Little does the appellant know that no such review is to be given to him, for all his money - and especially when his filing fee is waived and when he is allowed to proceed as a poor pro se person.
The interesting part is that the judge, after 35 years on the federal bench, claimed that "most of pro se cases must fail".
And that - while supposedly advancing his new project, a law firm "protecting" pro se individuals from discrimination.
You know what THAT last statement means?
It means that if a pro se (without a lawyer) appellant files an appeal, with (or without) a filing fee in a federal appellate court, he expects a service from the court - that a JUDGE will read his materials and make a decision based on them.
But instead, the judge does not read his materials.
Instead, 1st-year law graduates, "staff attorneys", whose names do not appear on the court decision, who were never nominated by the U.S. President or confirmed by the U.S. Congress to decide judicial cases, are drafting judge's opinions and making "recommendations" as to how to decide each pro se case.
And, federal appellate judges actually do not see the original materials, but see only the chewed-up and filtered version provided to them by the youngsters.
Imagine - judges decide your appeals WITHOUT READING your arguments.
Imagine if, on a visit to a doctor, the nurse takes your pulse, vitals and some health history and then tells you that the doctor will not see you, but will rely upon the nurse's recommendations of how to diagnose you.
That is exactly what happens in federal courts - and Judge Posner, while "fighting" for the rights of pro se parties (while at the same time demeaning them by saying that most of their cases are meritless, and that they have a low IQ, just because they cannot afford an attorney and because they still try to gain a legal remedy for themselves on their own.
As to the "low IQ" of pro se litigants, the 7th Circuit supervising staff attorney quoted Richard Posner's recent book "Reforming
Here is a fuller quote:
"whenever a judicial panel denies relief other than by issuing an order or opinion after full briefing and oral argument, the order denying relief should include an explanation of the reason or reasons for the denial. The explanation should be supplemented either by the staff attorney’s initial recommendation to the panel or by a supplemental memo by the staff attorney intended to amplify the explanation for the decision. I say staff attorney rather than judge because many (though not all) federal appellate judges don’t have the patience, or even the insight, to communicate effectively with a person (the typical pro se litigant) who lacks a good educational background and a reasonably high IQ."
Posner, Richard. Reforming the Federal Judiciary: My Former Court Needs to Overhaul Its Staff Attorney Program and Begin Televising Its Oral Arguments (Kindle Locations 576-581). Kindle Edition.
This is a judge who "awoke from slumber" after 35 years of discriminating and demeaning the poor litigants, and is not demeans them by selling a book and by promoting his own law firm that is supposed to protect people the judge demeans from discrimination.
First, Posner's "recommendation" is that when judges decide pro se appeals without reading them, through the filter of 1st-year law graduates, staff attorneys, that judges do not even have to provide an explanation of their decision to the appellant, but should simply attach a "recommendation by the staff attorney" why the decision BY THE JUDGE was made the way it was made. So, the 1st year law graduate know better why a judge decided the case this or that way, after all, the judge's signature on the youngster's draft of the order is just a formality - not the judge, but the youngster read the appeal and decided it by drafting the order.
Second, Posner equates lack of money to hire an attorney - which is the characteristic of most of Americans - with lack of educational background and low IQ.
Imagine the arrogance.
Only a law degree equates to a proper "educational background".
If you do not have 3 years of half-baked courses consisting of reading US Supreme Court cases and listening to a law professor putting your classmates and yourself on the spot with the so-called "Socratic method" of teaching, questions and answers, you cannot be deemed educated - or of an appropriate IQ,
The judge does not obviously care that it is these "low-IQ" people who hired him as a judge and paid his salary for 35 years out of their taxes.
To equate low IQ with a lack of law degree is a special level of arrogance.
Recently, a Penn Law professor was ousted of mandatory 1st year programs for stating that African American law students never graduated in the top quarter of their class - and that was done without publishing statistics that would rebut the professor's statement.
In other words, the public outcry was because of the perceived presumption by a law professor that African Americans are less clever than non-African American law students.
There is no public outcry as to what retired Judge Posner said though - even what he said, and in the context of the circumstances, of his own background, what he said was no less offensive.
Judge Posner has been regulating the absolute attorney monopoly for court representation for 35 years as a judge.
The 7th Circuit has its own "bar" that Judge Posner regulated - as a legislator, investigator, prosecutor and adjudicator all wrapped in one.
That attorney monopoly CREATED the situation where the majority of Americans cannot afford an attorney, and produced, of necessity, the numbers of pro se litigants and pro se appeals.
Moreover, Judge Posner is part of the problem also in that his court repeatedly sustained chilling sanctions against civil rights attorneys for brining novel constitutional arguments, as it is happening across the country, sanctions that intimidated such attorneys from representation of victims of constitutional violations in civil rights cases, forcing people into a "choice" - to represent themselves in court, or to give up on even a possibility of a legal remedy.
Having caused the crisis of access to justice, Judge Posner has the audacity to now say that those people who STILL, against all odds, had the courage and determination to pursue their legal remedies in court without an attorney who they either cannot afford or who is intimidated by the prospect of sanctions for representing such people, simply for raising novel constitutional arguments in court, those people are either lack educational background or are dumb (have low IQ).
You do not have a law degree and a law license, you are "unrich" and cannot afford to pay thousands upon thousands of dollars to an attorney = you lack educational background and you have a low IQ, (c) Richard Posner.
And, you are not even entitled to have a judge read your appellate documents. A fresh law graduate, a privileged kid without any life experience, a staff attorney, will be enough of a "judicial review" for you - and the "fighter for pro se rights" Judge Richard Posner insists that it should remain this way, judges should not read pro se appeals. After all, they are mostly meritless, and written by poorly educated and low-IQ people.
You may be a Stephen Hawking, but, without a law degree, you are still a dummy for Richard Posner.
For Richard Posner,
So, if you cannot afford to pay thousands of dollars to an attorney, you are "lower down on the social scale" for Richard Posner - or other federal judges, and because you are a second-rate appellant, Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment or not, you will be provided a second-rate justice, you will not get a judge to read your "pro se materials", you will not get a judge to decide your "pro se materials" and you will not get a judge to even explain those "pro se materials", the youngsters whose names you will never know will do that for the judges, as a courtesy to them - to save them the unsavory task of dealing with you, your "lower social scale", "lower educational background" and "lower IQ".
I do not see outrage in the media about this blatant deprivation of masses of Americans of legal remedy by courts, where judges are both regulators of lawyers and licensed lawyers themselves, of a statutory right to appeal because they cannot afford to hire a member of the judge's own profession.
That is some sort of punishment.
You can afford to pay for the member of my profession - I will read you appeal and decide it myself.
You cannot afford to pay for the member of my profession - I will diagnose you and order your treatment without seeing you, just upon what the nurse tells me to do.
I wonder whether we need such arrogant "public servants" who establish such arrogant and discriminatory "rules".
And, as to Posner himself, with such "friends" as Posner, with his brazen elitist down-his-nose views of any non-lawyers, and especially of the indigent and pro se litigants he claims he is "fighting for" now (to sell more of his books and to remain in the spotlight), pro se litigants in federal courts do not need enemies.
No comments:
Post a Comment