On August 10, 1993, as one of the requirements for becoming a United States Supreme Court justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg placed her hand on the Bible and spoke the following words:

I, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter.  So help me God.

Apparently the aged Supreme Court justice needs a refresher course on her solemnly sworn oath.  How else to explain the fact that she went on Egyptian TV and spoke disparagingly of the United States Constitution as a passé document that is no longer good enough to protect human rights?

Ginsburg, who has been rendering stultifyingly unintelligible liberal opinions since 1993, clearly doesn’t understand that the best and only way to protect human rights is to rein in government.  Otherwise, the government giveth and the government taketh away.  With the stringent controls in the Bill of Rights, and the checks and balances in the remainder of the Constitution, there would be nothing to prevent the United States government from having gone Chicago long before Obama took the oath of office.  And even now, Obama is ever so slightly constrained by at least the appearance of Constitutional propriety, something that buys us time (assuming he’s out of office by January 2013).

As a dues paying California lawyer, I periodically receive an email from the California State Bar offering random tidbits and squiblets of news some assumes California lawyers might find interesting.  The January edition intrigued me because of drive-by punditry that appeared in an ethics analysis of Judge Richard Posner’s latest decision.  I wasn’t paying attention, but Posner’s decision apparently has lawyers talking because as it takes very direct aim at a specific lawyer, and does so using rather broad humor.

There’s nothing new about a judge taking potshots at a lawyer.  One of the funniest (and meanest) opinions ever written comes out of a federal court in Texas and includes the foll0wing gems:

Before proceeding further, the Court notes that this case involves two extremely likable lawyers, who have together delivered some of the most amateurish pleadings ever to cross the hallowed causeway into Galveston, an effort which leads the Court to surmise but one plausible explanation. Both attorneys have obviously entered into a secret pact — complete with hats, handshakes and cryptic words — to draft their pleadings entirely in crayon on the back sides of gravy-stained paper place mats, in the hope that the Court would be so charmed by their child-like efforts that their utter dearth of legal authorities in their briefing would go unnoticed. Whatever actually occurred, the Court is now faced with the daunting task of deciphering their submissions.

With Big Chief tablet readied, thick black pencil in hand, and a devil-may-care laugh in the face of death, life on the razor’s edge sense of exhilaration, the Court begins.

[snip]

Plaintiff seems to rely on the fact that he has pled Rule 9(h) and stated an admiralty claim versus the vessel and his employer to demonstrate that maritime law applies to Phillips. This bootstrapping argument does not work; Plaintiff must properly invoke admiralty law versus each Defendant discretely. Despite the continued shortcomings of Plaintiff’s supplemental submission, the Court commends Plaintiff for his vastly improved choice of crayon — Brick Red is much easier on the eyes than Goldenrod, and stands out much better amidst the mustard splotched about Plaintiff’s briefing. But at the end of the day, even if you put a calico dress on it and call it Florence, a pig is still a pig.

Now, alas, the Court must return to grownup land.

[snip]

The Fifth Circuit has held that “absent a maritime status between the parties, a dock owner’s duty to crew members of a vessel using the dock is defined by the application of state law, not maritime law. Specifically, maritime law does not impose a duty on the dock owner to provide a means of safe ingress or egress. Therefore, because maritime law does not create a duty on the part of Defendant Phillips vis-a-vis Plaintiff, any claim Plaintiff does have versus Phillips must necessarily arise under state law. Take heed and be suitably awed, oh boys and girls — the Court was able to state the issue and its resolution in one paragraph … despite dozens of pages of gibberish from the parties to the contrary!

[snip]

After this remarkably long walk on a short legal pier, having received no useful guidance whatever from either party, the Court has endeavored, primarily based upon its affection for both counsel, but also out of its own sense of morbid curiosity, to resolve what it perceived to be the legal issue presented. Despite the waste of perfectly good crayon seen in both parties’ briefing (and the inexplicable odor of wet dog emanating from such) the Court believes it has satisfactorily resolved this matter. Defendant’s Motion for Summary Judgment is GRANTED.

