Judges Have An Unstated Agenda

The most transcendent, mist-enshrouded, bedrock first-principle that guides judges in their work is:  "Be objective.  Have no bias."  Most judges seem to ascribe to this maxim, and believe that they bring objectivity to their work.

In reality, the law itself is not objective nor are the judges.  The price which we have paid for straying so far from the legal ideal has become intolerable to a large and ever-growing pool of Americans.  These are the citizens who have been partially or even utterly ruined by the judicial system, or have had their property or families taken away by it.  It is not a light matter when judges have the power to intrude that deeply into lives, and often on the most flimsy and unreliable of evidence.  It is then that the bias and the agenda of the law are at their most flagrant and visibly destructive.

After appearing before maybe one hundred state and federal judges over nearly twenty years, I believe that few judges operate without either a known or unknown bias. In areas of the law where discretion is the largest part of the judge's work, such as family and juvenile law, the biases interfere with justice on a widespread scale.  Most persons who get entangled in the system, whether intentionally, thinking that justice will be done, or unintentionally, because the system drags them in, find out to their horror that the system is a disaster for everyone who touches it.

Virtually every person who enters a family or juvenile courtroom - whether voluntarily or involuntarily - exits that same court room later with the firm conviction that the system is grossly unfair, and that the judge operates with at least a tacit, if not a downright clear agenda or bias.  Why are litigants across every demographic category, gender, social station and educational level, so universally convinced that the system is utterly ruined?  Because, for the most part, it is true.

Lesson of the Lord High Chancellor

Charles Dickens put the most trenchant comment about these equity-based courts ever uttered into the mouth of a character in his 1852 serialized novel, Bleak House.  As only Dickens can, he mercilessly skewers the pompous be-robed and be-wigged Lord High Chancellor sitting on his bench in the British Court of Chancery, and then offers this advice to potential litigants: "Suffer any wrong to be done to you, rather than go there."

The be-wigged Lord High Chancellor Campbell
(1779-1861), sporting court dress (Harumph)

Nearly every litigant whom I have personally represented, or observed in my sojourns into court, would echo that sentiment.  Nor is it a new belief, as illustrated by Dickens' comment of over 150 years ago.  In fact, Jesus also said, "Settle with your opponents on the way to court", because the system will crush and ruin you.  Rather, this is a universally understood sentiment, reflecting a systematic, long-term failure of the judicial departments of every legal system.  Yet, not one time or in one place, has the system done anything meaningful to remedy the dreadful deficiencies that are so painfully obvious to all those who have been exposed to then since time immemorial.

What is happening here?  Why do courts persist in their same stubborn path, despite widespread recognition that they have failed to serve their constituents?  And, most important, what can be done?

I grit my teeth every year as our own "Lord High Chancellor", the head of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (pronounced "Cawt" here in Massachusetts) gives her annual address and report on the judiciary to the assembled grandees in the Massachusetts State Legislature.  To hear these fairy tales, one would think that justice is always being done for the lumpen masses, that judges are all noble, good. wise and true, that clerks are helpful, and are being overworked to the point of exhaustion (for that nice six-figure salary), and that the only problem is just not enough money to extend these benefits with even more efficiency.

The lesson of the Lord High Chancellor hasn't gone too far. One ought to suffer any wrong to be done to him or her rather than go to our hallowed halls of justice, either, but no one will admit it.  All is well.  Just give us more money, and it will be even better!

This blog post cannot become a lengthy historical treatise, explicating the historical developments which landed us in the present continuation of a long-term court crisis.  Rather, this post will explain my conclusions and recommendations from long years of courtroom observation, from reading thousands of pages of judges' opinions, and from living through the cases in real time, which involve real people with real problems.  That will likely be more useful than some dry historical treatise.  We know what we have and how we got there.  The real need is to get away from the status quo to something better.


Political Agenda in the Family Court

Judges in family and juvenile courts have the most opportunity to exercise bias and discretion, because they are so-called "courts of equity", like that of the Lord High Chancellor".  That means that they operate with few rules, and give the judges substantial discretion to do what they think is fair.  There are no juries in these courts, and many juvenile courts are even closed to the press and public.  With fewer rules, discretion and wisdom must take the place of rote imposition of legal remedies.  That presents an opportunity for bias and hidden agendas to become the premier factor in guiding judicial decisions.

