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.
Friday, June 1, 2018
A Freedom of Information Act inquiry was sent to the ABA for the roster of its members
Just go to their website and see that membership in this organization is under a login and a password.
Nevertheless, this Illinois corporation with foreign membership and funded with foreign money (membership fees and donations from foreign members) regulates in the entire United States the very public function of access to justice guaranteed by the Petitions Clause of the 1st Amendment and by the Due Process Clauses of the 5th and the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Without approval of legal education from this Illinois corporation - through accreditation of law schools - no law school graduate can be allowed by state regulators (Boards of Regents, the judiciary) to sit for the licensing exam, called "the bar exam" in the United States.
And, no individual is allowed to represent another individual in court, for free or for money, without a law license - where approval of this Illinois corporation with foreign membership and capital is the condition precedent to even apply for a law license.
Moreover, the ABA undertakes to recommend to Presidents of this country appointments of judges in federal courts, up to the U.S. Supreme Court, thus playing a crucial part in the U.S. politics and government.
For that reason, membership in the ABA, in view of its very public functions, should be the matter of public record.
With that in view, I have filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the ABA, under the laws of the State of Illinois where the ABA is incorporated.
I will publish the ABA's response in this blog.
Stay tuned.
Tuesday, April 10, 2018
On the rule of law in the United States - the way the public sees it
- tout the "crime-fraud exception" to the attorney-client priviledge,
- claim that if an UNKNOWN judge ALLEGEDLY signed on an ALLEGED document - it must be the law and it must be well-grounded;
- approve of wholesale fishing expedition of the lawyer's files regarding his clients other than Trump in order to find "something criminal" there, and
- proudly announce that they have nothing to hide, they would greet the FBI to their lawyer's office and will happily allow the FBI to search through their files - and so should everybody else.
And, by the way - what is the name of that judge who allegedly signed the warrant?
I get only "hahas" from commentators who claim that it was signed by a judge - and, therefore, totally legal.
Whoever knows the name, please, drop me a line.
Thanks.
Tuesday, March 27, 2018
Like a good old wine
Here is the text of the lawsuit.
It is about verification of various records pertaining to corruption in the judicial and attorney regulation (also judicial) system in New York courts.
Of course, the lawsuit was blocked.
In this case, I sued David Peebles (judge).
The case was dismissed - before defendant even appeared in it - by NDNY court (Chief Judge) in 2014.
My state law license was suspended in 2015 by state court
My federal law license was ALLEGEDLY suspended in 2015 - because there is no public docket of the case, yet, I am listed as suspended, and Judge Norman Mordue threw me out of a case and denied me attorney fees in 2016 for 3.5 years of successful litigation against CPS because I am allegedly suspended. Even though secret court dockets are unconstitutional and hiding court docket is considered grave misconduct and scandalous behavior for courts - but what legality means, after all, for those who call the shots?
Correct. Nothing.
For Judge Peebles - who presided over the case where he was a Defendant, "authored" a motion to recuse without mentioning that he was a defendant in the case, and then, in 2016, together with his colleague Judge Norman Mordue, changed a statute, 42 U.S.C. 1988, and stripped indigent civil rights plaintiff of any hope of ever obtaining a representation of a civil rights attorney - in order to retaliate against me and to deny me 3.5 years' worth of attorney fees in a successful litigation against CPS on behalf of three clients.
For Monica Duffy - sued in this case for concealing records, filed another record after the lawsuit was filed, and is concealing it until now.
For Judge Mae D'Agostino - was sued for participation in a secret organization, I sought by the lawsuit to verify her participation.
The lawsuit was dismissed.
In 2016, through a FOIL request, I verified her participation in yet another secret-membership organization, New York State-Federal Judicial Council.
To this day, the 2nd Circuit is denying me information as to other judges in that Council, and access to the records of their meetings. Since Mae D'Agostino (and other judges sued in this lawsuit) were deciding my lawsuits against judges, it was very relevant information that she did not disclose, that she may have been a member of a committee where, together with defendants appearing in front of her in a civil action, she was deciding that same civil action (fixing a court case).
And, in 2018, an attorney from California, Linda Shao, filed a petition for certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court, filed a motion to recuse the entire U.S. Supreme Court (with the exception of its newest addition, Judge Neil Gorsuch), and went public and gave a videotaped interview to a journalist about disqualifying conflicts of interest of SCOTUS judges based on their participation in American Inns of Court and on sponsorship by AIC of their law clerks for annual all-expenses-paid month-long trips to England, while members of AIC appeared with cases in front of SCOTUS.
A good financial incentive for judges (law clerks who routinely write SCOTUS decisions instead of judges) to please attorneys appearing in front of SCOTUS, AIC members.
Disclosure of involvement of judges with American Inns of Court is what this "old wine" lawsuit was about.
And, of course, it was dismissed as "frivolous" - thrown out as a very, very, very dangerous thing.
Think about it - she wanted information that could show the true scope of judicial corruption in the country!
Now, access to such evidence can never be safe for a commoner.
And the commoner was denied access, and then punished.
Etc. etc. etc.
This "old wine lawsuit" makes for a very interesting reading 4 years down the road.
History is created before your own eyes.
It is like reading a manuscript.
It is like a good wine.
