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.


Sunday, December 30, 2018

My book regarding #SeparationOfChildren by New York government goes on a short New Year's sale today

My book goes up for a short New Year's sale today, as soon as Amazon approves the price change.

Here is a short explanation of what the book is.

Children are separated from parents by the government not only at the border.

State government has nearly 400,000 children at any given time separated from their biological parents and subjected to abuse, exposure to adult dangerous psychotropic medications, medical experimentation - and, ultimately, permanent separation from their parents, adoption out of foster care, for which CPS gets thousands of dollars per head of the child from federal incentive money, courtesy of federal legislation passed under President William Clinton.

I wrote about the legislation in 2014 here, when Barrack Obama was President.  Nothing changed since then - to the better.

Since the money incentive law is federal, all states have adopted similar CPS laws to satisfy federal conditions to get the incentive money.

Thus, the nightmare parents across the United States are experiencing is similar.

The quagmire of quasi-criminal unconstitutional laws cast against parents in order to grab their children in New York is described in my book "The Oxygen Mask Rule" in Amazon , with a detailed analysis of laws used to make the parent make *confessions", "allow" warrantless searches of the house, submit to unconstitutional body and mind searches and "allow" CPS to grab the children "to keep them safe" - which results most often in a separation forever, for which separation the feds pay several thousand dollars per head of stolen children to state CPS departments.
I will reduce the price of the Kindle and paper book today for a short-term New Year promotion, to nearly nothing and put it also in Kindle Unlimited.
This is the topic in which the press is not interested, since it is a big business in the US, "legitimately" stealing children, using them in illegal medical experimentation while they are in foster care, and then sell them into adoption , for federal money.
To prevent that kidnapping and sale of children, a parent must first know how to keep himself out of jail when CPS is at the door, while so many tricks are devised to put him there. Hence, the name of the book, "The Oxygen Mask Rule".
Defense of parents against CPS is not taught in law schools, so there is no hope that a licensed attorney, by virtue of being licensed, will "know what to do" against CPS.
Moreover, attorneys opposing CPS are targeted for disbarment, so a parent would be better off learning himself what needs to be done in his own defense, to use legitimate tools his attorney will be afraid to use, and to monitor actions of his attorney .
This is the first book of the series, and the only book on defense against CPS in New York available in Amazon.
The next book of the series, access to records in such cases, which c an mean a difference between keeping the child or losing him forever, is coming out, at least I plan it, in 2019.

Wednesday, December 19, 2018

The New York Law Journal criticizing (somewhat) the sacred cow: something must be really happening with New York courts

My experience with the leading scholarship journal of the legal profession in New York, the New York Law Journal is one of disappointment.

There is nearly never any critical review published there of judicial decisions, usually just comments of WHAT a judge did, but no attempt to analyze WHY that was done, and no attempt to go into the judge's background and explore the judge's potential conflicts of interest to make this or that sensational - and sensationally wrong - decision.

NYLJ also gives its platform to former and present judges in their calls upon the legal profession and the public to defend judges as "having no voice" defenseless creatures - while the judiciary not only permeated with its "officers of the court" all branches of the government, controlling those branches through control of officers of those branches who are attorneys, but acquired a "well-settled" knack for making laws for the entire country and being entirely unaccountable in its misconduct.

Presumed honorable - with a self-given immunity for malicious and corrupt acts, that says it all.

So, it sounded to me like something unexpected has happened in the market of legal services and in the New York judiciary when New York Law Journal suddenly published an article vigorously criticizing regulators of attorneys, the New York court system.

Look at the language of the criticism:

"“It (New York State’s Unified Court System) employs the energies of more than sixteen thousand judges, officers and employees around the State, who handle more than three million new case filings annually.” Fiscal Year 2019-2020 New York State Unified Court System Budget.


Yes, New York’s Judiciary does handle more than 3 million cases per year, but they have a peculiar way of counting. For each petition filed in Family Court they give each child a separate docket number so if you have four children and file for custody it counts as four cases. They count Uniform Traffic Tickets and Parking Tickets as cases and include “both answered and unanswered cases.” For 2017 those tickets totaled 497,623 “cases” without which the total filings would be well below 3 million.

Just to put this in perspective, there were 4,671,265 filings in 2008 which is 41 percent more than 2017. The budget for 2007/2008 was a little more than $1.6 billion. The Judicial Budget for 2019/2020 is an all-time high of $2.336 billion, an increase of $44.7 million from last year. Just five years ago it was $1.81 billion even though there have been significant decreases in filings every year. When you add all costs, the judiciary spends about $600 million more but the budget never mentions the actual sum spent by the Judiciary. For example, in 2018-2019’s budget the request was $2.23 billion but the Chief Administrative Judge’s Annual Report four months later said that $2.96 billion was approved.