[snip]

In either case, the Court cautions Plaintiff’s counsel not to run with a sharpened writing utensil in hand — he could put his eye out.

Bradshaw v. Unity Marine Corp., Inc. (S.D. Tex. 2001) 147 F.Supp. 2d 668.

Bradshaw is a remarkably savage opinion, and one that will follow plaintiff’s attorney to the end of his career.  It is also, quite possibly, deserved.  After all, there are myriad decisions in which courts have chastised, sanctioned and even disbarred attorneys for poor or despicable behavior.  Bradshaw stands out only because it adds the humiliation of being laughed at to what is probably a deserved reprimand.  (Lord knows, I’ve appeared opposite attorneys who operate on the “bury someone under paper” principle, an approach that invariably generates, not just dozens, but thousands of pages of gibberish.)

Judge Richard Posner therefore did nothing out-of-the-ordinary when he delivered a strong rebuke to an attorney in front of him.  Even the fact that he used humor was not sufficient to make it stand out.  Posner, though, added something a little different:  pictures.  To make known his disdain for counsel’s decision to file what he considered a completely unwarranted appeal, Posner had this to say — and show:

The ostrich is a noble animal, but not a proper model for an appellate advocate. (Not that ostriches really bury their heads in the sand when threatened; don’t be fooled by the picture below.) The “ostrich-like tactic of pretending that potentially dispositive authority against a litigant’s contention does not exist is as unprofessional as it is pointless.” Mannheim Video, Inc. v. County of Cook, 884 F.2d 1043, 1047 (7th Cir. 1989), quoting Hill v. Norfolk & Western Ry., 814 F.2d 1192, 1198 (7th Cir. 1987).

I don’t particularly take umbrage at what Posner did.  Using rather amusing pictures strikes me as better than being sanctioned heavily or referred to a State Bar for disbarment proceedings.  And if indeed the lawyer ignored controlling law, that’s a big no-no, and deserves some judicial umbrage.

Although it’s not entirely clear, though, Diane Karpman, who wrote the ethics post from the California State Bar, seems to believe that it was a bad thing for Posner to use illustrations to take aim at a lawyer who violated appellate rules.  Thus, after carefully explaining the decision, Diane Karpman poses a series of questions indicating, without actually saying, that she thinks that maybe Posner crossed a line:

Is it acceptable conduct or unacceptable conduct to make a public spectacle of the lawyer? McKeand is now (and forever will be) known as the “Ostrich Lawyer.” As lawyers, we all make silent promises to members of the bench to protect them from ridicule and scorn, because they cannot protect themselves. Isn’t there a reciprocal promise made that everyone will behave in a civil, respectful and professional manner?

Those are fair questions.  Where Karpman goes of the rails as far as I’m concerned is in the paragraph immediately following, when she suddenly becomes political pundit, turning on Newt Gingrich:

Now we have Newt Gingrich, who in the final Iowa debate described the courts as “grotesquely dictatorial,” and who wants to subpoena justices before Congress to explain decisions he rejects.

Did you see that coming?  I didn’t.  As far as I can tell, it’s a complete non sequitur.  I can certainly conceive of an argument that might lead into this bit of punditry.  For example:

Although judges have the power to sanction the attorneys who appear before them, that should not give them the right publicly to ridicule those same attorneys by likening then to animals or to otherwise demean them.  Engaging in this type of judicial conduct lowers the judges’ own standing, leaving themselves open to challenges to their authority.  In such an environment, it is not surprising the Newt Gingrich has proposed making judges more accountable.  While Newt’s proposal is fatally flawed insofar as it attacks the separation of powers, there is no doubt that judges who behave vindictively, rather than showing a true judicial temperament, leave the door open to these kinds of political challenges.