Fifty years ago, men were favored in family courts, and women were treated shamefully, as though they were not equal.  Now, the pendulum has swung grossly the other way, and women are favored as against men, and the state is favored over both, when it comes to children.  Domestic abuse restraining orders are now given out freely, without adequate due process, to break up with boyfriends, as first strikes in a divorce, or even as a cheap eviction procedure.  Women get the kids most of the time, along with child support and alimony, and fighting for shared parenting puts a man into pariah status.

In the child protective services area, single women with children are most commonly preyed upon by these agencies, the men are ignored altogether, and the kids are routinely kidnapped from fit parents with hardly a reasonable basis to do so.

My shorthand formula for the unstated court bias in these matters, admittedly a reductio ad absurdam, goes like this:

Men are evil abusers;

Women are victims;

Children belong to the state.

The outcome of most matters in family and juvenile court can be predicted using that formula.  Courts have always had a "default" setting which pre-disposes them to enhance state power, or to favor the litigant which most identifies with state power.

The New Fourth Branch of Government

Today, the government has expanded into so many areas which are either explicitly forbidden by our federal and state constitutions (e.g. regulation of campaign finance or of gun ownership), or which are not enumerated in a strictly limited list of powers permitted to the government. (e.g. toilet water limits or rutabaga regulations). 

Because of this massive accretion of power, government has made virtually every interaction between humans, or humans and any other animal, vegetable or mineral, a matter of crushing over-arching regulation and legal jeopardy.  

One of the most significant ways that government has done this, is to create a semi-autonomous fourth branch of government on the federal, state, and local levels, which is a hybrid of the three functions which we have traditionally separated under our constitutional system:  the legislative, executive and judicial branches.  This fourth branch is the Regulation State.  It contains its own legislative function by making up regulations without approval of Congress or state legislatures except in broad terms.  It contains its own executive function, through its "swarms of officers", to use Jefferson's term.  And, it has a court system, which appears to be real, including people in robes, when they are not appointed under Article III of our constitution or their state cognates. 

For example, in the environment area, states and the feds have environmental agencies (i.e. the Environmental Protection Agency) which write wetland laws, and which administer those laws that they write, and then enforce them if landholders do not comply.  They have local and state tribunals like Conservation Commissions, and Departments of Environmental Protection, which issue orders to not use land in accord with their rules.  Non-compliance results in huge fines or land confiscation.  Continued non-compliance lands you - at last - in court.  But, here is the rub.  Judicial review of Fourth Branch proceedings only looks at whether the agency was "rational" in what it did, or whether it obeyed its own unconstitutional regulations, not whether what they did was lawful, fair, constitutional, or with due process. Guess who almost always wins?

The New Crimes

A second major trend is that most laws passed in the last forty years are crimes against the state, not against persons or property, as our laws used to be.  Lawmakers have, in their drafting, bypassed almost all of our traditional notions of fairness and due process, and replaced them with low standards of proof, one-sided hearings, non-judicial tribunals, non-availability of juries, and limited judicial review.  The current crop of laws would have been ruled entirely out of line in days past, since they changed every premise on which our system was originally premised.

Topping it off is a thick veneer of official "immunity" for government employees, which is legalese for not being accountable for most of the depredations which these people commit in the name of the government, as long as they are "discretionary", and within their illicitly obtained jurisdiction.

Sovereign Immunity was a doctrine which protected the King of England from legal process.  The king could do not wrong, so you could not sue him.  That legal doctrine, which now protects government employees from their wrongdoing, may be the most destructive thing we have ever imported from a foreign land.

There Is No Right Or Wrong, Just Arguments


One of the first things that fresh-faced, earnest law students learn in law school is that the system does not believe in right or wrong, only in arguments.  Whose argument is best.  "Right" and "wrong" are concepts for moralists, not jurists.  The law changes with the needs of the people, and shifts with the times.  This collections of relativistic principles is called "legal realism", and became part of our system through figures such as Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes.

Another permutation of anchor-less law is called "legal positivism", where law can be binding on courts, rather than merely drifting with the whim of the judge.  However, that law is usually created out of the fevered minds of do-gooders, who enact layer upon layer of arbitrary regulations, based primarily on a philosophy which believes that only government can bring about good behavior in the lumpen masses.  Have a problem, pass a law, is their credo.