New York’s court system is the most expensive per capita in the country and possibly the world. It amounts to $117 per citizen just using the State Operations Budget request of $2.336 billion, but using total funds it is over $150 per person. Florida has many more people than New York but runs its judicial budget on $27.09 per person. The United States Judiciary costs $22.25 per citizen."

Wow.

Catching the court system red-handed in padding up the statistics of case-filing by gerrymandering docket numbers?
Blasting State Chief Judge DiFiore's "Excellence Initiative" as the possible justification of unjustifiable padding up and increasing the budget while the actual number of filings actually dropped 41% in just 9 years?
What is going on in New York?
Do more people leave the state than is officially reported?
Case filings in court dropping nearly TWOFOLD in just 9 years?
Access to court blocked by courts artificially by different tricks, for judges to have less work?
Just when judges pushed through (with the help of attorneys and bar associations judges control through control of their law licenses) an increase of salary for themselves?
While THREE major whistleblower lawsuits were either settled or are pending at this time - whistleblowers being EMPLOYEES of the court system?

By the way, with the drop in filings, the increase in salaries, the increase in the budget, the pending lawsuits regarding misconduct of judges - and New York Court Officer Associations' demand that a new body be created to control budgetary spending of the court system, because the current oversight bodies are not to be trusted (say the insiders) - judges do not even have to "do their time", come to work on time and spend their work day where they are supposed to, in the courthouse, in the courtroom, doing their work.
There was a standoff - at least, as reflected in the media - this year between Governor Cuomo and his friend and nominee Chief Judge Janet DiFiore over whether judges should present to the public their time-sheets showing when they come and leave their workplace.
Cuomo finally ceded the fight to DiFiore, so now, as before, New York State judges do not have to show the public, the mere mortals (and the judges' employers, by the way), the paper trail proving that they actually work for that increased salary.
And still.
A 41% drop of case-filings in court in 9 years?
While New York judges
  1. do not want to tell the public whether they show up for work or not and how many hours they actually are PRESENT in the courthouse;
  2. despite having nearly 1/2 less work than 9 years ago, have upped their salaries, dramatically, with the help of their PR-slaves, attorneys whose livelihoods judges control, who testified in favor of the increase to the shadowy "judicial salary commission" - an unelected body engaged in unlawful legislation; 
  3. squash any kind of sexual harassment policies and get rid of employees who blow a whistle on sexual harassment and other types of judicial misconduct; and
  4. push to increase the budget, under the guise of different "excellence" initiatives, while there is less work for judges - because of fleeing population, or for other reasons that New York court system does not want to explore, and
  5. all those budget increases go exclusively to judicial salaries and perks - while support employees of the court get fired in alarming numbers, to the point that they had to call upon judges not to take the bench while being so understaffed?
So, was the New York Officers association correct in calling New York Court Administration and court system organized crime?




Even court attorneys have had enough - to the point of losing the fear of being fired and losing the licenses and speaking out, and recording judges, and filing lawsuits?
Even court officers unions calling the court system organized crime and demanding to put some money from budget increases towards support personnel, not just judges, their salaries for work without timesheets or accountability and their discretionary budgets they use without any oversight?
Even the usually timid-as-a-mouse New York Law Journal that is never raising a critical argument about a judge, no matter how bad a judicial decision or conduct is?
What is going on?




No discipline for SCOTUS Justice Kavanaugh: good or bad? The Trump litmus test continues

I have written on this blog many times that the election of Donald Trump has so far worked, and continues to work, as a litmus test for many ways of how the American government works, on federal and state levels.

Certain things which the law permitted the previous administrations to do, somehow becomes not permissible under this administration.

Certain things that were wrong - but not noticed - under the previous administrations, became more visible just because Trump is doing it.

I am planning a detailed overview of this phenomenon, but in this particular article I wanted to point out one extraordinary feature of the "Trump litmus test":  it has shed a light on the U.S. Supreme Court and what is very wrong about its operation over the last 100 years.

First of all, with the death of Justice Scalia (and unlawful filibustering by the Republican Senate of a nomination to SCOTUS by President Obama) and retirement of Justice Kennedy, Trump has got to fill two seats so far on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Same as President Obama, same as all presidents before him, President Trump has avoided as a plague in fitting the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, the last resort in death penalty cases - candidates with criminal defense background.

