…and there isn’t even a case before him!
I’m talking about Roberts’ recent out-of-court proclamation that federal judges should never be impeached; the remedy for bad decisions is the appellate process. As an attorney I don’t really disagree with that. But what does it mean that he SAID it?
Since when does a judge, ANY judge, from district magistrate up to SCOTUS, just step outside his courtroom to preemptively announce his legal position?
They can’t, amirite? You gotta find a plaintiff to initiate a lawsuit, or find a prosecutor to arrest, and charge the perp, follow the steps to obtain personal jurisdiction over the parties, hear the facts, and THEN the judge can assign liability or even enjoin conduct—order the party to actually do or stop doing something.
If a judge does express an opinion on certain conduct when he’s not on the bench, what he says and thinks is just a gratuitous statement, like we all utter every day.
If Boasberg were impeached by Congress, the Supreme Court wouldn’t get a chance to weigh in. There is no appeal. But I wonder: could
Boasberg get the articles of impeachment preemptively declared unconstitutional? Unheard of, as far as I know—but It would certainly be worth a shot now that he knows how Roberts would weigh in.
Strange things are happening on the flip side, too, with Trump’s executive orders directed at certain law firms—Perkins Coie, Paul Weiss. Oh they deserve it, esp. Perkins. But it still feels funny to me, kinda …attainderish.
AND YET: do you know about The 65 Project? A group of leftist private tourneys, funded by a “NGO” called Global Impact, whose sole raison d’être is to make sure any other private attorneys who represent Trump will be disbarred.
So yeah: I WANT to stick with the principle I learned in law school: everyone is entitled to zealous legal representation. The idea of a governmental agency punishing attorneys or law firms because of whom they’ve represented is repugnant.
BUT: what if the cause a party ( like The 65 Project) wants to advance is to PREVENT persons with whom they disagree from obtaining representation? Constitutionally speaking I reckon that’s okay; it’s only the state which may not suppress speech or thought. Private persons can and do do it all the time.
Our “ adversarial system” of justice was supposed to be like the Olympics: a clean competition, with nobody getting performance-enhancing assistance. All participants “amateurs” in the original root meaning of the word: lovers. Of the system itself. Attorneys do all they can for their clients, but primarily, we are all officers of the court, “Officers of the Law” would be a more accurate way of putting it.
Okay but we can’t ignore that the Lefty side of the bar has been on steroids for decades now, massive infusions of private cash poured into electing non-prosecuting prosecutors, and into groups like The 65 Project.
Trump is right, he is SO-morally and practically—right, to do what he’s doing. He’s the anti-Soros. He’s NOT a lawyer, so he isn’t hampered by the concerns I’ve expressed above.
But what hope has he got of doing it within the system? Wasn’t Boasberg the FISA court judge who let Clinesmith go on practicing law, even though it was undisputed that he had committed the ultimate trespass, the worst thing a lawyer can do: lied to a court—under oath?
Oh, Trump’s going to be impeached for a third time. I can see it coming.
And as for Roberts—okay, even if he shouldn’t be impeached because we don’t agree with the opinion he expressed in his recent ex cathedra bull—
Shouldn’t he be impeached just for gratuitously expressing it, thus irrevocably displaying bias in connection with cases bound to be coming before him soon, and as president justice, arguably tainting the other members of his bench?
Bishop Hooker wrote:
“Of the law no less can be said, than that her seat is the bosom of the LORD.”
Those words are engraved on the ceiling freize of Harvard’s Widener Law Library. Visiting there when my daughter was a student,I actually choked up reading that quotation.
In practice, though, unfortunately there’s no certiorari to the Almighty.
“we are here as on a darkling plain…”
I do not believe impeachment is the appropriate remedy for Roberts’ verbal promiscuity/incontinence. There is an alternative remedy available, which, if applied, might actually affect him. Congress may issue reprimands/condemnations or ‘sense of the Congress’ resolutions. Such a resolution might condemn his voicing ex-cathedra opinions regarding current matters before or likely to soon be formally before the courts. Such a resolution might remind him of his duty to recuse himself, should a case formally arise, about which he has voiced prejudice.
Would that it were so! As individual citizens, we are free to spend our hard-earned money any way we choose – no matter how ridiculous it might seem to other people. But I suspect that much of the money which has undermined public confidence in our “legal” system has come from us taxpayers. USAIDS is probably only the tip of the iceberg in how our rulers have used our own resources against us.
The solution, as CW suggests, would be for Congress to act in some manner. But if there is any entity in the US which has done more to undermine public confidence in itself than the Court system & the “legal” profession, it is Congress. Sadly, “representative democracy” has failed, and we are all going to have to endure the consequences.
