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2010apr27
In this Web site, some judges are listed on pages for the geographical place in which they work or live, not on this page. Many judges are listed on special pages for judges who contributed money to political entities in California.
Webpage http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/courts/ has links which may help you find about specific judges. For example, that website has a page which lists every Superior court judge in California.
Below on this page, we opine.
2005 August 15, Marvin R. BAXTER
California Supreme Court Associate Justice Marvin R. Baxter
An appellate judge is a "justice". Justice Baxter was born 9 January 1940 in Fowler village (Fresno County), California. His wife is Jane Pippert Baxter. She worked in Burlingame. She retired from the Fresno school district. He was a lawyer in Fresno.
In California, the governor appoints lawyers to be judges. Each lawyer must be recommended by a powerful politician. Incompetent candidates (to become judge) are appointed judge if they are recommended by a powerful politician. It is unusual for a lawyer to apply to be a California judge without first arranging for a powerful politician's recommendation. Often, the lawyer buys the recommendation by paying a bribe ("political contribution"). The governor's appointments secretary finds out if each lawyer (who has applied to be a judge) is recommended by a powerful politician. In plain English, the governor's appointments secretary finds out, for each lawyer who has applied to be a judge, if the fix is in. Baxter was appointments secretary of governor George Deukmejian for several years. Baxter was centrally involved in the appointment of over seven hundred judges.
Later, Baxter was appointed to be an appellate judge in Fresno. We don't know what his qualifications were to be be an appeallate judge on the day he was appointed. In our opinion, most appellate judges (who were not previously trial judges) do poor work.
He belongs to California's Judicial Council.
MARVIN R. BAXTER, age 65, 150 LOMBARD ST, SAN FRANCISCO CA 94111, (415).
Block and Lot
0059 005.
Address
150-150 LOMBARD ST 94111.
Zoning
RESIDENTIAL- COMMERCIAL, HIGH DENSITY.
MARVIN R BAXTER, age 65, 5810 E DWIGHT WAY, FRESNO CA 93727, (559).
MARVIN R. BAXTER, age 69, P.O. BOX 215, FOWLER CA 93625, (559) 834-2nnn.
MARVIN R BAXTER, 9123 S. TEMPERANCE AVE., FOWLER CA 93625, (559).
MARVIN R. BAXTER, 3560 PARADISE DR, BELVEDERE TIBURON CA 94920, (415).
The California Supreme Court lies that, except for visits to San Francisco and other cities, it works in Sacramento, the state capital. We are unaware of a Sacramento home address for Baxter. We do not know if it is a crime for a California state government employee to refuse work in a place that he knows he's legally required to work in.
Los Angeles county superior court presiding judge JAMES R. "Jim" BRANDLIN, age 47,
28428 CEDARBLUFF DR. (near Rothrock), RANCHO PALOS VERDES CA 90275, (562).
Assessor's parcel Number 7583-016-017, Single Family Residence, Tax Rate Area 07099.
Robert Michael Foley - #42804 Status: Inactive Lawyer # 42804 Address 191 Joe's Ln Hollister, CA 95023 Undergraduate School Santa Clara Univ; Santa Clara CA. BA 1965. County San Benito Law School Santa Clara Univ SOL; Santa Clara CA Date Status Change Present Inactive 4/30/2003 Inactive 1/8/1979 Judge 1/9/1969 became a lawyerHe may possibly have been born FOLEY ROBERT M 04/08/1943 MALE, mother HAMES, county SANTA CLARA.
(831) 636-5811
Someone named "Robert M. Foley" has lived in Palo Alto 94103 and San Francisco.
Here are some of our opinions about judges in general. Get opinions from many sources, not just us.
As a preface, we want to report two incidents as well as we can vaguely remember having read about them. One involves knee surgery done by a non-physician, the other involves judging done by a non-judge.