The only people who have criminal law experience on that court are former prosecutors.  

Of the 9 current justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, 


  1. Stephen Breyer;
  2. Clarence Thomas;
  3. John Roberts (The Chief Justice):
  4. Ruth Ginsburg;
  5. Samuel Alito;
  6. Neil Gorsuch;
  7. Sonia Sotomayor;
  8. Elena Kagan;
  9. Brett Kavanaugh,
the only U.S. Supreme Court justice who does not have prior experience as a prosecutor is Ruth Ginsburg, and yet, Ruth Ginsburg's experience as a law professor and general counsel for ACLU between 1973 and her nomination to the bench in 1980 is not the equivalent of a background in criminal defense, since the ACLU has never undertaken criminal defense, and Ruth Ginsburg in particular did not work as a criminal defense attorney.

I thoroughly dislike Hillary Clinton and did not vote in the previous presidential elections because I did not see good presidential candidates in either of the candidates running in 2016.



President Trump, so far, also disappointed, having nominated to the court 2 white males, both former prosecutors, having so far confirmed the trend portraying background in criminal defense or civil rights litigation as a disqualification for public office (only one justice on the U.S. Supreme Court has a qualification in civil rights litigation, and NONE - in criminal defense).  Once again, this court handles criminal cases, and, especially, death penalty cases.

With NO justices having prior experience in criminal defense, while 8 justices having experience (and indoctrination) in prosecution, and the mentality of people having "enjoyed" prosecutorial immunity - which corrupts prosecutors' minds and drives them to score convictions, without regard whether the law is followed, with an eyes on the prize, career advancement.

For 8 out of 9 U.S. Supreme Court justices, prosecutorial positions did bring a career advancement, to the top of the American government, a lifetime appointment to a position where there are no job requirements, no accountability and an unlimited power over life and death (literally), people's fates, property, and over setting the law in the entire country - without authority for doing that in the U.S. Constitution, but by "well-settled" custom.

Since 1925, SCOTUS has asked - and received - from the U.S. Congress the gift of not having to review all petitions filed with the court, on the merits.

A SCOTUS judge is the only position where the judge does not have to preside over court cases other than impeachment of the President (applicable only to the Chief Judge of SCOTUS) and does not have to discharge functions other than administrative (swearing in highest officers of the U.S. Government).

Otherwise, there is no minimum of cases to review per year for SCOTUS.

If SCOTUS chooses no cases for review in a given year, they have a right to do that, too.  Nobody can make them accountable for refusing to review the absolute majority of cases (7920 out of 8000 filed, and then, we do not have official statistics of how many cases are REALLY filed published by the U.S. Supreme Court, only approximate numbers).

Cases that SCOTUS does take for review "coincidentally" are filed predominantly by 70 attorneys, the so-called "Echo Chamber", most of them having some kind of connection to the court (former clerks etc.).

Nothing too crooked.

Judges accept gift from parties and attorneys - for themselves and for their law clerks.

Periodically scandals flare about particularly corrupt gift-taking, but no impeachment of a U.S. Supreme Court Justice occurred on that ground so far, and the U.S. Supreme Court does not have a code of judicial conduct, but does have a code of silence for its clerks and a code of PERSONAL loyalty of clerks to justices, which has nothing to do with the U.S. Constitution that gives to justices their power, within its strict boundaries.

Justice Scalia was "found dead" at a remote Texas ranch with personnel speaking only Spanish, the ranch belonging to an individual who has had prior litigation with the U.S. Supreme Court that ended up in his favor.

The duck-hunting trip of the same Scalia with a party in litigation also did not result in discipline for Scalia.

Scalia's friend on the court Justice Ginsburg, while spewing open hatred to the current President, and having done so since before his elections, continues to preside over cases where he is a party, without recusal.



While President Trump is being investigated for "Russian collusion" by a special counsel, nobody investigates SCOTUS justices when they travel or lecture while paid by foreign governments.

In 2015, foreign sponsors paid (bought) U.S. Supreme Court justices for the following:

Roberts - lectures in Japan;
Ginsburg - lectures in South Korea; Switzerland
Kennedy with spouse - Austria;
Kagan - Israel;
Breyer - Great Britain

Ginsburg and Alito were paid by lawyers' organizations to travel abroad in 2015,

Ginsburg - to the Great Britain (paid for by the American College of Trial Lawyers), 

Alito - to the Dominican Republic, paid for by the Federal Bar Council - 

by organizations of attorneys APPEARING in front of these judges.

