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.


Wednesday, June 6, 2018

On integrity of prosecutors and regulators of prosecutors, Pennsylvania-style. Time for voters to stop being disenfranchised in the choice of their prosecutors

Oh, the supremely honest Supreme Court of the State of Pennsylvania.

The court that kept NOT disciplining as an attorney the judge who was selling - for years - kids into kiddie prisons, until the feds locked him up for over 20 years.  And instead disciplining attorneys who reported judicial misconduct so viciously that attorneys preferred to let kid-selling continue rather than lose their licenses and livelihoods.

By the way, the kid-selling judge, when sued by his victims, was still declared immune, because of the "law" that judges invented for themselves - a gift of absolute judicial immunity barring victims of their misconduct and corruption from obtaining a legal remedy for their injuries in court.

“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. 

Oh, the court of supreme integrity, which repeatedly allowed a prosecutor who obtained a death penalty through prosecutorial misconduct, to preside over the same case as a judge, block the condemned TO DEATH prisoner from habeas corpus relief and even have the audacity in authority special opinions blasting the federal defenders who would not shut up defending the condemned-to-death-person against the judge (former prosecutor) own misconduct.

Which allowed a judge who was the target of an elected State Attorney General's investigation (and who had to later resign and pay a fine because of his misconduct that the State Attorney General was investigating) to yank the State Attorney General's law license in order to disenfranchise the State of Pennsylvania voters and remove the State Attorney General from her office.

And which refused to reinstate the law license because it was taken with the help of the target of the Attorney General's official investigation - Judge Michael Eakin, and in retaliation for that investigation.

And that repeatedly refuses to reinstate the law license of attorneys Andrew Ostrowski - who ran for the U.S. Congress on the platform of judicial reform and cleaning up judicial corruption, and of Don Bailey, the former State Auditor, who, using his skills as the former State Auditor, investigated judges and claimed judicial corruption - for which claim he was disbarred.

And that invented a "rule of law", contrary to a state statute, that lay representation of indigent (poor) unemployed before the Pennsylvania Unemployment Compensation Board is allowed by statute - but not if the lay representative is a suspended or disbarred attorney, for those buggers such a lay representation will mean "unauthorized practice of law".  Thus, the extremely honest Pennsylvania Supreme Court has changed a criminal statute to mean different things for different people - exactly what is prohibited in the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Attainder clauses (2 of them, for the federal government and for the states), which every single judge of that honest court was sworn to uphold.  So that lawyers who were stripped of their livelihood for their big mouths - publicly raising the issue of corruption of their own regulator - will remain forever tarred-and-feathered and impoverished, without any possibility to earn a living with their skills, while the population desperately needs their skilled services.

THAT honest court now is investigating a prosecutor, for ex parte communications with a former judge.

Now, prosecutors routinely engage in ex parte communications with judges, and are never disciplined.

Why the extremely honest Pennsylvania Supreme Court turned its radar towards prosecutor Stacy Parks Miller?


Easy.

Publicity.

She has caused publicity.


Note that obligations to the public are not mentioned, what is mentioned is violations of a public prosecutor's supposed obligations "to the Board, court and the legal profession".

And those obligations supposedly trump a court-imposed gag order, since the public prosecutor was ordered in a disciplinary proceeding to disclose what a court, another court, prohibited her to do.

So, she had a Catch-22 - disclose it, and be sent to jail for contempt of court.  Do not disclose it, and be stripped of your law license and public office - same as Kathleen Kane was (aided by a fabricated criminal case).

What is wondrous with all of that happening is how people continue to tolerate those jerks ruling access of the public to court at their own personal whim.

A SECOND FEMALE public prosecutor, elected public official, is being yanked out of office through a closed-doors, no-public-allowed disciplinary process.

She may have done something wrong.  But then, the same standards should be applied evenly across the board, and for public officials there is only ONE way to go out of office - impeachment.

Without it, disciplinary process operated by the public officials' competitors or people who she investigate or may investigate in the near future, have no right of undermining her public status.

And, it is time for the Pennsylvania voters to change their state Constitution to remove requirement that any public official should be also an attorney and to actually prohibit such a thing - to prevent cancelling voters' decisions through backyard deals.




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