Once (maybe on Long Island of New York state), a patient retained a physician to do surgery (install an artifiical knee, we think). The physician arranged, without the patient's knowledge or consent, to have a salesman (who sold the artificial knee) install it. The surgery was done by a non-physician salesman in the persence of the physician who had been retained. The patient later found out and successfully sued. There were at least two legal problems for the defense: the patient had not retained the saleman (important because not all duties may legally be subcontracted out by the one originally obligated to do the work); and the salesman was not a physician (important because surgery is part of the practice of medicine, and therefore is normally restricted to physcians even when outstandingly expert non-physicians are avilable). We guess that that particular knee-installation had been done incorrectly (because otherewise there would have been no substantial harm to the patient, and therefore probably no medical malpractice lawsuit).
The second incident was in a small town in rural, northern California. A non-lawyer was illegally working as a lawyer. Somehow, he decided criminal cases as a judge. (Maybe he was elected a judge, maybe he was a commissioner, maybe a temporary judge, but somehow he decided crimninal cases.) It eventually was discovered that he was not a lawyer. Many of his orders (sentences he imposed on convicted defendants, for example), were then undone by the court.
The preface is complete (although there may be inaccuracies in our report of the incidents).
In California, the normal way to become a judge is to get the backing of a powerful politician, and this is normally done by paying a bribe. The sale of judgeships is an important source of income to California political parties, so it will not stop. As a result, most (but not all) judges are generally incompetent. Their qualification is that they paid for the job one way or another. Imposing an additional requirement (that judgeship buyers be able to expertly preside over a jury trial, for example) would reduce the number of potential judeship-buyers, and thus reduce political parties' income, and therefore will not be done.
In general (but not always), lawyers do not pay a bribe (or do another felony) to get a job that requires hard work. As a result, many California judges are neither competent nor do a full-time job. How does judges' work get done?
Lawyers (or, in some cases, the litigants themselves) mail papers to the courthouse. A judge's clerk (someone chosen by the judge, who is not a judge and sometimes not even a lawyer) reads the papers, analyzes them (which requires, among other things, seeing if the law is correctly relied on by the litigants), and writes a summary for the judge. Often, especially in appellate cases, there is no hearing. If there is a hearing, the lawyers may say at the hearing that they have nothing to add to what is in their papers. The judge then decides the case based on the clerk-written summaries. By the way, this is done completely openly. For example, early in a clerk's work, while he's still learning to summarize the way the judge wants, the judge may send a memo to his clerk to frankly specify strenghts and weaknesses in the clerk's summaries.
Some clerks (we don't know what percent of clerks) skim many incoming papers that should be crefully read. (This pracice, skimming instead of reading, is not done openly.)
Most clerks were fine law students who have no experience winning or losing court court cases. As a result, clerks' summaries tend to have an academic, legalistic flavor.
A judge reads the clerk's summary. The judge usually does not read the litigants' papers. This system lets the judge play hooky. He can be on a beach on a different continent while his clerk summarizes. Recall how the judge got his judgeship: bribery, not merit. The judge does not necessarily understand well the summary he reads.
Above is, in our opinion, a brief description of most judging in federal courts in California and in state appellate courts in California. The lower the court, the more likely that there is no clerk to write summaries for the judge. When there is no clerk, the judge reads or skims the papers himself.
An important exception (to the description above) concerns petitioning a state appellate court for a writ. Sometimes, for example, a lawyer in a trial court, before a case ends, asks an appellate court for help (for hypothetical example, asks an appellate court to order a trial court to allow a witness to testify as an expert). This process is called petitioning for a writ. How do appellate courts judge the petition case (in other words, decide how to respond to the petition for a writ)? State appellate courts in California have writ clerks (employees who are not judges). The writ clerk judges the petition case. As far as we know, he does everything in the case, and then appellate judges merely sign. In the appellate court, he is the de facto judge in the writ petition case, as far as we know.
By the way, many of California's state, trial courts strongly, frequently pressure lawyers to plea bargain (make an agreement in which the defendant pleads guilty to a crime in exchange for a concession from the prosecutor). An important reason for the courts' pressure is the inability of most California, state, trial court judges to expertly preside over a trial. Criminal defeense lawyers tell their clients that, if a jury finds those defendants guilty, the judge will impose a harsher punishment than the one in the prosecutors' plea bargain offer. Some defendants are also told that, if a jury finds them guilty, the judge may punish them for not having accepted the plea bargain offer. These are some of the consequences of courts' needing to avoid trials because most judges cannot expertly preside over them. The leniency of a convicted defendant's plea bargain sentence reflects inept judges' need to avoid trials, not the needs that sentences should reflect (rehabilitation, punishment, deterence of third parties, incapacitation of the defendant while he's incarcerated, etc.).
