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.

Thursday, September 21, 2017

Dean Chemerinsky's outrageous claims in his amicus brief regarding Arpaio's pardon, Part III - Chemerinsky is yet another "legal scholar" who is still in a longterm "peaceful slumber"

I recently wrote about a federal appellate judge, Richard Posner, who claimed he was has recently emerged from a 35-year (!) "slumber" and now claimed that his court (which he headed for many years) actually has a policy of discriminating against pro se appellants.

 Apparently, we have another long-term "slumber" candidate - Dean Erwin Chemerinsky of Berkley Law School, California.

 In his amicus brief claiming unconstitutionality of presidential pardon of Joe Arpaio, Dean Chemerinsky made an interesting claim:






 And, that the President cut off the court's ability to provide such a redress to the victims by providing the pardon, lamenting that "[n]o President till now has proclaimed that a public official who violated the Constitution and flouted court orders was 'doing his job'".

 Of course, other legal scholars already pointed out that when Article II paragraph 2 was put into the U.S. Constitution, it was well understood what exactly it is meant to do, and that it cuts off court-ordered redress for crimes.

 But, what absolutely floored me is the hypocrisy with which Dean Chemerinsky flouted this supposed "right to redress" that the President supposedly violated when not allowing a biased court to sentence an elderly sheriff to prison after a completely crooked criminal proceeding, see my blogs about how the criminal case was handled here and here.

 Let's go back to Chemerinsky's arguments.

 Chemerinsky claims that "Article III courts have a duty to provide effective redress when a public official commits harm by violating the Constitution", moreover, that this "duty" was "guid[ing] the federal courts" since 1803.

 My question to Chemerinsky and his team is - under which rock have they slept all this time?

 Actually, one of Chemerinsky's attorneys who signed this interesting statement about "right to redress" as the supposed duty of federal ("Article III") courts is Larry A. Hammond who claims in his advertisement/ biography that he clerked for the U.S. Supreme Court Justices  Hugo Black and Louis Powell.

 As law clerks to federal judges, both of Chemerinsky's attorneys, as well as Chemerinsky himself as an attorney - who regularly represents judges - DO know that judges GAVE THEMSELVES a gift that absolves them from any liability for constitutional violations, and gradually gave the same or similar gifts to all other branches of the government.

 Chemerinsky must know that to even say that:
  • there is a right to redress for constitutional violations by public officials in the U.S., and that
  • courts are "guided by their duty" to provide such redress to victims of such violations
is not just hypocrisy, but is CRUEL hypocrisy, because, as majority of civil rights litigants (especially pro se civil rights litigants, discriminated, as Judge Posner admitted, by federal appellate courts) know, they have no chance to beat through the brick wall of

  • immunities;
  • abstentions;
  • comities;
  • deferences; and
  • other judicially created "doctrines" which
1) unlawfully restrict jurisdiction of federal courts contrary to what is provided by the Civil Rights Act,

2) deny redress to nearly ALL victims of constitutional violations in the United States; and, moreover,

3) that those courts whose supposed duty is to ensure right to redress for constitutional violations by public officials instead routinely PUNISH victims of such constitutional violations by making them pay attorney fees and court costs of PERPETRATORS of such violations - because those victims dared to invoke the Civil Rights Act in disregard to judicially created barriers to civil rights litigation.

It is disgusting, #ErwinChemerinsky, to laugh in the face of victims of judicial, police and prosecutorial misconduct who were not only denied redress of their injuries, but were made to pay attorney fees for their "immunity-covered" perpetrators, by quoting Marbury v Madison as a "guiding principle" of modern U.S. Courts:

"The very essence of civil liberty consists in the right of every individual to claim the protection of the laws, whenever he receives an injury.  One of the first duties of government is to afford that protection...  The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of law and not of men.  It will certainly cease to deserve this high appellation, if the laws furnish no remedy for the violation of a vested right...".




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