British press reports that the U.S. does not have effective mechanisms to fight judicial corruption, U.S. press keeps mum

I wrote on this blog extensively about attorneys sanctioned for trying to do the right thing for their clients.

I recently posted a list of some lawyers who were reported to be sanctioned for critisim of judicial misconduct.

For purposes of disclosure, I am one of those lawyers.  My law license was suspended as of November 13, 2015 for what the disciplinary court modestly called my role in "3 client matters", which in reality were sanctions for motions to recuse a judge who sanctioned me after I sued him.

I found another name today, attorney Lori Laird, of Texas.

Here is what reportedly occurred.  "Attorney Lori Laird asked that [Judge]Dupuy bow out in 2013 because she’d represented Dupuy’s ex-wife in the couple’s custody battle in Galveston. The judge responded by slapping her with 37 counts of contempt, demanding that she “explain, defend or apologize” for her motion. He later sentenced her to 220 days in jail, although she didn’t serve any time."

In my case, it was thousands of dollars of sanctions that Judge Carl Becker extracted from me for suing him and exposing his misconduct in motions to recuse and the loss of a law license.

What the Louisiana judge did in the case reported in the same article was no different than what Governor Cuomo did by providing a similar "incentive" to Appellate Division 3rd Department (NY) judge Leslie Stein by elevating her to the position of a judge of New York State Court of Appeals, which was a huge promotion in terms of more money and more prestige.

The article reports that a New York attorney Raoul Felder who "served" on the New York State Judicial Conduct Commission, recalls "perplexing" experience from the Commission's decision-making.

The article reports that unreported and unaddressed judicial conflicts of interest go all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court:

"Justice Steven Breyer owned $215,000 in health-care stocks when deciding on the legality of the Affordable Care Act in 2012. Justice Samuel Alito’s portfolio included $2,000 in stock in The Walt Disney Co. in 2008, the year the court heard Disney, FCC v. Fox Television Stations. And perhaps most famously, justice Antonin Scalia has participated in the Bush v. Gore case, even though his son Eugene’s law firm represented one of the parties. In another case, Scalia remained in the panel despite having gone on a duck hunting trip with former Vice-President Dick Cheney while he was being sued to reveal the details of secret meetings he held with oil company executives in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq",

and that judges refuse to step off conflicted cases by claiming that their impartiality cannot be reasonably questioned.

The question is - by whom? - by them certainly, since their moral compass seems to become permanently askew as soon as they take the oath of office that brings them their money, power and prestige.  But by a reasonable objective observer - sure.

Not the least of questions is - why it is a British newspaper that is so vigorously investigating judicial corruption and not American.

Why whistle-blowing attorneys, time and again, get their stories turned down by American mass media that is simply afraid to touch the subject?

Where is the famous fearless journalism on the burning issue of public concern in this country, judicial corruption?