" -- as a direct consequence of the Board's decision to put all their resources into reinforcing the old boys' network against Judge Lokuta.
The role of judges is to enforce the status quo. That's not a criticism; the law is the status quo. So perhaps it's not surprising that a judicial standards board would take the same approach, defending the way things are, no matter how corrupt.
The same mindset can be found in a case from Kermit, Texas. (I'd never heard of it either, but it turns out to be on the corner of my own state - it's apparently pretty flat down there.) The New York Times story on the shameful felony prosecution of two nurses for reporting concerns about a bad doctor to appropriate medical authorities can be found here.
Over at ScienceBlogs, Mark Dunford has interesting insight on the broader problems exposed by the case.
And the local Winkler Post has a wonderful take on the whole shebang.
Adding another twist to the case, the state was represented by an Odessa private attorney because the one-person district attorney's office was experiencing poor health, according to the Times. Hmmm. I hope he gets well soon, or alternatively acknowledge the diplomacy with which he passed the cup from his lips, whichever is more appropriate.
The Pennsylvania's Board was acting on the same impulse as the Texas sheriff who arranged the absurd charges against the nurses, and the hospital administrator who fired them for going over his head to state disciplinary authorities.
One name for the impulse is "system justification," a theory that explains much about the American legal system -- though judges and lawyers are usually pretty good at burying the tell-tale signs under piles of self-righteous, self-serving rhetoric. I'm inclined to think the Pennsylvania Board decided to go after Lokuta because the two male gangster judges were under investigation for acts 1,000 times worse than anything she was accused of. And that made sense.
Exposure of the gangster judges, after all, was also exposure of the Pennsylvania Judicial Judicial Conduct Board.
]]>Instead, you make fun of other cities' judges. Or I would, if they didn't do it for me:
That's called "ex parte-ing the judge." It's unethical in the highest degree for a judge to talk to one side in private, excluding the other side from the discussion.
Then comes the really delightful juxtaposition:
Failed attempts at political tyranny by elected officials are, it must be agreed, despicable. Successful assertions of political tyranny by judges are anything but. Judge Craig, for example, ordered a committee of the County Commission not to meet.
No, really. I'm not kidding. The judge prohibited the elected government of the county from meeting in committee.
"They just needed to know how much inherent authority the superior court had." Inherent authority, of course, is authority the superior court wasn't granted by the state or federal Constitution or by any statute. (See post 32 and post 261.) It's power without law, and for a Yadkinville judge to use his illegitimate power to bully and threaten elected officials is the Christmas pageant version of one of the major themes of this blog.
A lot of the dispute, apparently, is that the judge wanted the jail built out of town, like a Wal-Mart, and the town leaders wanted it downtown, like a family-run store. (Click here for a rather sad little resolution, a tattered flag of a plea for democratic self-rule.)
The judge, you won't be surprised to learn, got his way.
To change the topic abruptly, the gangster judges of Luzerne County ordered the state-run juvenile facility shut down in exchange for kickbacks from the operator of a private facility. (See post 389.) Not sure what reminded me of that.
Apologies for the digression. Back in Yadkinville,
Even whitewashing a judge has to be done in secrecy. Otherwise the people those elected officials are representing might get the right idea.
(Conscience requires a link to an explanation for the name of that road.)
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