While reading a recent article about judicial misconduct in the United States and specifically in New York - reported, naturally, outside of this country, since the local "mainstream" media sources are deadly afraid of the subject - I came across a situation where a female attorney from Texas was slapped with contempt proceedings by a judge after she made a motion to recuse him.
My further research of that situation revealed a recitation of the following law in Texas applicable to procedures in motions to recuse:
" If a motion to recuse is filed, the judge only has two options: recuse himself or refuse to recuse himself.
If the challenged judge refuses to recuse himself, then he cannot hear any further matter in the case until an assigned judge hears the motion to recuse. See e.g.Jamilah v. Bass, 862 S.W.2d 201, 203 (Tex. App – Houston [14th Dist.] 1993)(orig. proc.). Any order signed by the challenged judge after a motion to recuse is filed is void. In re Rio Grande Valley Gas Co., 987 S.W.2d 167, 169 (Tex. App. – Corpus Christi 1999, orig. proceeding)."
So, the attorney who was unlawfully slapped by the challenged judge with contempt proceedings for making a motion to recuse him continues to practice law.
Unlike me.
I was slapped with sanctions (which would have been void in Texas) by the exact same judge whom I was challenging on a motion to recuse.
In Texas, if a judge refuses to recuse, another judge should step in to determine the motion to recuse - and while that motion is pending, the challenged judge may not make any decision in the case. In other words, any proceedings on the case STOP if a motion to recuse is made and the challenged judge refuses to recuse.
Not so in New York.
In New York, the challenged judge is given an absolute discretion to decide the motion challenging himself.
Which resulted in sanctions - and suspension of law license - for me, while suspension of law license happened without providing me with any pre-deprivation hearing, because, in the eyes of the disciplinary court, I had enough "due process" in being slapped with sanctions by an enraged challenged judge.
After all, he "examined his own conscience" before denying my motion to recuse and slapping me with those sanctions.
Once again - why the State of Texas, which is not exactly known for its democratic ways in the courtroom - recognizes that a challenged judge is presumed biased in relation to a motion challenging his own impartiality and/or integrity and may not preside over or decide such a motion.
Why in New York an attorney may be suspended for making a motion to recuse while in Texas such a thing simply cannot happen - as a matter of law?
Shouldn't the right to earn a living be the same due process right and not depending on the whims of the legislatures in various states?
Especially that the rule of "discretion" for judges to preside over motions to recuse them is not even a statute, is not even a court rule - it is a judicial policy determination, illegal as legislating from the bench on an important issue of constitutional law.
Once again.
Why New York "justice" looks like cavemen's justice as compared to Texas?
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.
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