By the way, lawyers generally advise their clients to carefully consider whether the clients will be happy much later with any agreement they now make. For example, if you now take someone in as your partner in business, ask yourself if, much later, you will regret the decision you are now making. If you now sign an agreement guarantying to pay someone else's debt if he doesn't pay, ask yourself if later you will regret signing the guaranty. Many criminal defendants, after agreeing to a plea bargain that requires that they go to prison, regret having agreed. It is common for prisoners to try to undo their plea bargain. We have never heard of a criminal defense lawyer asking his client to consider whether, after he moves into prison, he will regret having pled guilty and having agreed to live there. In criminal cases, the vast majority of judges do not try to preserve inviolate each American's right to a jury trial. In criminal cases, the vast majority of judges try to avoid jury trials.
Ask someone who's been divorced to tell you what he thinks of his divorce lawyers and of the divorce court system generally. Most divorced people do not sing the court system's praises.
A court is run, to the extent any one person runs it, by a presiding judge. He is elected by all of the judges in his court. Non-judges (for example, true clerks [who do clerical work], nominal clerks [de facto judges who judge much of a case without the public seeing], court reporters, and bailiffs [specialized courthouse police officers]) obey the judges. The non-judges do what the judges want them to do. The judges (who got their jobs illegally rather than through merit) have a superficial, shallow understanding of what a court should do. Transaction costs (the cost of litigation, in other words) are extremely high because judges are not chosen on the basis of merit. We once heard a judicial canddidate (someone campaiging to be elected as a judge) say to an audience that the only promise a judge can make is to be fair. There wasn't a word about judges' use of the nominal clerk (who actually does the most important parts of the judging: writing the summaries that the cases turn on), or of any changes in the work done by real clerks, court reporters, and bailiffs. If judges ran airports, they would be open only from eight to five, Monday through Friday except holidays, and passengers would be advised to get dressed up before appearing in the terminal. There have been revolutionary changes in information processing, and information processing is basically what happens in a courthouse, yet American courts strikingly resemble British courts of centuries ago.
We once saw a female lawyer not permitted to speak in a California trial court because she was wearing dungarees (fashionalbe dungarees, we thought, but still dungarees). California judgeships are sold, out-of-the-public-eye judging is done by non-judge clerks, and judicial decisions consequently are often illegal and unfair, but the dignity of the California court supposedly was preserved by a prohibition of dungarees.
Once in New York state, a criminal defendant politely tried to enter a courthouse he was required to be in that day. Both of his arms were broken, making it impossible for him to empty his pockets. Everything usually done by his arms had either not been done or been done extremely poorly. Although he was a defendant who had to appear in court, he had not shaved or combed his hair. His shirt, to the extent it was buttoned, was buttoned incorrectly. His pants drooped much because he could not tighten his belt. The bailiffs (worker bailiff and supervisor bailiff) did not let him into the courthouse because he did not empty his pockets (although it was physically impossible for him to empty his pockets because his arms were broken). It was not enough that he gave the bailiffs permission to empty his pockets and to search everything all they wanted. He left the courthouse filled with concern that he would be arrested for failure to appear in court for his hearing. Luckily he eventually met his lawyer. With his lawyer at his side, he was let into the courthouse without any search whatsoever (terrorists take note).