By the way, I’m not saying that I agree with what I just wrote.  In fact, I happen to feel that way too many judges erroneously liken themselves to priests, whose ordination makes them conduits to a higher moral authority.  I’ve seen too many judges who believe that, merely by donning that iconic black robe, they’ve suddenly hooked into a hotline to some higher truth, one that usually has little to do with statutory and case law, and a great deal to do with Progressive ideas about social justice.  (Can you tell that I’ve spent my legal career in the San Francisco Bay Area, heartland of activist judges?)

What Karpman seems not to understand is that, if you’re desperate for some punditry, there’s a way to do it gracefully.  She made no such graceful transition.  In the middle of a mild challenge to what she apparently perceives as Judge Posner’s discourtesy, she suddenly, and irrelevantly, launched random criticism against Newt Gingrich.  This is liberal drive-by wannabe punditry at its worst.

Do you have any spare change lying around?  Yes?  I thought you might.

My dollar coins say “In God We Trust.”

My dollar bills say “In God We Trust.”

My quarters say “In God We Trust.”

My dimes say “In God We Trust.”

My nickels say “In God We Trust.”

My pennies say “In God We Trust.”

Every time I touch American legal tender, I touch the words “In God We Trust.”

Nevertheless, it turns out that those words are illegal — if they appear, not on a student’s coins, but on his classroom wall:

Saying a high school teacher has no right to “use his public position as a pulpit,” a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that a San Diego County school district was on solid legal ground when it ordered a math instructor to remove large banners declaring “IN GOD WE TRUST” and “GOD SHED HIS GRACE ON THEE.”

Those inscriptions and others that longtime teacher Bradley Johnson displayed on his classroom wall amounted to a statement of religious views that the Poway Unified School District was entitled to disavow, said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

Under U.S. Supreme Court rulings, the appellate panel said, government employees, including public schoolteachers, have no constitutional right to express views in the workplace that contradict their employer’s rules or policies.

“Johnson took advantage of his position to press his particular views upon the impressionable and captive minds before him,” said Judge Richard Tallman in the 3-0 ruling, which reversed a lower-court decision in the teacher’s favor.  (Emphasis mine.)

"Hey, you can't say that in here!"

I especially like Judge Tallman’s reference to “impressionable and captive minds.”  Apparently those young minds can withstand the constant propaganda emanating from legal tender, but put it on a classroom wall and their mushy psyches are completely overcome.  Under that kind of pernicious “God We Trust” influence, the next thing you know, those poor, weak-brained students are going to rush out and commit some heinous acts of morality and decency. You can see pictures of the hypnotic, over-powering banners here.

(By the way, if you’re getting old, as I am, and are trying to fix “God Shed His Grace On Thee” in your mind, it’s from “America The Beautiful,” a song that liberal media stalwart Lynn Sherr identified in her book about its creation as our “nation’s favorite song.”)

We need to stop worrying about al Qaeda and start getting seriously worried about our judiciary.  For three federal appellate court judges to say that the motto imprinted on every coin in America constitutes a private statement of religious views that can be banned from the classroom crosses a line from Progressive to deranged.

I haven’t been blogging about far Left judicial activist Goodwin Liu, but if you’ve been following the story on your own, you’ll be happy to know that the Senate Republicans successfully filibustered his nomination — a reminder, as if we need one, that the filibuster is an important tool for allowing the minority in Congress to put the brakes on the majority.  (And, if conservatives become a majority again, I hope that I have the good sense and lack of hypocrisy to remember that principle should it arise in a reversed context.)

People who know me in person also know that nothing is more likely to send my blood pressure spiking than talk about judges.  (To any of my readers who are in fact judges, I’m sure you’re the exception to anything nasty I might be about to say about judges.)  I dislike judges, something that is almost certainly a product of having practiced law in the San Francisco Bay Ara for the entire length of my career.

