Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Reliance on legal authorities is overrated when the judge's own misconduct is the issue


Many times various judges pointed out to me that simply stating that something is not fair, or not constitutional in my legal opinion as a trained legal expert (which trained legal expert I will remain, by the way, whether the retaliative judicial system will or will not yank my law license) - is not enough, that I must provide legal authorities that would "support" my legal opinion.

That point of view is, of course, erroneous, because any reasonable individual, attorney or not, can have an ability to interpret the U.S. Constitution and claim its protections as a matter of due process of law.

In fact, courts may not amend the U.S. Constitution by interpretation and may not create rights that did not exist before that cannot be directly derived from the U.S. Constitution without the interim interpretation by the courts.

To hold otherwise is to give courts authority they are not given by that same U.S. Constitution.

To hold otherwise is to foreclose even a possibility of having cases of first impression and developing the law.

Yet, ability of anybody, attorney or not, judge or not, to directly interpret the law is not the point I am making now. 

The point I am making now is equality under the law and practicing what the courts preach, when the issue turns on the judge's own misconduct.

In a recent decision, Judge Ferris Lebous of Binghamton, NY, refusing to recuse because it was not him personally, but his chambers engaged in an ex parte communication with a person who WAS opposing counsel at the time before jurisdiction of the court abated due to the death of his client (at the time ex parte communication occurred), provided NO legal authority whatsoever - none - supporting his position that ex parte communications with a judge's "chambers" is not the same as ex parte communication with the judge himself and obviously, not within the prohibition for ex parte communications.

Also, Judge Lebous testified on behalf of my opponents and on his own and his staff behalf in the decision (unsworn testimony, of course) by stating what his rules are, what he allows his staff to communicate with attorneys and parties about - while Judge Lebous did not make a statement that he verified with the staff what the communication was about, and while the billing statements provided to the court clearly indicated that the communication was on the merits of the case and NOT about scheduling.

Once again my husband and I are given to understand that rules created by courts, and laws created by the New York legislature - are not for the courts to abide when we are concerned.

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