I guess, it will make for even more interesting reading some more years down the road.
Judges like writing memoirs and boasting after they retire - or when they give various interviews, or attorneys like to boast at times in various public settings.
Internet search is a wonderful invention to search for such records.
This lawsuit, like that old good wine, is waiting for its reinstatement based on new evidence.
And, this commoner has a lot of patience.
Funny though, how scared judges are that somebody, anybody, will access just LISTS.
Membership lists.
Of an organization that claims it exists to "promote excellency in the legal profession".
Monday, March 26, 2018
The arrogant retired judge Richard Posner demeans pro se litigants and confirms that there is no federal appellate judicial review for pro ses in the U.S. - and that so it should remain
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.
And that "judges aren't actually to read the pro se materials".
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.
Retired Judge Richard Posner's interview: only 1% of criminal cases in federal courts are tried
The interview contains so many interesting (including outrageous) revelations that it is worth dedicating it a whole series of blog articles.
I will start with statistics of trials in criminal cases in federal courts that retired Judge Posner revealed - only after he stepped off the bench, of course.
It is 1%.
About the masochistic nation that loves to dance on rakes and loves punishment. A 230-year-old warning of the King-like powers of the U.S. Supreme Court
"I do not object to the judges holding their commissions during good behaviour. I suppose it a proper provision provided they were made properly responsible. But I say, this system has followed the English government in this, while it has departed from almost every other principle of their jurisprudence, under the idea, of rendering the judges independent; which, in the British constitution, means no more than that they hold their places during good behaviour, and have fixed salaries, they have made the judges independent, in the fullest sense of the word. There is no power above them, to controul any of their decisions. There is no authority that can remove them, and they cannot be controuled by the laws of the legislature. In short, they are independent of the people, of the legislature, and of every power under heaven. Men placed in this situation will generally soon feel themselves independent of heaven itself."
Not only the nation dances on rakes, but it loves its own punishment - as shown by the worship of the "notorious RGB" who notoriously defies any restriction of legal ethics on her behavior as a judge, including
- fixing court cases against parties she hates,
- refusing to recuse from cases of parties whose cases in courts below she fixed and who she publicly blasted and expressed hatred about, not to mention
- accepting money from foreign nations and
- selling shirts with the judge's own image while expressing how she misses the previous U.S. President while presiding over the litigation against the current U.S. President - whom she openly and publicly hates, to the point of "choosing" her speaking addresses in such a way that the media would have an opportunity to harass the President's child.
Look at the number of "likes", "loves", comments (mostly worshipping) and shares of this image.
And all that worship of people trampling the U.S. Constitution is done in the name of loving the U.S. Constitution.
That's what Brutus could not foresee 230 years ago - that people will love for their rights to be taken away from them and will worship violators of the U.S. Constitution.
If that is so, we do not need a Constitution.
Sunday, March 18, 2018
Published the first book on defense of parents in child abuse and neglect cases in New York Family Courts
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Update as of March 25, 2018: Amazon.com listed the book as a "#1 new release in Parent/Juvenile Family Law"
Here is the cover of the book, it is available right now in both the Kindle (electronic) format, and in a paper format on Amazon.com.
This subject is not taught in law schools and is not tested on bar examinations, so there is no guarantee for the parent, if the parent either hires an attorney or has an attorney assigned to him in court, that the attorney actually knows this area of law - because attorneys usually learn this law by either self-teaching or being mentored by other attorneys.
Buyers of the paper version of the book are allowed to get the electronic version of the book at a deep discount.
- analysis of what makes a court proceeding civil or criminal in nature, from a constitutional standpoint;
- analysis of several contempt and contempt-like statute that may be used against parents by Family Courts in order to put parents in jail for "non-compliance" with various court orders, a detailed analysis, based on mandatory precedents, of constitutionality of such statutes, and of constitutionality of Family Court practices in application of such statutes;
- verification what makes a contempt proceeding civil or criminal in nature, what is the difference in mandatory constitutional procedure, and how Family Courts often confuse or misuse criminal-in-nature contempt statutes under the guise of civil proceedings;
- constitutional issues involved in forced "evaluations";
- constitutional issues involved in forced drug-and-alcohol testing;
- constitutional issues involved in court orders giving social services a blanket authority to "supervise" parents and to order them to undergo any "evaluations" and tests at all, and procedures required by the Family Court Act and by the U.S. Constitution to be followed by courts to issue such orders;
- constitutional issues involved in branding parents "sex offenders" where they were never convicted (and often were never even charged) for a sex offense, the New York State policy of such branding that comes with a requirement to separate the so-branded parent from his children;
- constitutional issues of punishing parents for inability to pay for evaluations, or for asserting their true legal status as a non-sex offender;
- constitutional issues of punishing parents for any type of "noncompliance" by separating them from their children, or by threats of such separations;
- constitutional issues involved in forced speech of parents during the "civil" Family Court child abuse or neglect proceedings - in court-ordered evaluations and in forced testimony of parents, when they are called to testify against themselves at trial;
- constitutional issues involved in presence of criminal prosecutors in Family Court proceedings and of their access to record of such proceedings and of the central state child maltreatment register;
- constitutional issues and procedures related to three types of searches in Family Court - of the parent's home, body and mind.