Both of these philosophies have combined to destroy a legal system which could have evolved to become better, not worse, had it not fallen into the hands of the relativists or statists.

They Really Do Have Principles - Just the Wrong Ones - And They Won't Admit It.


The legal elite who declaim the existence of universal natural law principles, still have quite a quiver-full of their own inviolable presumptions.  The difference is, they will not admit that they all share an unstated but iron-clad agenda.  Variance from this agenda - which I will set out below - is a basis for expulsion from the inner circle, and it is rarely done.

While stating that there are no absolutes, the elite cling to these absolutes nonetheless, and will never concede an inch of ground in their defense.  Also, they will almost never mention them.  They are like the secret Masonic rituals cannot be known by non-Masons, but are binding upon their members.

What are these non-negotiable principles, hidden in plain site, which the elite cling to?  Here is my list.  See if your experience verifies that they must necessary exist, even if they cannot be seen, just like chemists can predict that an unknown element must be there, because of a hole in the periodic table.  They are simple, just like the periodic table, and appear to be almost as certain as those elements in the table.

1.  The state is god.  The statist revolution to save mankind from itself must triumph at all costs, even if it destroys most of mankind in the process.  See Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler.

2.  Feminism is catechism.  Men are evil, women are victims, the children belong to the state.

3.  Abortion is the high, holy sacrament.  Don't touch it, ever.

4.  Government agents are priests.  Let them operate unimpeded.

5.  Dependency on government must be widespread.  Only then will freedom be undermined.

6.  Resistance is futile.  Our agencies and courts will ensure it.

7.  Wealth is evil.  Fairness demands it be equalized.

8.  War is the health of the state.  Empire is inevitable.

Massachusetts Chief Justice Mulligan Knew Nothing Was Happening in the Probation Department, Doncha Know?

An incredible thing happened last week (November 9, 2010) to the Massachusetts Court System.  A special investigator  exposed about 5% of its corruption, a root-shaking cataclysm which has never occurred before.  That only leaves about 95% of the corruption in the system to be addressed.

OK, Ahem, tongue is now removed from cheek.

 Justice Mulligan "Seeing Nothink"
 at the Probation Department.

Last week, the largest bloc of Massachusetts court employees, the 2200 member (ultra hack-bloated) probation department, was rocked by a scandal.  It's management, including its commission John O'Brien and several high level assistants, as well as a number of state representatives and other state cronies, were larding up the payroll with worthless friends and relatives of said state reps.  These fine elected officials would then see the need to pass very very very large budgets to fund the Probation Department, thus enhancing the power and prestige of the Commissioner of Probation and his management team who were directing the hiring scheme.

One Western Massachusetts rep appeared to have sponsored about 100 such candidates, along with having two family members directly on the Probation payroll, his wife and son.  (They were only hired after a nationwide search for the best candidates, of course).  He became known as "Mr. Probation".

In Massachusetts, in order to maximize the number of tax-eaters on the state payroll, we have SEVEN different divisions of our trial court, such as family, juvenile, superior, district, land, housing, and the icing on the cake - a second completely separate Boston district court division.  Each of these departments has its own full management structure, chief judges, judges, clerk-magistrates (earning six figures), clerks, support staff, opulent high-rent headquarters, courthouses (some combined in various places), procedures, rules, forms, computer systems which can't talk to any of the ones in the other departments, and so forth.  About the only thing they do together is buy paper clips.

Each division also has its own probation officers, even the family courts, where they are euphemistically called "Family Service Officers", and instead of monitoring criminals, they act as semi-demi ineffective mediators. . .  sorta.  With 2200 people, probation has the largest workforce of any court department in this little state.

Anyway, when the scheme began to unravel, our Supreme Judicial Court hired a prestigious Boston lawyer, Paul Ware, to do an investigation.  To his credit, he kicked some serious butt in his report - until the butts got a little too important to kick.  And then, well, the important people didn't really know what was happening with their largest and most important court work force.

Chief Justice Mulligan Oversight of Probation Dept.

