THE EVOLUTION OF JUDICIAL TYRANNY IN THE UNITED STATES:

"If the judges interpret the laws themselves, and suffer none else to interpret, they may easily make, of the laws, [a shredded] shipman's hose!" - King James I of England, around 1616.

“No class of the community ought to be allowed freer scope in the expression or publication of opinions as to the capacity, impartiality or integrity of judges than members of the bar. They have the best opportunities of observing and forming a correct judgment. They are in constant attendance on the courts. Hundreds of those who are called on to vote never enter a court-house, or if they do, it is only at intervals as jurors, witnesses or parties. To say that an attorney can only act or speak on this subject under liability to be called to account and to be deprived of his profession and livelihood by the very judge or judges whom he may consider it his duty to attack and expose, is a position too monstrous to be entertained for a moment under our present system,” Justice Sharwood in Ex Parte Steinman and Hensel, 95 Pa 220, 238-39 (1880).

“This case illustrates to me the serious consequences to the Bar itself of not affording the full protections of the First Amendment to its applicants for admission. For this record shows that [the rejected attorney candidate] has many of the qualities that are needed in the American Bar. It shows not only that [the rejected attorney candidate] has followed a high moral, ethical and patriotic course in all of the activities of his life, but also that he combines these more common virtues with the uncommon virtue of courage to stand by his principles at any cost.

It is such men as these who have most greatly honored the profession of the law. The legal profession will lose much of its nobility and its glory if it is not constantly replenished with lawyers like these. To force the Bar to become a group of thoroughly orthodox, time-serving, government-fearing individuals is to humiliate and degrade it.” In Re Anastaplo, 18 Ill. 2d 182, 163 N.E.2d 429 (1959), cert. granted, 362 U.S. 968 (1960), affirmed over strong dissent, 366 U.S. 82 (1961), Justice Black, Chief Justice Douglas and Justice Brennan, dissenting.

" I do not believe that the practice of law is a "privilege" which empowers Government to deny lawyers their constitutional rights. The mere fact that a lawyer has important responsibilities in society does not require or even permit the State to deprive him of those protections of freedom set out in the Bill of Rights for the precise purpose of insuring the independence of the individual against the Government and those acting for the Government”. Lathrop v Donohue, 367 US 820 (1961), Justice Black, dissenting.

"The legal profession must take great care not to emulate the many occupational groups that have managed to convert licensure from a sharp weapon of public defense into blunt instrument of self-enrichment". Walter Gellhorn, "The Abuse of Occupational Licensing", University of Chicago Law Review, Volume 44 Issue 1, September of 1976.

“Because the law requires that judges no matter how corrupt, who do not act in the clear absence of jurisdiction while performing a judicial act, are immune from suit, former Judge Ciavarella will escape liability for the vast majority of his conduct in this action. This is, to be sure, against the popular will, but it is the very oath which he is alleged to have so indecently, cavalierly, baselessly and willfully violated for personal gain that requires this Court to find him immune from suit”, District Judge A. Richard Caputo in H.T., et al, v. Ciavarella, Jr, et al, Case No. 3:09-cv-00286-ARC in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Document 336, page 18, November 20, 2009. This is about judges who were sentencing kids to juvenile detention for kickbacks.


Friday, February 22, 2019

#TheCrimeToBeNamedMelania. Part 9. How to cheat people out of court representation that costs 17 cents per hour or less.

I wrote in the previous blogs of this series that a Romanian American couple that is being corruptly squeezed out of their prime business real estate in the center of the business district of Oneonta, New York, was cheated by Judge John F. Lambert of her paid-for attorney (to whom she paid, reportedly $16,000 for doing nothing and selling her out at every turn, and remained owing, allegedly, $21,000).

The attorney charged

  • $300 per hour for a partner,
    $250 per hour for an associate, and even
    $100 for a "law clerk" - which is a false statement, since "law clerks" must have law degrees, and the price suggests that it is a secretary/paralegal without any law degree.



Judge Lambert let Melania and Nicolae Pervu's law firm out, for non-payment of fees (even though his usual policy - for non-connected attorneys, of course, is to make them represent the non-paying client for free at trials), let the attorneys abandon their client in the middle of a contempt proceeding, and did not even advise Melania and Nicolae Pervu of their right to an assigned free counsel in such a type of proceeding - just callously telling them instead, reportedly,
  • after their attorney have just proven that they cannot pay, and
  • after the City of Oneonta has just complained that they are supposedly not doing costly "bringing-up-to-code" the place where multiple government agencies have put the poor, after inspections of the pace
that the judge was sure they would be able to find another attorney for themselves.
A pro se individual, or an individual rendered pro se by a crooked judge like Lambert, finds him/herself as a fish out of water - not knowing what to do, or who to ask, especially if he/she does not have the money for a new lawyer, with fees like mentioned above, and especially where their opponent in litigation is the powerful government represented, at taxpayer expense, by attorneys.
Since attorneys grabbed for themselves in the United States, and continue to maintain, with the help of their most powerful group, judges, monopoly on who may represent people in court, 

people in the United States are reduced to a "choice": 

  • represent yourself - and lose because you do not know the law very well, do not know the tricks, do not know the judge and because judges are hostile to pro se parties; or

  • bankrupt yourself and your family and friends on another extortionist lawyer.
But - there is a third and fourth ways.

The third way, a taboo and anathema amongst attorneys to even speak about - is to just allow people to HIRE WHO THEY WANT to represent them in court.

After all, licensing/regulation of a profession is a type of the government's help in marketing for a lawyer.

And, any competent adult should be able to decide his own destiny, for his benefit or detriment, including his choice of his own representative - especially in cases where government is on the other side of a court case.

