On thoughtful judicial rubber-stamping of human rights violations

I have been reading judicial decisions by the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, in cases involving me as an attorney and/or a party, and civil rights cases where I was not involved in any capacity.

Most of the cases, as I wrote previously in this blog, were rejected without much explanation in "summary" decisions.

My husband and I ventured to ask for the so-called "en banc" rehearing by the entire panel of the court.

With the same result.

The usual template statement in the summary decisions of the 2nd Circuit in civil rights cases affirming decisions of the lower district courts (no matter how unconstitutional those decisions are) are because they are affirming the "thoughtful" decision of the lower court for "substantially the same" reasons.

"Substantially the same" is not the same.

By rules of federal appellate procedure, in pro se civil rights cases the appellate court receives the docket sheet (list of cases) "in lieu" (instead) of the real record. 

According to the unspoken rule of the 2nd Circuit that can fit into two short letters: TL;DR (too long, did not read), it is the clerks who read those pesky civil rights appeals, and it is judges on senior status, most of them over the age of 70 and 80, who "hear" and decide those cases.

Since judges send to the clerks an unmistakeable message that civil rights appeals are to be discarded, they are discarded.

But, to discard a civil rights appeal because the court wants to clear its docket of those pesky civil rights appeals would be too arrogant for even today's utmost level of arrogance of the American judiciary.

So, a template phrase is invented that the case is affirmed on appeal "on substantially the same grounds" as the "thoughtful" decision of the district court.

First of all, where there is a phrase "substantially the same", it is not the same, there are differences, and the court is bound, as a matter of due process of law, to explain the EXACT grounds upon which the appeal is rejected.

Furthermore, ANY decision of a judge, no matter how corrupt, unlawful or unconstitutional it may be, is still THOUGHTFUL, because any judicial writing is a product of THOUGHT.

So, to say that a judicial decision is affirmed because it was THOUGHTFUL is to say that the appellate court DOES NOT CARE what the decision was at all - it will rubber stamp any decision anyway.

So much for civil rights litigation.

Yet, the judiciary does not seem to realize that revolutions are made (and the American revolution that we celebrated on the 4th of July included) where legal remedies for violations of basic human rights are not available.

No matter how THOUGHTFUL those violations are.