In the Bay Area, the vast majority of judges act as if they consider their judicial robes the equivalent of a priest’s vestments.  This means that, rather than being constrained by the law, they believe that they have some sort of direct connection, not to God (whose laws exert moral control over the priest), but to some higher liberal morality located somewhere around each judge’s own navel.  The practical result of this is that rulings almost invariably favor politically correct parties over legally correct parties.

This lack of judicial temperament is on its most blatant display in the trial courts.  It’s been about 15 years, but I still haven’t recovered from the trial court judge (now an appellate court judge) who said to me “I don’t care what the law is; I think there’s something here.” Although few judges were as open about their reluctance to apply the law, the deceit that emanates from the bench to justify manifestly wrong decisions indicates that there are a lot of judges out there who “don’t care what the law is.”

The appellate courts are not immune — which is unsurprising, I guess, given that they’re made up of former trial court judges.  Several years ago, I worked on a case that saw the justices lie about the underlying facts in order to achieve their preferred outcome.  This was a particularly vicious little thing to do, since the case (which was published) looks perfect on its face, with stated facts inexorably driving towards an inevitable legal conclusion — except that the stated facts were false, and the underlying record proved their falsity.

The other day, an opinion came down that saw the judges being a little less clever.  They simply lied about the law itself.  Worse, it was a simple enough lie to track down, because they quoted from a case to justify their holding — except that the case from which they quoted said the exact opposite of the principle they claimed to derive from that earlier ruling.  Since they’re appellate judges, which is an office reserved for quality lawyers, I’m going to acquit them of carelessness and stupidity, which leaves only malice.

All of the above griping is a lead-in to an article Thomas Sowell wrote saying that, if judges are going to act like politicians, its time to treat them that way, and vote them out of office:

Arrogant politicians who do this [pass laws that directly contravene the Constitution] are dismantling the Constitution piecemeal — which is to say, they are dismantling America.

The voters struck back, as they had to, if we are to keep the freedoms that define this country. The Constitution cannot protect us unless we protect the Constitution by getting rid of those who circumvent it or disregard it.

The same thing applies to judges. The runaway arrogance that politicians get when they have huge majorities in Congress is more or less common among federal judges with lifetime tenure or state judges who are seldom defeated in elections to confirm their appointments to the bench.

The problem, of course, is that judges function under the radar. Even in elections, voters usually know nothing about them. When it comes time to mark the ballot, the voters either abstain or they pick a name at random. As often as not, the judges (at least in California) run unopposed, which means that votes are irrelevant.

If judges would act like judges — if they would be impartial arbiters ensuring that the Constitution controls overall and that constitutional laws are enforced as written — I would have no problem with lifetime tenure which, in theory, keeps the judges out of the political fray and, therefore, makes them less likely to engage in the type of favoritism that would ensure them reelection.  However, decades of liberal ideology in the court means that judges are not impartial arbiters.  They are, instead, political players who need to be called to account.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News

Just random stuff that’s so good you shouldn’t miss it:

Shirley Sherrod’s been on a roller coaster.  Thanks to a video snippet that Andrew Breitbart posted, she got pilloried as the face of Leftist/NAACP racial intolerance.  When it turned out the snippet was out of context, she got sanctified as the face of true racial harmony.  Now, though, that we know who this formerly anonymous government worker is, we’ve learned that she is indeed just another Leftist race-baiter, that she’s been complicit in government fraud, and that she has a long history of much badness.  Turns out that Breitbart managed to target precisely the right person to show what the Left is like.

May I recommend to you — no, may I urge upon you — Wolf Howling’s fabulous post regarding the judicial activism on display in Perry v. Schwarzenegger?  As a conservative, whether one agrees with gay marriage or not, the true issue is whether judges should be allowed to impose their values, wrapped in an ostensible cloak of legal reasoning, on citizens. Or, as Wolf Howling more eloquently says, “gay marriage is not an issue of Constitutional law for the Courts, but rather one of social policy for the people of the fifty states and their state legislatures to decide.”  A nice companion piece is James Taranto on the same subject.

And a simple economics video for you (h/t Danny Lemieux):

Click here to view the embedded video.