We once attended a court hearing at which a question was asked about us. We vividly remembered the question and answer. Later, we bought a copy of a court reporter's verbatim transcript of the hearing. The question and answer were missing. We called the court reporter, then stated her mistake. She said that she was a professional, she knew her job, blah, blah, blah. Hours later, she called back to say that a computer system had been used for the transcription, and that system had caused the mistake. She sent us a new, correct transcript. As far as we know, there is no quality control of court reporters' transcripts (the reporters' transcripts actually used in litigation). Important court decisions (for example, who wins court cases) are often based on court reporters' transcripts. For example, the outcome of a court case can turn on what, according to a court reporter's transcript, a witness or judge said. As far as we know, no one (except us) ever used to check how accurate the transcripts are. One way to check the accuracy of transcripts is to bring a small audio recorder into the courtroom, then later compare the audio recording to the reporters' transcript. Many courts prohibit bringing a recorder into the courtroom. We never brought a recorder into a courtroom. How does one conveniently, economically check the accuracy of the reporters' transcript without a recorder? It is wrong that, as far as we know, there is no quality control of the reporeters' verbatim transcripts of what supposedly is said in real hearings. The judge cannot lose a court case (because he is not a party to it). That is why there is no quality control of reporters' transcripts.
When judgeship-buyers (in other words, most judges) are incompetent, it is unrealistic to expect their subordinates to be excellent or even lawful.
Competent lawyers investigate a judge's potential conflicts of interest. For hypothetical example, if a plaintiff sues a travel agency owned by the judge's wife, the plaintiff's lawyer should discover that and consider asking the judge to recuse (get out of the case). Competent lawyers in a court case discover the income and assets of people who live with the judge. Judges usually are indignant or angry toward the recusal-requesting lawyer for years aftrer the request, but recusal is sometimes requested anyway. In petitioning for a writ in a California state appellate court, the real judge is the person called the writ clerk. We have never heard of anyone requesting a writ clerk's recusal although they are the actual judges in writ petition proceedings in California state appelate courts. In cases in which the judge decides the case based on a summary written by his clerk, if there is a clerk's conflict of interest, maybe one requests the judge's recusal, with the cause of the request being that the judge's clerk has a conflict of interest. We have never heard of such a motion actually being made (in other words, a recual motion based on a conflict of interest of the clerk who reads the paperwork and writes a summary). We guess that incompetent lawyers don't find out if the judge's summary-writing clerk has a conflict of interest, and cautious lawyers don't want to embarass the judge (by pointing out that someone else reads and sumamrizes incoming paperwork for him) or antagonize the judge (by requesting recusal).
Judges sometimes tell lawyers in a case about a potential conflict of interest. We have never heard of a disclosure by a judge of his clerk's conflict of interest. We emphasize our view of litigation, which is that the person who writes the summary is usually more important to the case's outcome than the person who decides the case based on the summary.
When judges run for office, they are silent about whether they can modernize an antiquated organization, or even whether, when voting for a presiding judge, they will consider whether that presiding judge can modernize an antiquated organization.
We guess that much of what we've discussed above is a crime. Reading the paperwork sent in by lawyers is the most important part of judging. Only a judge should judge. When a judge decides a case based on someone else's summary, the summary-writer has done the most important part of judging the case. Because the judge hasn't done his job, he should pay a refund of his salary. In theory, judges might divide the work among themselves with some judges reading and summarizing the incoming papers, and other judges deciding cases based on those summaries. However, that doesn't happen. The summary-writers are never judges. That may be a separate crime: a non-judge is doing the judge's work. We are not lawyers and we don't know a lot about substantive crimianl law. We guess that the behavior we describe is a crime.
Judging is supposed to be a job which the judge personally must do. Actually and sadly in our opinion, judging (especially in appellate courts and powerful trial courts) often is a business. A lawyer buys a judicial concession (pays a bribe to be made into a judge). Then, he subcontracts out the most important part of the work: summarizing the incoming paperwork. Judging is not only what the public watches. Judging is the entire process of judging the case, including judging the paperwork. TV shows about courts often focus on words spoken in courtrooms because the speech is dramatic. However, the outcome of a case is often caused by paperwork mailed to the courthouse.
Does the judge closely (or even distantly) supervise the clerk who writes summaries? We don't know if supervision is relevant to anything. In any event, the purpose of the clerkship is to enable the judge to skip work. Often, the judge is far away (for example, on a beach on a different continent, or at home sleeping) while the clerk works. Often, there is no supervision. The clerk is on the honor system, which is why some clerks write some summaries based on merely skimming the incoming paperwork. Some judges are unable to expertly supervise anyone doing anything: they are terrible supervisors. Furthermore, a judge is appointed because he bought his job, not because he can do it. Many judges cannot expertly write a summary, and they use circumstantial evidence and other clues to try to figure out if their clerks are expertly writing summaries.