SCOTUS judges who reject the majority of incoming petitions, have time for side jobs.

For example, in 2015, the following side jobs were reported by SCOTUS judges (I summarized this information from justices' releases obtained by a watch-group on a Freedom of Information Request),  I have printouts of  copies of justices' actual financial disclosures for 2015 are on file.

Anthony M. Kennedy McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific  $                   12,500.00
Anthony M. Kennedy Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
Clarence Thomas Horatio Alger Association
Clarence Thomas Creighton University School of Law  $                   15,000.00
Clarence Thomas George Washington University School of Law  $                   10,000.00
Clarence Thomas J. Reuben Clark Law School - Brigham Unviersity  $                      2,225.00
Clarence Thomas The Daily Caller  Salary 
Clarence Thomas Liberty Consulting, Inc.  Salary and benefits 
Ruth Ginsburg Trust Article Fourth U/W Martin D. Ginsburg, Trustee
Ruth Ginsburg University of Michingan - Tanner Lecturer  $                   10,000.00
Samuel Alito ABA Advisory Committee on the Law Library of Congress
Samuel Alito Member Honorary Board of the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in the United States
Samuel Alito University of Kentucky  $                      6,000.00
Samuel Alito Duke University Law School  $                   15,000.00
Elena Kagan Harvard Law School
Elena Kagan President and Fellows of Harvard College  $                   15,000.00
Stephen Breyer Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Stephen Breyer The Pritzker Architecture Prize
Stephen Breyer Penguin Random House LLC, Royalty Income  $                 116,774.61
Stephen Breyer The authors Registry, Inc; Royalty Income  $                         384.93
Stephen Breyer Penguin Random House LLC, Nonemployee compensation $5,000

Note that, when SCOTUS Justices are paid lecturers in colleges and universities, they were disqualified from hearing immigration cases where colleges and universities were claiming standing and injury from Trump administration's "travel ban".

None of them recused.

And none of that became a burning issue in the American media or for the American public.

No "emolument clause" was invoked, no demonstrations held in the streets, no lawsuits filed and no criminal or impeachment investigations commenced.

In fact, complaints against U.S. Supreme Court justices die on filing - because NOBODY "under the law" in the United States may discipline a SCOTUS justice.


One might say that complaints against Justice Kavanaugh were politically motivated - since he was on the federal bench for 12 years, from 2006 to 2018, with no complaints filed against him.

The trigger for the complaints was not the judge's behavior, but him having been nominated by President Trump who certain people want to filibuster no matter what he does.

From that point of view, complaints against Kavanaugh, likely, did not have merit and were unfair.

But, that is not the point I am making here.

The point I am making is that the complaints, fair or unfair, meritorious or not, were not even REVIEWED by federal judges - BECAUSE Judge Kavanaugh has become a U.S. Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh, and as such, unreachable by judicial discipline.

He (and his 8 associates) have a job that has

  1. no requirements of a minimum caseload;
  2. a marble palace and a practically unlimited budget - for 9 people to review court cases, for which the same court had, initially, a single room in the Capitol building;
  3. plenty of time to go, during business hours, to 
    1. talk to law students;
    2. talk to bar associations (all expenses paid for travel and accommodations);
    3. write books, sell them and advertise them;
    4. lecture for money;
  4. an ability to allow themselves to accept gifts in money and in kind for themselves and for their personnel from parties and counsel in litigation, and from foreign governments and entities - 

with NO ACCOUNTABILITY whatsoever.

The "phenomenon" of no discipline for a U.S. Supreme Court Justice BECAUSE he is a U.S. Supreme Court Justice was caught by the media because the complaints were against a Trump-nominated Justice.

But, the same applies to all other judges of this court.

Isn't it time to demand from the newly-elected democratic House in the U.S. Congress to stir up this sinecure that has nothing to do with the authority given to this court (a limited authority, mind) by the U.S. Constituion, and to re-establish this court the way it was planned by the "Founding Fathers" in the first place - 

not as a lifetime graft-making sinecure without any accountability and unlimited power, 

but a court of law that must resolve ALL incoming petitions on the merits.

If they do not have enough justices to review all incoming cases - expand the court.

If we have 150 justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, and if they have a strictly enforceable code of conduct, limited terms and a prohibition on making laws, and on accepting gifts of ANY KIND from the public and especially from foreign governments, entities and individuals - maybe, then, we will look the way we declare ourselves to be, a democracy?

Because the way SCOTUS is set up now smacks of a monarchy.