I checked in with Alan Dershowitz. He agrees with Roberts’ statement in general (don’t impeach, appeal). But puzzlingly, he said there are some decisions which COULD be grounds for impeachment, for example, Dred Scott.
He didn’t elaborate as to why.
So: why?
This was 1857, before the Civil War and the 14th Amendment. Of course, it’s repugnant to all right thinking—and left-thinking—-American people today. But back then? We’d love to think everybody was an abolitionist but they weren’t. The fact is, we HAD slavery in this country at that time, because the European colonial powers foisted it on us; they had imported slaves and left ‘em here when they pulled out. A large portion of the country believed it was ok. As is often pointed out, our founders were slaveholders. SCOTUS had to come down on one side or the other. If this hadn’t been a contentious issue it never woulda gotten to the Supreme Court. I mean, legally, it just doesn’t seem the decision was THAT outta line, although from where we sit, it was very clearly on the wrong side of history.
But I wish I could ask Professor D: what in his opinion made that decision, not only legally erroneous, but impeachable?
A resolution of censure! Good thinkin’ good buddy! Like what they tried to do to Justice Alito because he was flying or had at one time flown the Gadsden flag at his home.
Whatever happened with that? I reckon like the baner in question, it, ah, “blew over”…?
Checking back with Article III, Section 1 of our much-ignored Constitution –
“The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behavior …”
So who defines what constitutes “good Behavior”? And did Roberts’ outburst constitute something other than “good behavior”? Clearly, the Supreme Court cannot be left to rule on its own behavior – that would leave the door open to a tyranny of the Judges. Of course, Congress can impeach a judge – but do they need to impeach? Could some devious attorney argue that a President has the power to remove a Supreme Court Justice who has fallen short of the standard of “good Behavior”? Just asking!
Dershowitz must be feeling the need to re-burnish his leftist credentials. There is really no other plausible rationale for impeachment over the Dred Scott opinion. Back then, before the new tablets were handed down to the Dems of the ‘60’s, who knew that “racism” was the WORST POSSIBLE SIN??, beginning from time immemorial and extending to infinity. From breaching the other 10 Commandments, one may be forgiven. So, when all is said and done, Dershowitz’ statement is incoherent - as least rationally.
BTW, I have long considered the origin of racism in terms of evolution (another sacred topic). There can be no doubt that during the vast majority of human existence, instantaneous recognition of tribal belonging was a matter of life and death. Visual pattern recognition of other human beings - at a distance - based upon superficial characteristics, was an ability highly preserved in the procreating population. In other words, recognizing superficial differences like skin color is a hard-wired instinct. How one responded was fight or flight. That’s what evolution gave us.
Unrecognized (and unheralded by the left, of course) is the tremendous moral good which arose in numerous decent societies. In those societies, altruism (another likely hard-wired instinct) was amplified and extended to include ever more people different from our selves or from our tribe. It became a moral norm to treat them decently (see: the Old Testament and the Gospels). In decent, morality-seeking groups, actual inclusivity was sought. Otherwise put, we got new software which countered the old hardware.
The left, ever at odds with reality, could not brook the scientific fact of underlying human tribalism. They cannot brook the fact that undoing of inborn prejudices (developed over scores of thousands of years of human evolution) took place imperfectly in the blink of an eye (evolutionarily speaking - remember, evolution is sacred).
So, is their response to celebrate humanity’s progress? Oh no! Heaven forbid. Instead, they derogate all prior societies lacking their supreme wisdom (the real “supremacists”) and spare no effort to amplify tribal and other differences; in fact, to manufacture differences even where none exist, so as to divide and conquer. And that, we’re instructed is “progressive”.
How’s that for the real roots of the Dred Scott decision and Dershowitz’ revisionist opinion that jurists of its time should have been impeached? No wonder leftists hate God. He left us originally imperfect by their standards; we should have been created incapable of racism (the only lefty sin).
Since always. The Court has been, and always will be, political. And it is in the nature of the political to announce one’s position loudly.
The mythology that the courts (small c) are somehow miraculously apolitical is a pretty lie that has no basis in reality. It is most plainly on display in jurisdictions where judges are elected but it doesn’t end there. How else can one explain the sudden change-of-heart on gay marriage? After millennia of a definitive understanding of the meaning of marriage, the courts had some kind of epiphany.
Everything is political; that is the message of the modern era. Modernity sux. Get used to it.