The greatest recipient of the storm shield was the Commissioner's direct boss, Chief Justice for Administration and Management, Justice Robert Mulligan.  According to the report, he sternly admonished Commissioner O'Brien every few years or so - wink, wink - that he really oughta clean up his act.  But horrors, despite this strict and careful oversight by Justice Mulligan and his predecessor, thousands of these unqualified candidates were hired anyway during the twelve years of Commissioner O'Brien's tenure.

How could this be?  Pretty easy, I guess.  No one noticed for twelve years.  However, it is preposterous to suggest that the uppity-ups didn't know about this scale of fraud and corruption occurring in plain sight all that time.

My concern is that this tiny little first start at exposing the corruption will start and end here.  Congratulations will be extended all around for a job well done, and it will deflect any further attention from the other 95% of the corruption that is still in the system.  I wonder if that was the idea.

Important New Law Firm Announcement

____________________

The Very Important Boston Law Firm of 

Doolittle & Doolittle et al.

AND

The Even More Important Boston Law Firm Of

Billem, Fore, Ayotte

are combining into the Gallacticly Important 

Boston Law firm Of 

Doolittle & Billem, Fore, Ayotte

_________________

This enlightened merger developed when the Very Important Lawyers at Doolittle & Doolittle were at a wine and cheese party with the Beautiful People at the Boston Bar Association.  Suddenly, the Even More Important Lawyers at Billem, Fore, Ayotte alighted from their harbor launches at the waterfront quarters of the Bar Association, and the Doolittle lawyers burned with envy.  

After earnest and furrowed-brow discussions over much Bordeaux,  Gewertztraminer, pate fois de gras, and Camembert, the firms agreed to merge.  Good thing, as the bar tab had become quite enormous.  

Anyway, the new combined firm will now not only be able to do very little, but will also be able to bill their clients for even more magnificent maritime floating palaces, designed to arouse uncontrollable lust and acquisitiveness in their lawyer colleagues.

Additionally, Doolittle & Billem, Fore, Ayotte will now host bigger and better wine and cheese parties for the Beautiful Legal People, (paid for by their clients, of course, who will be allowed to mingle and buy influence with large gobs of cash).  These improved parties will also feature more malleable judges in attendance, and even better wine.

So, congratulations to the newest and Most Very Important Boston Law Firm, at least for today.

Two More Places TSA Hasn't Looked Yet

This may be a bit indelicate, but the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) sexual assault artists at airports have not yet been instructed to look in the two most secure places in the human body where a real hard-core suicide bomber would be likely to hide his or her explosives.

Illustration From the Animal Kingdom of One of the Places They Don't Yet Check For Explosives

Despite searching millions of persons per day, they have caught no terrorists yet.  Nor will they.  When the next blast occurs, the mule will have carried the Semtex or C-4 plastic explosives in an intimate place where the TSA is not yet authorized to probe.

So what is the point?  Why inconvenience all these people with ineffective semi-intrusions on their privacy, which will not make any difference?  They have already clearly signaled to the terrorists what the safe zones on their bodies are, and that the TSA will not check those places, particularly if you are a Muslim.

Thus, they have rendered all such superficial searches meaningless, like stopping every single car on every single road or highway, every single day, to search ONLY the trunk for illegal drugs.  It will be pretty clear to controlled substances transportation specialists that drugs can be hidden in other places, and the drugs will never be found.  

With the simplest of logic, and a willingness to believe that gubmint is not always honest, the only conclusion is that another agenda, rather than passenger safety, must be at work. 

The Two Janets: Operation Shutty Uppy

With the recent notoriety and anger over the Airport Sexual Assault Squad of the TSA, we have all become much more aware of the execrable Janet Napolitano, (mocked as "big sis"), and who heads up the Dept. of Homeland Security.  Her ugly mug now shows up everywhere, promising to protect us from the bad guys, if we will just her goons molest our loved ones.  But she wasn't the original Janet with the itchy trigger finger.

Does  everyone remember Janet Reno: Bill Clinton's attorney general, alligator wrestler, child murderer, and smirking monster face of the federal regime?  Janet The First, front and center.

