Saturday, July 9, 2016

#MaleChauvinistGalore on the bench - can one re-educate a sexist judge?

I recently wrote a blog about law graduates' support for the California Judge Persky



who has become a symbol of judicial favoritism to white rich rapists in this country.

Those aspiring legal professionals claim that Judge Persky should not be recalled because what he did - including making comments that belittled the victim - was a matter of "judicial discretion".

At the very same time a Canadian judge, this white charmer, by the name of Robin Champ,



stands to be disciplined because he stated to the victim of rape: "why didn't you just keep you knees together" - which was, basically, what Judge Persky implied, too, when he imposed a sentence upon the rapist of an unconscious woman less than for a petty theft.

In the U.S. recently, a judge in Montana, G. Todd Baugh, this white man



was reprimanded for giving a lenient sentence to the rapist of a 14-year-old girl while claiming that the raped child looked older than her age and was as responsible for the crime as the defendant.

Reprimanded - but not taken off the bench.

Yet, in Louisiana judge J. Robin Free 



has been recently suspended and ordered to pay over $11,000 of costs to the Judicial Qualifications Commission for, among other things,  "Scalia-like" behavior - accepting a trip from an attorney who obtained a $1.2 million settlement in a case tried in front of the judge,  and for joking about domestic violence against women in criminal proceedings.

And, in Nevada the judicial qualification authorities review a complaint against Judge Conrad Hafen



for handcuffing a female attorney when she was making a constitutional argument on behalf of her indigent client.

Four judges disciplined or turned in for discipline for sexist behavior, and one in the neighboring Canada.

All of the above five sexist judges are white.

The law graduates - male and female - who support Judge Persky are also predominantly white (only one dark-colored girl among 7 supporters of Judge Persky).

It appears that the "rape culture", that the woman is to blame, is part of "white male privilege".  

No wonder that many women are leaving the legal profession - what judges stated openly in rape cases, they practice impliedly against female attorneys, and many male law partners profess behind closed doors of their law firms.

Other women - like Stanford law graduates, like a petite New York attorney who first considered a surgery to change her voice to more masculine, and then took "speech therapy" sessions to change her mannerisms and speech to a more masculine, to succeed in the sexist world - try to adjust to male chauvinists by joining their ranks, mimicking them or expressing support for them.

Sexual discrimination, sexual harassment, disdainful attitude to females by white males in power is nothing new.

Media coverage and increasing public outrage against it, powered by social media, is new.

The public is right - the #MaleChauvinistGalore in public courts should not be allowed to continue.

California constituents should continue to pressure their government to remove Persky off the bench.

"Reprimands" mean nothing.

In fact, some judges - like judge Lisa Gorcyca in Michigan - wear judicial discipline (censure) like a badge of honor and host flash-mobs to practically celebrate her defiance to that discipline, complete with crowds of attorney practicing in front of the judge coming to the flash-mob, with flowers, standing ovations and hand-shaking receiving lines.

If judges engage in egregious misconduct, with the education and experience that judges have even before they come to the bench, and with the oaths they took before they came to the bench, such oath-breaking behavior and misconduct is not curable.

Such people cannot be re-educated, and should not be spared.

One cannot re-educate a middle-aged racist.

One cannot re-educate a middle-aged sexist.

One cannot re-educate people who believe they came to the bench as to their own fiefdom, to establish their own rules, and rule by whim and by favor to those who please them better.

But, the public can and should remove those judicial public servants from positions of power where they can hurt people.

Such people should not be on the bench.

Period.



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