Another one to add to your reading list is Michael Totten’s article about the way in which the media, which never steps outside of its small Leftist bubble in Israel, grossly misrepresents that country.

I’ve never liked David Letterman, whom I’ve always found self-centered and mean-spirited.  His periodic forays into actual wit could never compensate in my mind for the essential ugliness of his character.  According to Ed Driscoll, he’s only gotten worse, attacking conservatives with “sclerotic” glee.  (Isn’t “sclerotic” a great word?  I fell in love with Ed’s post practically on the basis of that word alone.)

Kim Priestap, who blogs at Up North Mommy, got an impassioned email from the Democratic Party, raving about Elena Kagan.  Does it rave about her brains?  No (although it mentions as an aside that she’s “among the best legal minds this country has to offer,” which is a depressing comment about legal minds in America).  Her legal expertise?  No.  Her judicial experience?  No (because there is none, no matter how one puffs up her limited management experience and some government work).  Her looks?  No, no and no.

Instead, the email is very clear about Kagan’s single most important virtue, along with a little subsidiary fillip to add to the Progressive excitement:  She’s a woman and, even better, she’s almost black because she once worked for a black man.

Read the following and tell me if the whole point of the Democratic euphoria isn’t that, after being the first female Harvard Law School dean, and the first female Solicitor General, she’s poised to become the third female Supreme Court justice sitting on the court, and one who is black by association, thereby raising both the female and black liberal quota on the Supreme Court:

Have you been watching the hearings? The nomination of a Supreme Court justice is a special time in Washington, DC. The air tastes different — it buzzes with an electricity even the humidity can’t conquer — and even more so this time.

Elena Kagan’s nomination is special. It took us almost 200 years as a country to get the first woman on the Supreme Court, but now we’re on a roll! If Elena Kagan is confirmed, for the first time, we’ll have three women serving together. We’re still a far cry from parity, but we cannot allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good. We’re making progress, and Elena Kagan is great progress.

Over the past three days of hearings, she has conducted herself with poise, grace, rigor, and humor. She has won praise from liberals and conservatives — prior to her nomination and since. It’s no easy feat to become the first female dean of Harvard Law School and the first female to serve as solicitor general. Her illustrious resume also includes periods as associate White House counsel and deputy policy director under President Bill Clinton, as a teacher at the University of Chicago Law School, and as a law clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Lend your name to help us show that the American people back Elena Kagan’s nomination.

Let there be no doubt: She earned this nomination. It’s not simply because she’s a woman, or because she’s among the best legal minds this country has to offer. I know firsthand the strength of Elena’s character and am certain she is the best choice.

The Supreme Court nomination process, like almost any political contest, is like a food fight where the nominee does his or her best to stay clean and dry while everyone else in the room slings Sloppy Joes. I’ve watched this before (recently) and there’s nothing the Republicans won’t do to take down a nominee chosen by a president they’ve vowed to obstruct at all costs.

Republicans are attacking her credibility, her credentials, and her character. They’ve become particularly focused on her work as a clerk for Justice Marshall, seemingly maligning his long and respected service to our country. As chief counsel to the NAACP, Justice Marshall argued the case of Brown v Board of Education. Later he would become the first African American to serve as solicitor general and the first African American to serve as a justice of the Supreme Court. We would be better off with more justices like Marshall, and Kagan’s work for him should be a feather in her cap, not a thorn in her side right now.

The other side is grabbing at straws, with nothing to support their groundless accusations, but it doesn’t stop the attacks. The Democratic Party is pushing back to ensure that this incredible woman gets a fair hearing, but we must also show that public support for Kagan is overwhelming.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony are rolling in their graves.  I think Martin Luther King is also starting to wiggle around in there.  This is not what they envisioned when they campaigned for equal rights for women, or demanded that people be measured, not by the color of their skin or bra size, but by the content of their character.  These trailblazers wanted women and blacks to enjoy full inalienable, constitutional, and legal rights in America.  For women and minorities to be valued just as numbers on some quota list is heartbreaking and as dehumanizing in its own way as the ancient status quo.

