Macfarlane on Posner on pro se litigants

Katherine Macfarlane (Idaho) has posted her new article, Pro Se Prisoners’ Posner Problem (Missouri Law Review, forthcoming), on SSRN. It is a review of Judge Posner’s recent self-published book, Reforming the Federal Judiciary.  Cribbing from the abstract:

This book review … is focused on what Posner deemed the book’s “most important theme”—“the need for better treatment by the federal courts of pro se litigants.” His staff attorney proposals offer the most reform potential. This review examines the assumptions underlying Posner’s desire to assist pro se litigants, including the conclusions that pro se litigants are: “very often poorly educated and/or of limited intelligence”; “ignorant of the subtleties of the law”; and “basically fairly normal people who because of bad luck, psychological problems, poor judgment, lack of family support, or other internal or environmental misfortunes, simply have great difficulty living a law-abiding life.” In examining Posner’s newfound empathy for the pro se, this review will argue that empathy is a poor proxy for meaningful institutional change, concluding that though Posner has identified unjustifiable structural inequality, he has stopped short of fixing it. If pro se litigants deserve equal treatment, then eliminate all staff attorney programs. Assign pro se cases directly to judges’ chambers, make staff attorneys law clerks, and allow the new law clerks to work directly with jurists like Richard Posner.

Macfarlane’s review lucidly points out the strengths and weaknesses of Posner’s discussion of the treatment of pro se litigants — and there are indeed many strengths and weaknesses.  The review is a good, short read for those who want a summary of Posner’s arguments — and a clear-eyed analysis of the argument’s shortcomings.

Kenya’s Supreme Court schedules, then fails to attend, emergency hearing to postpone presidential election

Kenya’s court-ordered repeat presidential election is scheduled for today, and the situation is a mess. Opposition leader Raila Odinga has asked his supporters to boycott the event, and there appears to be widespread confusion about how the process is supposed to work.  The country’s electoral chief himself has stated that he has no faith that the country can deliver a free and fair election.

Within this maelstrom, there was a last-minute effort this week to ask the Kenyan Supreme Court to postpone the election. A hearing was apparently scheduled for Wednesday morning. But only two of the seven justices showed up for the hearing, making it impossible for the court to hear and render a decision. Among the missing justices was Philomena Mwilu, whose driver/bodyguard was shot and killed Tuesday night.

Early reports from today’s election have already centered on violence and clashes between police and protesters.

North Carolina judicial selection update

It has been a while since I wrote about the political wrangling between North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper and the state legislature over the selection of state judges. But a lot has been going on.

Some background: North Carolina primarily elects its judges, with the governor filling vacancies on an interim basis as they occur. But there seems to be a general consensus that the current process is not functioning well. Contested (now partisan) elections, political gamesmanship with respect to filling judicial vacancies, and outworn judicial districts all have contributed to the malaise. The issue has become a flashpoint in recent months, in part because of a widely publicized tug-of-war between the state’s courts and its Republican legislature. The court system has struck down many significant pieces of legislation in recent months, leading to loud complaints from legislators.

In the last several weeks, under the guise of judicial reform, the state legislature has passed two bills that would radically remake the state’s judicial selection process–and with it, the state’s judiciary.

Continue reading “North Carolina judicial selection update”

Kenya’s judiciary remains under pressure

The Wall Street Journal has a good summary story on the pressures that the Kenyan judiciary has faced since its Supreme Court invalidated the country’s presidential election last month.  In the run-up to the new election (scheduled for later this week), judges have faced direct threats, and the court system as a whole has faced substantial indirect threats of “judicial reform” — which everyone seems to understand as a potentially substantial cutoff in funding.

Observers of the American court system often speak of the importance of judicial independence, and rightly so. But for much of the world, third branch independence is a far more existential issue than in the United States. Threats to judicial independence are not an issue of verbal criticism, but rather of physical attacks or the diminution of critical resources. We would do well to pay more attention to these threats worldwide.

