Another reason NOT to elect judges.

A pastor running for a Philadelphia judgeship (where you apparently don't have to have any legal training to sit on the bench) told potential donors a while back that they should contribute to his campaign for Traffic Court judge because they were "going to need [him]" later.

If Willie Singletary gets the job, (he is the Democratic nominee), he will have to walk to work or take public transportation since his driver's license is suspended until at least 2011 for owing (as of last April) $11,427.50 in fines for 55 violations including reckless driving, driving without a license, careless driving without registration, and driving without insurance.

From CBS News.

OMG! Chu Chu! EOM.

Robert Gillespie is a multitasker. He apparently can drink heavily, then drive and text messages to his friends at the same time. He just can't do them both very well as he found out when he looked up from the text message he was sending on his cell phone just in time to see the freight train he crashed into.

Another Darwin Awards wannabe.

This might be a good time for the plaintiff to see if that last offer is still on the table.

Anyone who has ever sat through an entire trial can appreciate this poor juror's frustration. I assume the judge had to boot the juror, but was probably nodding while he read this juror's letter, saying, "I'm with you, brother."

This is a transcription of the handwritten original;


Your Honor,

I am tired of spending day after day wasting my time listening to this bullcrap. This is cruel and unusual punishment. The plantif (sic) is an idiot. He has no case. Why are we here? I think my cat could better answer these questions . . . and he wouldn’t keep asking to see a document.

I’ve been patient. I’ve sat in these chairs for 7 days now. If I believed for a second this was going to end on Thursday I might not go crazy. This is going to last for another 4 weeks. I cannot take this. I hate these lawyers and prayed one would die so the case would end.

I shouldn’t be on this jury. I want to die. I want to die!! Well not die for real but that is how I feel sitting here. I am the judge, you’ve said that over and over, well I am not fair and balanced. I hate the plantif. His ignorance is driving me crazy. I know I’m writing this in vain but I have to do something . . . for my sanity. These jury chairs should come with a straight jacket.

An entire day today and we are still on the same witness. The defense hasn’t even started yet and we have 3 days left 3 days my ass. Not that the defense needs a turn considering the plantif and his lawyer (who looks like the Penquin (sic)) have no case!!!! Thanks for letting me get this off my chest. Please keep the disordelies (sic) nearby. I may need them.

Juror #5

Via iComo

What does Wagner's operatic hero Seigfried have in common with a psychopathic mass murderer? I don't know either.

The Vlaamse Opera (The Flemish Opera) is advertising its new production of "Siegfried" with a poster which includes a photo of a threatening Seung-Hui Cho. Cho is the man who murdered 32 of his fellow students at Virginia Tech in a rampage in April of this year.

I am not an opera fan and I suppose many opera companies are trying to fill seats by making the artistic medium more "relevant" but I don't find anything the least bit Wagnerian in the actions Cho and as far as I'm concerned, this poster is in very poor taste.

** Update - As of November 11, 2007, the picture of Cho pointing a gun had been removed from the opera's website.

*** Update #2 - As of November 26, 2007, the picture of Cho pointing his gun is not only back on the opera's website, it has been enlarged a bit.

Apparently being a wizard in Great Britain pays pretty well.

Robert Brett-Deans says he is a wizard but prefers to be known as "The Jason." Unfortunately The Jason finds himself in a spot of trouble with the local constabulary in Croydon.

What did the wizard formerly known as Robert Brett-Deans do? He's been charged with one count of conspiring to commit false imprisonment and two counts of possessing the proceeds of crime. Although The Jason has no fixed address, police found £500,000 ($1,000,000 US) in cash, along with sledgehammers, balaclavas, superglue, rope and batteries. I don't know if The Jason went to Hogwarts but despite having read all of J.K. Rowling's books, I have no idea what kind of spell would require ingredients like these but apparently the result is a lot of money.

Here's what The Jason told the Court:

I'm serious about everything I do. I am also a wizard of the Round Table and I am a master manipulator. In other words, I can do magic.

There will be no white flag going up on my ship and I will also help you all so I can put your minds at rest. I'm not playing games with you all. I do not play games.

In mythical terms, be careful in everything that you might do because you might just find yourselves opening Pandora's box and, as you might know, the only thing left in the box was hope.

To the police detectives, The Jason said "I wish you good luck because you will need it." So is he fit to stand trial? Yes, according to a psychiatric report. Is he a wizard? Well if he is, I guess he won't be in jail long.

What's in a name? For $25,000, apparently not much.

The University of California at Berkeley has a very good law school, long known far and wide in legal circles simply as as "Boalt Hall."

However, after some soul searching, University officials recently decided to change its name because of concerns that people outside the Bay Area did not know what "Boalt Hall" was. "We [were] looking for ways to more clearly identify the law school with Berkeley so that outside audiences will have a clearer sense of what we are," says the school's dean, Christopher Edley Jr.

This being California where association with the city of Berkeley actually is perceived as desirable, school administrators hired the San Francisco consulting firm, Marshall Strategy Inc., to help the law school select a new name that would be more clearly identified with Berkeley, According to its website, Marshall Strategy "helps all types of organizations develop successful identity strategies. This may involve re-positioning or revitalizing existing identities, creating new identities, or aligning brand portfolios." Or, Marshall can "align and rationalize identity portfolios for strategic effectiveness and cumulative impact," if that would help. "We are experts in creating meaningful names."