I have nothing more to say.

You’ve probably noticed that I’ve had nothing to say about Kagan.  There is nothing to say.  She’s a bright, often charming, lady from the far Left who, entirely separate from her anti-Constitutional ideology, is grossly unqualified in terms of professional experience and intellectual heft to be a Supreme Court justice.  She is, in other words, the perfect Obama nominee.

Kagan does get kudos for her moral support for Israel (she’s open about supporting that nation and I applaud her for that), but even as to that, I’d wait before giving her a free pass.  After all, a lot of Leftie Jews think that the best way to support Israel is to yield completely to all Palestinian demands.  (Think Tacitus.)

The American Prospect has written a little guide for its readers explaining why Republican attacks will fall off Kagan like eggs off Teflon.  You and I know that they won’t matter because of the Democratic majority, and maybe the American Prospect knows that too, because its defense is lazy.  One aspect of the defense, however, caught my eye, and I wanted to share it with you:

She’s an activist.

Republicans have pointed to two things — Kagan’s clerkships for Thurgood Marshall and liberal judge Abner Mikva, and her admiration for Israeli Supreme Court Justice Aharon Barak, whom she praised as a “judicial hero” — as evidence that she is a judicial activist who tailors her reading of the law to whatever result she wants to achieve. Criticism of Marshall, though, isn’t likely to take Republicans very far. As the first African American on the court, he’s a largely unimpeachable figure. Democrats will also note that some conservatives have expressed admiration for Barak, including Justice Antonin Scalia, the current intellectual leader of the conservative wing of the court.

This kind of criticism would offer an opportune moment for Kagan to provide a liberal rebuttal to John Roberts’ hollow conceit about judges merely calling balls and strikes.

The Democratic response, though, will likely be a simple one. In terms of overturning precedent, this court is the most activist one ever produced. This may be effective, but it also reinforces the conservative canard that judges simply interpret the law as written rather than resolve the inherent and inevitable tensions between the principles and obligations outlined in the Constitution.

There are three arguments there.  The first argument is that, simply because Marshall was the first black Supreme Court Justice, nobody can criticize his approach to judicial interpretation.  It’s a closed subject. This is not an argument, of course.  It’s the absence of argument.

The second argument is that the mere fact that Barak may have admirable traits means that he is off limits for criticism when it comes to his approach to judicial interpretation.  Again, this is simply a way of preventing intellectual discourse, and shutting down argument ab initio.

The third and final argument is that, because Roberts’ court is the most activist ever, no one can criticize Kagan on the ground that she might be an “activist.”  It’s this argument that intrigues me, because it shows how differently Lefties and Righties view the notion of judicial activism.

When conservatives think of activist judges, they think of judges who, at their core, are unconcerned with the limits the United States Constitution places on both federal and state governments in their relationship to the individual citizen.  Their decisions are decided by references to natural law, and penumbras, and African tribal decisions, and Israeli Supreme Court decisions, and emanations and emotions.  The Constitution, if it makes an appearance at all, is folded, spindled and mutilated into meaninglessness (there are those penumbras and emanations).

To the conservative mind, the anti-Constitutional bent of decisions made by liberal, or activist, judges, means that, to the extent a prior judicial decision violates Constitutional restrictions, that decision is invalid, and should be overruled.  In other words, merely because a case exists, it is not automatically valid precedent.  If the case was void ab initio, overruling the decision isn’t activism; it is, instead, a corrective act to reinstate Constitutional limitations on government.

To the Left, however, “activism” means any decision that overturns liberal precedent — even if that precedent is, in and of itself, unconstitutional.  It’s therefore no wonder the Left is dismayed by the fact that the Roberts court is tidying up the record and reversing preexisting cases enacted by activist judges.

Click here to view the embedded video.

h/t:  Mike Devx