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Twelve-year old federal court vacancy in North Carolina one small step closer to being filled

Since 2005, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina has had an open seat, the product of partisan bickering in the Senate. George W. Bush nominated attorney Thomas Farr for the seat in 2006, but Senate Democrats failed to process the nomination.  Barack Obama subsequently nominated two different women to the seat during his presidency, but both nominations were blocked by Senate Republicans.  Now Donald Trump has come full circle, re-nominating Farr for the same seat.  And despite deep opposition by Democrats, Farr’s nomination advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday on a straight party-line vote.

It’s unclear who benefits from this partisan rancor, but it is very clear who loses: the courts and the public. For a dozen years since Judge John Malcolm took senior status, the Eastern District has been down an active district judge. Given that the district is only authorized to have four active judges, the court has been operating at only three-quarters capacity for more than a decade — and through no fault of its own.

I have no opinion on whether Mr. Farr is the right man for the job. But the public should reject as outlandish that the seat was not filled by someone long ago.

 

D.C. Circuit allows live broadcast of oral argument for first time in sixteen years

This morning, the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit  permitted a live audio feed of an oral argument in Garza v. Hargen, a case involving whether the government should allow an undocumented teenage immigrant to obtain an abortion. It was the first live broadcast in the D.C. Circuit since a 2001 hearing in the Microsoft antitrust suit. Chief Judge Merrick Garland permitted the live stream in response to a request from the transparency group Fix the Court.

Although the argument itself has come and gone, the audio is available on the court’s website.

On courtroom cameras, states continue to lead the way

As the United States Supreme Court begins another Term this month, calls for the Court to open its oral arguments to cameras are getting louder. The Court has traditionally brushed off these demands, and there is little reason to believe that it will respond differently this year. But there is yet hope for supporters of court transparency: the state courts continue to lead the way in allowing broadcasts of courtroom proceedings.  Two examples from just this week illustrate the point:

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Former federal judge to run for U.S. Senate

Russell Fagg, who recently retired from a life-appointed position as a United States District Judge in Montana, announced yesterday that he will seek the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate from that state. The winner will oppose incumbent Jon Tester in 2018.

Judge Fagg is hardly the first jurist to seek a position in another branch of government — former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore recently won the Republican Senate nomination in that state, and another former Alabama Chief Justice, Sue Bell Cobb, is running for governor. In the other direction, many Supreme Court Justices (among them John Jay, William Howard Taft, Hugo Black, and Sandra Day O’Connor) came to the bench after extensive careers in the executive and/or legislative branches.

Judge Fagg is touting his judicial experience — more than 25,000 cases during a 22-year career. And there is something to be said for having a jurist’s mindset in the legislature — one that is capable of coolly and dispassionately evaluating complicated matters. Of course, having that mindset does not mean that one will use it, and the Senate has not exactly been a paragon of reasoned deliberation in recent years. But it will be interesting to see whether — and how — Montana voters account for Judge Fagg’s third branch experience as the race heats up.

 

When judges are litigants

I always find it interesting to follow cases in which a judge (or a group of judges) is a party, especially if the litigation involves some aspect of the judge’s professional role.  Two such cases popped up this week, in very different contexts.

In New York, the state Court of Appeals heard a challenge to legislatively imposed limits on judicial health benefits, in an action brought by a number of active and retired lower court judges.  The Court essentially was asked to rule whether the reduction in state contributions to judicial health insurance violated the compensation clause of the state constitution.  Interestingly, many of the judges were skeptical of the claim, and the decision has yet to be rendered.  But it was an excellent illustration of what I have called “judging when the stakes are personal” — conditions under which the judge cannot issue an entirely impartial decision, because he or she will necessarily be affected by the decision one way or another.

In a separate action with a very different flavor, state judges in New Orleans are defending a civil rights suit in federal court, accused of running a “debtor’s prison” by jailing poor criminal defendants who cannot pay court costs. The plaintiffs allege that the practice is unconstitutional. (The judges have moved to dismiss the action.)  This is a different kind of judicial interaction — a federal judge being asked to assess the constitutionality of a state judicial practice — but it still raises interesting issues about how the federal judge views the work and professional role of her state colleagues.

We will follow both cases, especially the way in which each court the issues surrounding its fellow judges.