Will Ferrell as Janet Reno 
in Operation Shutty Uppy

Saturday Night Live did a great parody of Janet Reno, played by Will Ferrell, where he boxed the actual Mayor Giuliani of New York.  As Janet donned the boxing gloves, she told him, "It's time for operation shutty uppy."  The skit perfectly captured her bottomless cruelty and her ability to care not a whit about it.  The point:  Shut up, or I'll kill you.  She meant it, and that was Janet I in a nutshell.

Some younger readers may not know of Janet Reno's heroic exploits in Waco, Texas, in 1993, at the communal home of a whackadoodle cult leader named David Koresh.  She authorized a cross-agency death squad of federales, after a standoff involving deaths on both sides, to go in and kill everything.  She did this by pumping poisonous CS gas into Koresh's large dwelling, setting it on fire, and then machine-gunning the screaming survivors as they exited.  Fifty-four adults and twenty-one children died.  An exciting day for Janet, I'm sure.

Janet I also socked it to a woman who was holding a baby, who happened to be near a fellow who may have had a gun that was slightly too short for federal regulations.  Her F.B.I. hit-man, Lon Horiuchi, shot the woman dead in her house in 1992, along with a child, but was not held liable for his crime.  Another great day for Janet.

Janet Reno was also the hero of Child Protective Services agents everywhere when she sent the now-famous gummint raiding party to kidnap Elian Gonzales at gunpoint in 2000, and accomplish some foreign policy objective with Senor Castro in Cuba.  The classic photo of this encounter, which will stand for all time as the premier symbol of government child protection, is here:

The raid was described in legal documents as follows:

In the pre-dawn hours of April 22, pursuant to an order issued by a federal magistrate, eight SWAT-equipped agents of the Border Patrol's elite BORTAC unit as part of an operation in which more than 130 INS personnel took part approached the house; they knocked, and identified themselves. When no one responded from within, they entered the house. Pepper-spray and mace were employed against those outside the house who attempted to interfere. Nonetheless, a stool, rocks, and bottles were thrown at the agents.

Child protective services at the point of an HK MP-5 submachine gun.  Now THAT'S child protection.  The photo, which horrified America, likely spawned the fevered aspirations of thousands of social workers all across the land:  "If only we had that kind of power....."

So, that is Young Person's Short Guide to Janet I, Janet Reno.  She performed a permanent "Operation Shutty Uppy" on a lot of Americans.

Now, of course, we have a new Janet II at the helm - Janet Napolitano, and a shiny new Gubmint Department for her to run, one that Janet I would have salivated over.  The Department of Homeland Security, which might have even made Mussolini envious, has not had the good fortune to commandeer a nice standoff where women and children can be gunned down in cold blood, but give it time.

Napolitano's TSA Sexual Assault Specialists are the friendly folks bringing you our new enhanced airport security, and much, much more in their own new Operation Shutty Uppy.  If you say anything at the airport, they will haul you away to a place where you can learn to not be so impertinent to your betters.  Unless you are like Neo here in the famous "lobby scene" from The Matrix, where he takes out a small army of security guards, I wouldn't try it. (It only works because every guard misses with every one of the thousands of shots from their sub-machine guns, but that is another story.)

There are more "non-existent" black-op agencies in her department than at the Pentagon.  Most are doing dastardly things in our name, spending billions of our money, and creating world-wide blow back against America by projecting our empire and power around the world in a most unpleasant manner.  All the while, they recoil in mock puzzlement when various foreign nations squawk at being brutalized, dominated, tortured, stolen-from, and manipulated in order to push our will on them.  How dare they complain, the ingrates.

It remains to be seen whether Janet II has the utter ruthlessness and lack of conscience of Janet I, which are necessary to really get it done in this world of Obama tyranny.  I predict that President Obama will put Janet II to the test, and that she'll be making her bones soon, as she steps up to take control of some ghastly project where children will die hideous deaths at her hands.  She will then appear on the news, and say it was for their own good.

Is Janet II Ruthless Enough?

If Janet II can perform to the low standards set by Janet I for cruelty and venality, and then (and this is where the champs show their real colors), react utterly cavalierly and unconcerned, while "taking full responsibility" with a straight face, then her position in the Obama orbit is ensured.

Hey, you gotta check out the Saturday Night Live parody of Reno, with Will Ferrell as Reno and Rudy Giuliani as himself, called "Operation Shutty Uppy.", where she beats up Hizonner the Mayor.  Here is a sound clip.