Tag: law and politics

On terrible judicial optics

Over the weekend, Texas state judge Sarah Eckhardt was forced to apologize after a reporter caught her publicly mocking the disability of the state’s governor, Greg Abbott. Eckhardt made her comment while participating on a panel at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin. The Federalist reports:

At a panel on leftist activism in cities, Travis County Judge Sarah Eckhardt was railing against the Texas legislature, complaining about how the state is constantly thwarting municipal policy. The Republicans running state government, she said, just want to stop whatever good things the cities are doing—whether it’s plastic bag bans, fracking bans, even local tree ordinances!

Then she said, “Governor Abbott hates trees because one fell on him.” The crowd laughed.

As all Texans know, Abbott was paralyzed from the waist down at age 26 when a tree fell on him while he was jogging on a windy day in Houston in 1984. He has used a wheelchair ever since.

Eckhardt’s comment was incredibly crude, even by our low modern standards, and she was right to apologize. But what was she doing at the Tribune Festival in the first place? It is an environment steeped in rough-and-tumble politics: this year’s speakers included Nancy Pelosi, Ted Cruz, Susan Rice, Julian Castro, and Anthony Scaramucci, among others. The panel on which Judge Eckhardt participated was entitled “Civic Enragement” and its description read: “How progressive politics are turning citizens into warriors and cities into battlegrounds.” Her co-panelists were all politicians; the moderator, a columnist for Vox.

This is no place for a judge to be. Of course, judges have their own political leanings, and in Texas they wear their party affiliations on their sleeves. But what message does it send to the public when a judge so plainly aligns herself with partisan politics and partisan ideology? How could anyone who openly disagrees with her politics ever hope to get a fair hearing in her courtroom? Even leaving aside her sophomoric joke about the governor, Judge Eckhardt has permanently stained any chance to build a reputation as an impartial jurist.

Judges have to make sacrifices when they don the robe, including avoiding activities that they might otherwise enjoy. This is not always fair, but it is necessary, as this sorry episode makes clear.

A dispiriting 230th birthday for the federal courts

On this day 230 years ago, President George Washington signed into law the Judiciary Act of 1789, which created our system of lower federal courts. The U.S. Constitution, ratified just a week earlier, limited its discussion of the judiciary to the Supreme Court and “such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” Yet Congress wasted no time creating thirteen new federal district courts (each populated by a single district judge), and three federal circuit courts, whose judges would “ride circuit” and hear cases across multiple states.

It was not a given that lower federal courts would in fact come into existence, at least not right away. In the early days of the Republic, state courts were expected to handle most cases, and a placement on the state court bench, not the federal bench, would have been the object of desire for most judicial aspirants. But the growth of federal law after the Civil War, and especially in the twentieth century, expanded the size and importance of the federal docket and  helped transform the federal courts into key players in American law, politics, and society. Last year, the federal district courts began processing almost 283,000 new cases.

Congress did not have to create the federal court system. But having done so, it has an ongoing obligation to provide the courts with the resources necessary to ensure the proper administration of justice. That means adequate funding, adequate staffing, and adequate institutional support. Lately, however, Congress has fallen short on all three counts. Continue reading “A dispiriting 230th birthday for the federal courts”

(Even more) corruption of the judiciary in New York City

The New York Times periodically turns over the rock known as judicial selection in the Big Apple, and lo and behold, the nasty little critters underneath always seem to be thriving. This time it’s a story on corruption in the Bronx, where a Democratic party boss seems to have punished a local judge for refusing to hire his hand-picked crony as a “confidential assistant.”

What a colossal embarrassment. Why do New Yorkers tolerate this?

 

More ugliness against judges in Poland

The multi-year battle between Poland’s ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) and the state’s judiciary took another ugly turn this week, when it was revealed that deputy justice minister Lukasz Piebiak orchestrated a secret effort to blackball judges who were critical of the party. One of the main targets was Judge Krystian Markiewicz. According to reports, Piebiak and a woman known only as “Emilia” planned to anonymously send material with rumors about Markiewicz’s private life to his home, as well as regional branches of the judicial association Iustitia.

This section of the conversation transcript between Piebiak and Emilia is eyebrow-raising:

Emilia: I will talk to journalists and send letters, anonymously by email and also by post. The only problem is I don’t have addresses and emails. I will do everything I can, as always, but won’t vouch for the result. I hope they won’t jail me.

Piebiak: We don’t imprison people for good deeds.

With the story consuming the news, yesterday Piebiak tendered his resignation. This is an obvious black eye for the PiS with national elections coming in October. But given the party’s unrepentant attacks on the judiciary and the rule of law over the past four years, it’s hard to believe that any real lesson has been learned.

