Opposition To Judicial Elections Ignores Reality
August 12, 2009
Yesterday, Shira of JudgesOnMerit.org praised a Huffington Post op-ed by a retired federal judge which proclaimed that the election of judges is unacceptable and akin to an American Icon contest. Specifically, Shira decries the “lack of relevant information available to voters.”
As I discussed back in June, Shira and Sarokin’s preferred alternative-judicial selection-suffers from an even more impenetrable lack of information, and therefore accountability. At the time I praised the Wall Street Journal’s recognition of necessary reforms to Tennessee’s merit selection process:
That reform, along with requiring the commission to come out from behind closed doors and meet in public, is ‘a good first step toward bringing transparency and accountability to those judging the judges.’
All sides of this debate can agree that there have always been “unseemly” interests seeking to influence the outcomes of judicial decisions. Neither system can extinguish this phenomenon. The question is which provides better accountability. Unelected boards operating in sometimes near-secret conditions can hardly be a better alternative to public elections-even if many people don’t take the time to study all the available information on their candidates.
If we take Shira’s position to its logical conclusion, shouldn’t we stop electing other local officials too? Certainly the election of school board members, mayors, and city councilmen must suffer from the same information shortages and ugly politicking. If judicial selection proponents have such little faith in the American voters, why bother with democracy at all?
Posted by Dan Pero in the categories: Judicial Elections
One Response to “Opposition To Judicial Elections Ignores Reality”
Shira of JudgesOnMerit.org infuriated me with the arrogant and “status quo, protecting” excuse for denying voters the right to vote judges in –, and out of power. Shira “decries the lack of relevant information available to voters” as the reason why voters are too ignorant and out of touch to intelligently vote judges in and out of power. What an arrogant, infuriating, hypocritical and status quo protecting “cop out” that rhetorical charade is.
Shira “neglected to reference the fact” that the lawyers and judges themselves enjoy the exclusive, enviable” and self endowed authority to conveniently and covertly blindfold the electorate to the crucial and “relevant information” regarding a judge’s (and a lawyer’s) dirty laundry. Their ethics and formal complaint and disciplinary histories are generally suppressed or censored as “privileged and protected information” which is the “the relevant information” that Shira apparently references. .If that sounds like “double talk politics as usual” that’s because it is.
All 50 state attorney owned, controlled and operated “fox guarding the chicken house” attorney/judge “discipline” bureaucracies lock the “relevant information” that Shira covertly references “out of the sight and reach” of the electorate which is denied any consisent, effective and meaningful role in the attorney/judge accountability, oversight and discipline process..
Shira is well aware of that but he assumes that we the non lawyer types are all too unlearned, stupid and ill informed to understand that very sinister, self serving and toxic element of legal and judicial tyranny.
The fallout of locking the referenced “relevant information” out of the sight, reach and possession of the electorate has saddled our society with a secretive, sinister, self serving, self policed beast that Americans -, on both sides of the law -, harbor an escalating and hostile mistrust and contempt for -, and with very good , painful and costly reason.
Legally and judicially mandated, manipulated and dictated “electorate ignorance” denies the electorate the “tyranny insurance” transparency, visibility and accountability in the most secretive, “sovereign, self policed” and powerful profession and bureaucracy in our government.
The suppression of “relevant information” such as formal complaints and the disciplinary history of attorneys and judges protects a lot of unscrupulous, “slickey boy” attorneys and corrupt or compromised judges who “infect” our civil and criminal justice system. That translates into a “free wheeling, free enterprise racket with the power of law and with no checks and balances” aka no transparency and accountability to-, or restrain-ability by the electorate. The unchecked and unstoppable judicial juggernaut of malicious, frivolous lawsuits resulting from “the fox guarding the chicken house” is crushing the assets the spirit and respect for the law out of thousands of powerless prey Americans .
I am a veteran of two malicious, frivolous and meritless lawsuits in which both plaintiffs were serial litigant professional plaintiffs with absolutely horrible domestic, civil and criminal histories. One was mob enforcer, contract killer and loan shark Federal Prisoner Harold “Kayo” Konigsberg.
Konigsberg sued me for $175,000.00 for “defaming his good name and reputation by allegedly referring to him as a thug, threatened my family and via his attorney Frank Lopez procured four 8×10 photos of my four year old daughter playing in our yard (See The Gorilla Cowed His Keepers in the June 25, 1971 issue of Life Magazine) Those photos were found in and confiscated from his federal prison cell. Only by the Grace of God, a handful of loyal colleagues, Life Magazine and national media publicity did my family and I escape tragedy by putting the kowtowing, “kid glove” bureaucrats and a Federal Judge in the national spotlight. Naturally I suffered some “bureaucratic backlash” but in the end publicity, not the system saved my family from tragedy and saved my job. It did that by making that Federal Judge and the Bureaucrats afraid to “discipline” my colleagues and I with anything more a punitive IRS audit and a promotion sabotaging “not a team player” notation on my next performance rating.
My second experience as a defendant in an ongoing Wilson County Kansas District Court frivolous lawsuit Case #2006-CV-25 now in the Kansas Appellate Court as Case# 102665 is still creeping though the process. This plaintiff is also a serial litigant, professional plaintiff whose civil and criminal record in the Littleton-Denver, Colorado area under both his birth name and his alias is extensive and infuriating. But he is an “Eternal Life Golden Goose” for the frivolous lawsuit attorneys not only because he consistently “employs them and shares the spoils” but because he recruits lawsuits for and drives business to them in return for a “kickback” or legal services and representation at http://www.dial4lawyer.com Thus far this serial litigant and disgruntled heir has cost us over $60,000 in attorney fees thus far defending our father’s “last wishes” as expressed in two duly prepared and recorded Transfer On Death Deeds.
As the defendant in these cases I have acquired some “relevant information” that most as yet “un-sued members” of the electorate are unaware of but which many of them are destined to learn much to their sorrow”. Not a penny of that $60,000 is tax deductible. But the Trial Lawyers are currently going after a multi billion dollar annual “tax break” on their “trial expenses”.
Ivan L. Fail, Sparta, Missouri
ilf@centurytel.net