But, no, as a matter of social control, courts refuse to allow competent people to pick who they want to represent themselves in court.


The name of the case is Turner v ABA (and all 9 justices of the U.S. Supreme Court that fixed the case for themselves by consolidating it from several different circuits and picking their own judge for themselves), 407 F.Supp. 451 (1975).

The fourth way to get representation in court involves NO investment of anyone whatsoever, in fact, it involves a BIG, HUGE, ENORMOUS, GIGANTIC, HUMUNGOUS - savings for us all.


An AI software, Luminance, is being now used by a giant law firm - which means, it is available on the market now - and does what a human being without a license will be put in jail for doing - it looks for and pinpoints "inconsistencies" in documents for lawyers, which means, it uses "the judgement of a lawyer" and gives lawyers - legal advice regarding such inconsistencies. Here is what AI Luminance can do:



Yet another AI legal software, ROSS, is being sold - to lawyers only - for just $123 per month's subscription, a price of a family cell phone plan.

Note that both AI platforms are marketed to lawyers only - which is an unwarranted and an illegal discrimination against pro se nonlawyer litigants, which constitute the majority of litigants in court right now and are suffering from lack of access to specifically the type of services that these AI platforms offer. There is no legitimate reason whatsoever, especially during the ever-deepening justice gap in the country where, according to scholars, the majority of UNRICH (poor and middle class) Americans cannot afford legal services and are forced to forfeit a lot of their claims of violations of their rights. "Neglected in today’s headlines, blogs, and talk radio is a silent shameful crisis inflicting suffering and costing the nation money, legitimacy, and decency. Our justice system has become inaccessible to millions of people who are poor, of modest or even average means. As a result, every day, we violate the “equal justice under law” promise engraved on the front of the grand United States Supreme Court. Americans who cannot afford legal help routinely forfeit basic rights because they cannot afford to enforce them."
Beyond Elite Law: Access to Civil Justice in America (p. xv). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition. Note the edition. Cambridge University Press. Note who developed Luminance.
Note the hypocrisy of holding the technology that is desperately needed by the people while at the same time publishing lamentations about people forfeiting their rights because they cannot afford human lawyers. $125 per month is approximately 17 cents per hour. That is the actual cost of legal services now. 17 cents for hour, and even less. Because, for these 17 cents per hour the AI software will do for you a lot more than a human lawyer can ever dream of doing. It will accept your questions asked in a natural language, not in legal terms, translate your questions into legal terms, go, fast, through a zillion of documents, cases, statutes and regulations - and spit out for you a possible solution for your problem, at least, it may show you what the state of the law is on the topic, issue you are interested in and point you into the right direction as to how to argue your case in court. On your own. For free. But empowered by AI - the same way as lawyers already are. What follows from sales of and use of Luminance and Ross in the United States, is: 1. The AI legal technology is already here, available AND AFFORDABLE - for an average American, for the same average American who cannot afford an overpriced (and less efficient than AI) human lawyer. 2. Calling what a machine can do "unauthorized practice of law" is ridiculous. We do not license machines to do professional work, do we? So, if a robot can do a task, and in response to a normal-language input, that task should not be licensed to humans, especially where a crisis of access to justice exists because human professionals have made their services overpriced and ridiculously unaffordable to the majority of Americans. Compare: $300 per hour for Donovan who sold out his clients, did nothing for them than made their situation worse, but charged them $16,000 and claimed they owe him $21,000 more - over a span of 5 months and just several court appearances, no trials, no evidentiary hearings. AS OPPOSED TO 17 CENTS per hour for AI that would work a million times faster than any Donovan ever can, and will certainly not have political interests to sell out the user. The AI is 1765 TIMES cheaper than Donovan, while being million times more efficient and honest than Donovan. My question is - ladies and gentlemen, the American Public, We the People - WHY DO YOU NEED DONOVANS? Why can't you urge, no MANDATE YOUR government, YOUR public servants, to make the antimonopoly service, the Federal Trade Commission (also overpowered by Donovans) to do their job for their very high salaries that they currently draw for nothing, and, 1. QUASH attorney monopoly as violating federal civil and criminal antitrust laws, and/or simply 2. to MAKE companies selling AI software subscriptions, Luminance and Ross, to attorneys only, to sell them to everybody, at the same affordable price - and the attorney monopoly will then die its natural death, as it should have long time ago. 3. Have the government, instead of pouring zillions of dollars into humans reviewing papers and lamenting that there is not enough money left to fund legal representation for Americans, to just switch all courts to AI Ross or Luminance, or any other, better AI software (on a competitive basis, after public bidding), and allow the public to use legal AI assistants in and out of courtroom, free of charge or for a small fee. Access to justice crisis - resolved. Budget crisis for courts - resolved. Caseload crisis for courts - resolved. AI can read through a year-load of cases in, probably, 5 minutes, spitting out prospective decisions based on the law and not on backroom deals of some wining-and-dining players. Affordable representation for the public to address their legal needs and protect their rights - resolved. Why shouldn't We the People inundate the Federal Trade Commission NOW with demands that it take its collective head from where it is now and MAKE Luminance and ROSS sell their products to non-lawyers? The whole country was eagerly discussing a supposed discrimination where a baker refused to make and sell a wedding cake to a same sex couple. This is discrimination of a trade, a profession AGAINST ALL OF YOU, WE THE PEOPLE, the employer of the government. Just get off your collective behinds, stop complaining about the high cost of legal services and MAKE YOUR GOVERNMENT DO ITS JOB FOR YOU, FOR YOUR BENEFIT. Consider: 17 cents per hour vs $300 per hour and the justice gap. The bastards.

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