 

Against the partisan labeling of Supreme Court Justices

My colleague Lawrence Friedman (an occasional contributor to this blog) has a very nice piece in The Hill today, explaining why labeling individual Supreme Court Justices as “liberal” or “conservative” is a mistake. A snippet:

Attaching such labels to the justices is a common and unfortunate fixture of our politically polarized era. To be sure, the conservative and liberal tags may be accurate to the extent that they characterize the results of a Supreme Court decision as more favorable to one or the other political camp. The labels serve to shorthand judicial decisions for people who desire to know the bottom line. Does the result favor my side or theirs?

But it does not follow that the justices should be characterized in the same way. The shorthand may be helpful to those readers or viewers seeking to absorb the implications of a Supreme Court decision. The problem is that these labels fail accurately to reflect both the role of the Supreme Court in our governmental scheme and the ways in which the justices approach the critical task of judicial review in our democracy.

I urge you to read the whole thing.

No vacancies, but a docket crisis nonetheless

I have been writing recently about the vacancy crisis in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, which has only 11 active judges despite a statutory entitlement to 17 (and a Judicial Conference recommendation for 20). But docket challenges can occur even where a court has its full complement of judges. This story highlights the docket overload in the Middle District of Louisiana, which has all three of its authorized judges in place but which still struggles to manage its docket, one of the heaviest in the nation.

Happily, it appears that Senator John Kennedy is continuing to push for more resources for the district. But in our fractured age, when every judicial appointment has taken on a (misplaced) political tint, it’s nearly impossible to expect that Congress will adequately address the resource need.

New Jersey federal judges speak out on vacancy crisis

The U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey is authorized by law to have 17 active (i.e., full time) district judges. Since 2015, however, retirements have dwindled that number to 11 active judges. And simultaneously, the number of case filings has gone up 150 percent. As a result, the district today faces terrible docket congestion. The number of cases pending more than three years has more than doubled, and the total number of pending cases has more than tripled, over the last four years.

Now some of the district’s judges are speaking out. In a story published on NJ.com, Chief Judge Freda Wolfson insisted that Congress and the President should do their job and fill the vacancies.

While Wolfson said the judges continue to work around the clock and treat every case — no matter the magnitude — diligently, the sheer number of cases is going to inevitably slow down the process.

“We need help tremendously,” Wolfson said. “It is not just to relieve the burden on the judges. It is because we need to service the public as quickly as we can in a just manner.”

There is plenty of fault to go around. The Trump Administration has not put forward a single nomination for the District of New Jersey, even as it works to fill other judicial vacancies at a rapid pace. And in any event, neither of the state’s Democratic Senators, Bob Menendez and Cory Booker, have suggested any willingness to work with the Administration on potential nominees.

As I wrote for The Hill back in March, judicial vacancy emergencies like this stress the capacity of the courts and damage the administration of justice in all cases — most of which are entirely apolitical, garden-variety disputes. Playing politics with judicial appointments is damaging and largely pointless.

The head of a Florida judicial nominating commission resigns. Who is to blame?

A strange story has emerged out of Florida’s 18th Judicial Circuit. The head of the Circuit Judicial Nominating Commission, attorney Alan Landman, resigned after a kerfuffle with Governor Ron DeSantis over the commission’s recommendations for an open judicial seat in Brevard County. Landman maintains that he had no choice but to resign after the Governor directly interfered with the independence of the nominating commission. The Governor’s representatives, by contrast, maintain that Landman was asked for his resignation after he inappropriately pushed his own preferred candidate.

Continue reading “The head of a Florida judicial nominating commission resigns. Who is to blame?”

Another major conflict of interest in Brooklyn’s judicial elections

The chicanery surrounding judicial elections in New York City, and especially Brooklyn, will come as no surprise to longtime readers of this blog. But here we go again:

Brooklyn lawyers who decide who can get the crucial Democratic ballot line to run for prized judicial seats are getting jobs as legal guardians and referees from the very judges they’re charged with reviewing — and their law firms are appearing before those same judges in active cases.

Of the 25 attorneys listed as serving on the Brooklyn Democratic Party’s judicial screening panel in 2019, at least five have been given jobs as court-appointed lawyers by the judges they’re tasked with reviewing, the Daily News has learned.

Previous coverage of the Brooklyn’s high quality approach to selecting judges here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Texas judge accidentally resigns via Facebook

William “Bill” McLeod, a well-respected Houston-area trial judge, was contemplating running for the Texas Supreme Court in the 2020 general election. Earlier this month, he stated as much on his Facebook page, unaware that such a declaration triggered an automatic resignation from his current position under Article 16, Section 65 of the Texas Constitution.

Harris and his supporters appealed the automatic removal, but this week Harris County commissioners voted 4-1 to uphold the resignation. It appears to have been a difficult decision, given that McLeod was a popular and experienced judge who won a sizable majority in the last election.

Still, there were important countervailing considerations: Continue reading “Texas judge accidentally resigns via Facebook”