At a cost of $25,000, these re-branding artists conducted extensive interviews with alumni, students, donors and others in the community, and, after an undoubtedly lengthy process of rationalizing the school's identity portfolio to maximize strategic effectiveness and cumulative impact, UC Berkeley's school of law will now be known as (drum roll please)--

The "UC Berkeley School of Law."

In a happy coincidence, the school's new name happens to match what it has long been using on its diplomas.

Also coincidentally, Dean Edley has supported hefty fee increases at Boalt Hall, arguing that they are needed to attract top-quality faculty. Presumably the UC Berkley School of Law will require even heftier fee increases for the Marshall Strategy, Inc. advertising campaign designed to convince U.S. News & World Report that this law school they hadn't heard of before is actually a top tier school (actually, to be fair, U.S. News & World Report already uses what is now the new name in its rankings. This is more than can be said for the law school itself. Marshall Strategy's strategy to "update the brand portfolio" should probably have included updating the name on the website which as of this posting, still refers to the place as "Boalt Hall.")

Do the child labor laws apply to geniuses?

But I think this job probably pays better than the paper route I had!

In defense of judges (at least some of them).

In his conclusion of this post at his Judging Crimes blog, Joel asks the question "What better job than appellate judge for the person who feels a psychological need to win every argument but lacks the intellect to win any? He can pretend to win the argument by lying about the facts of the case and misrepresenting the arguments of counsel, and he can then enlist the entire apparatus of the judiciary to make his pretense seem real. And for such a superlatively bad judge, the simulacrum is the closest he's ever going to come to the real thing, so of course he seizes every opportunity to experience it."

Ouch!

He empirically refers to an appellate judge "from the right side of the map" that a friend of his practices in front of, which Joel describes as follows:

This particular judge, while viewed as harmless enough by most of the bar, has developed an interesting reputation among appellate practitioners: his published opinions are full of lies. When he can't refute the arguments of counsel, he misrepresents those arguments and then refutes the misrepresentations. When the facts are inconsistent with his position, he ignores them or makes up others. "When you read his opinions, you need to constantly remind yourself that there's no more than a 50/50 chance that he's describing the case honestly."

The judge is running little risk of having his lies exposed because most lawyers reading his opinions (and no one but lawyers will ever read them) know nothing about the case except what the judge himself has revealed. The only lawyers in a position to expose his lies fall into one of two camps: those who aren't going to risk their client's victory by complaining; and those whose complaints would sound like sour grapes - and would almost certainly provoke retaliation. (Bad judges hold conscientious counsel's clients hostage in that way.)

In theory, the other judges serving on the appellate panel could check this judge's lying. But why would they want to? What's in it for them? As Judge Richard Posner has pointed out, appellate judges benefit in multiple ways by raising no objections to their colleagues' opinions. Going along to get along is rewarded by increased leisure, while scruples only mean extra work.

Perhaps even more importantly, passivity maintains cordial relations among colleagues. If Judge X points out that Judge Y has misrepresented the facts, Judge Y will retaliate by dissenting from Judge X's next opinion, forcing Judge X to write crabbing footnotes in rebuttal, and so on, until someone boycotts the annual party and the feud becomes a real drag for everyone who works at the court.

You have to decide which is more important: justice for strangers, or a comfortable workplace for yourself. (Whenever an appellate judge starts talking about "collegiality" on the court, pay attention, because it's a coded confession: he or she is admitting that the judges run the court primarily for their own benefit.)

I know that judge bashing is any lawyer's favorite sport (I certainly engaged in plenty of it when I was a practitioner) and I don't doubt that there are judges on the bench that are just as incompetent, lazy or deceitful as Joel describes. However, on the (perhaps mistaken) assumption that the judge above is someone other than me (I do admit to residing on the "right side of the map"), let me gently suggest that many, dare I say even most, appellate judges don't fit Joel's implied generalization.

If only I could win every argument with my colleagues. I confess that I never thought of just misrepresenting the arguments and then just refuting the misrepresentations in the sure and certain knowledge that my colleagues would be too lazy and polite to correct me. Indeed, my own experience is that neither I nor my colleagues are the least bit reticent about actively challenging any errors of fact or law that find their way into draft opinions. While judges are human and thus fallible, if any judge in my jurisdiction developed a reputation for consistently writing opinions that were "full of lies," his or her colleagues on my court simply wouldn't stand for it. Our culture is that while a single judge may be the author of an opinion, it is the opinion of my court and we all collaborate to insure through rigorous peer review that our opinions reflect a high standard for factual accuracy and legal scholarship. Now obviously a losing party may not agree with that statement as far as their case is concerned but we meet annually as a court with representatives of various statewide and specialty bars as well as trial judges, and ask them to constructively criticize our work and they have not been shy about doing so.

Courts, including appellate courts, are in the customer service business and the quality and utility of what we produce ought to be of paramount importance. My only counterpoint to Joel's post is that while I don't take myself very seriously, I and most of my colleagues do take our job very seriously indeed so while Joel's accusations may be the true in some jurisdictions, it isn't true in all of them.