I don’t know all the details so maybe I don’t understand. I thought that Trump revoked their security clearance. Did he do anything else?
I thought the executive branch is the branch that granted security clearance? Is security clearance defined by law? Is there a listed set of criteria that if you meet the criteria you have clearance and a set of criteria that would cause you to loose clearance? If there is no law defining it, it not a punishment to not grant nor to revoke it.
I guess it says where we are as a nation when a privilege granted by the executive branch of government is as important as a right granted by the constitution.
I did not realize everyone kept their security clearance forever until Trump started to revoke them. It seemed obvious to me that once you left government service you would lose your security clearance. What purpose does it serve for an ex government employee to have a security clearance 20 years after they have left the agency? This just seems to be a security failure. If, for some reason, they are needed, a request can be made to provide them new clearance.
Only the little people have their clearances pulled at the earliest possible instant. Apparently, the beautiful people get to keep ‘em forever. In my world, if you no longer had TS-level work, you were downgraded quickly. Same goes for SCI. This, even though OPM had spent a fair amount of effort doing the enhanced background investigation: interviewing friends, ex-girlfriends, colleagues. I have to wonder if these others were subjected to the same scrutiny.
Sort of like votes huh?
Do you see why I suggest replacing government with a citizens dividend?
Or in the old days before Our Father who art in heaven became Our Lord, the seat of the law actually was in the bosom of the Laird.
Outside of that, well… Shall we talk about the border clans?
See why I keep trying to get people to think about WROL before it’s too late?
I’m sorry to say I knew only ONE lawyer that fit that bill, (present company in here excepted as I had not hired any to defend me).
The only one attorney I knew that would do all for his client died some years ago, The five or so that I employed to “do all they could for their client”, me, failed miserably.
They were in it for the money and did not defend me in my dealings with the courts.
Maybe they were silent as to not instill the wrath of the court, I think not.
Maybe I am wrongly influenced by the likes of the “Lincoln Lawyer”. Someone that would come to the defense of the innocent with a passion like those of the TV lawyers.
Sorry, I had to put my two cents in on this in this way, experiencing paying anywhere from $800 to a grand, one would think a lawyer would do more that show up at a magistrate or write a will that would not show them as a beneficiary.
What I have been wondering in connection with all these deportees is : was there ever a determination at which they had the opportunity to be heard, that they ARE here illegally? It could have been an administrative hearing,
The author admits illegals have no due process rights “beyond “ establishment of the fact that they are here illegally. “Beyond “ concedes that they do get due process AT that level.
That’s the problem with all these “asylum” claims. The criteria for getting asylum are actually quite narrow, most of these bozos have no chance of getting it. But in the meantime they’re free in this country.
The entire problem with our system boils down to admitting “asylum seekers” BEFORE their claim is determined. Under international law, they’re supposed to remain in the first country they pass through and consult the U.S. Embassy there. Once again the law doesn’t have to be changed, it just has to be enforced.
But “ours” is a culture in which fraud replaces force as the appeal of last resort in dispute processing. This is an inevitable consequence of The Word (ref my prior comment about “Our Laird”) replacing The Sword as The Last Resort under The Law.
Make words determine whose bloodline makes it into the future and you reduce words to mere weapons, and deprive them of their informative content beyond that conveyed by the actions of an adversary – hence the phrase “speech act” becomes central to our “discourse about discourse”.
No force, no enforcement – especially no enforcement of The Law against those who employ “our” culture’s artificial selection regime favoring fraud: Phony Asylum Seekers.
How DARE we oppose the entry of Our Betters – especially with that icky archaic force thing.
“What you have here are judges that are imposing national injunctions which the Supreme Court, including liberals like Justice Kagan, have objected to,” Turley said. “She said this is madness that you have all of these trial judges who are imposing national injunctions.”
“I think that the Trump administration is likely to win,” Turley said of the Supreme Court. “I also think the Trump administration is likely to prevail in most of these cases. I think that federal judges have overextended themselves. I think they have intruded into areas of Article II or presidential authority.”
Where were judges when most of these absurd policies were created - mostly by executive orders?? Once again, it shows the huge difference between control-freak liberals and live-and-let-live conservatives. The former are always “activist” in controlling others (by any means necessary, including under color of law), while conservative are “passivists”, believing in ‘live and let’ live’. We don’t live our whole lives - in other words - with an incendiary desire to rule over others.
No but maybe we better start (desiring to rule, that is). Remember when the whole trans thing got started? We shrugged and said, we really don’t care, knock yourselves out. And the Wokies’ response? “You will be MADE to care!”
Tru dat……