An interesting feature of selling judgeships is the concept of the generic judgeship. Consider a county trial court which has a shortage of divorce judges. In an ethical court system, one might appoint an expert divorce lawyer to be a divorce judge there (to reduce the shortage of divorce judges), then have him be a divorce judge. Similarly, if one needed a criminal judge in a court, one might appoint an expert criminal lawyer to be a criminal judge, then have him be a criminal judge. However, in a felonious judgeship-selling system, generic judgeships are the rule. A judgeship is sold to a lawyer who pays for it regardless of whether the county's court system needs his particolar area of legal expertise (even assuming that he has an area of legal expertise). A county court might need a divorce judge but, if a patent lawyer buys a judgeship, that patent lawyer becomes a judge. The result may be poor judging (needless delays, horrible mistakes, etc.) but that's tough.
In a trial court, what judicial work is a brand new judge assigned to do? In many places, a low-seniority judge is given the judging work unwanted by judges with more seniority. How can you find out about the role of seniority in a court in which you are interested? Find out about judges' seniority (which should be a matter of the public record) and compare their seniority to their assignments. For example, is there a statistically significant differnce in the mean seniority of judges in divorce court, criminal court, and other courts of the court system you're interested in? If you're trying to predict the first judicial assignment given to new judges in a court system you're interested in, how useful is it for you to know what work those judges did in the five years preceding their becoming a judge? In the court system you're interested in, is there a court which has a high proportion of new judges and a low proportion of highly experienced judges? Another way to find out about this is, in a conversation in which you promise to keep his name secret, ask a judge who works in the court system in which you're interested..
The unfortunate practice discussed above (namely, appointing judges with disregard for their areas of legal specialization, and with disregard for the areas of specialization needed by the court) exists in appellate courts, too (for example, the U.S. Supreme Court). The nine judges of the Court confer with each other on cases, then vote. When it's time to appoint a judge to the Supreme Court, the chief issues politicians argue about usually are liberal-conservative (for example, position on abortion) and demography (for example, whether the job should go to a Hispanic). Reporters and the public seem to mistakenly think that the Supreme Court expertly analyzes and decides all kinds of cases, so that a potential judge's legal specialization(s) should be ignored. To choose a purely hypothetical example, we haven't noticed a reporter writing that the Court's patent and tax analysis has often been low in quality, so that the next Supreme Court judge should be a tax or patent expert. Reporters and the public seem to mistakenly think that the Court's reasoning displays uniformly high expertise in all areas of law, and that therefore a new judge's area(s) of legal specialization is unimportant (because there is no area of law in which the court needs to improve).
The people named on this page have done nothing to end California's cesspool of judgeship-selling. Selling judgeships causes incompetent judges. Those judges work to prevent jury trials, not to prevent violence and other problems. The two goals (preventing jury trials, preventing violence and other problems) are often incompatible. For example, consider a hypothetical, criminal defendant who should appropriately be sent to prison for a long time to protect the public from his violent crimes (when he's in prison, he can't do violent crimes to people who are not in prison). He probably won't agree to spend a long time in prison. In a fair system, he would get a trial. Then, if found guilty, he would get the sentence he deserved. In the hypothetical example we are considering, that sentence would be a long stretch in prison. Where judges know that they are incompetent to expertly preside over jury trials (for example, in California), judges pressure litigants to settle their cases without a jury trial. In the hypothetical example we are considering, the public suffers because a violent person gets out of prison much sooner than he should. Furthermore, harsh sentences sometimes rehabilitate. If people are not rehabilitated, they get convicted and sentenced over and over (sometimes called the revolving door), eventually causing high costs for prosecutors, public defenders, defendants, courts, and prisons. Plea bargains are often penny wise and pound foolish. The chief beneficiaries of plea bargains are trial judges, who succeed in avoiding jury trials. Many defendants are punished less harshly than they should be punished because judges are excessively concerned with avoiding jury trials, and judges have this excessive concern because they know they can't do their job well. This criminal sentencing example is only one example of how incompetent judging causes violence. For another example: some domestic violence could be prevented if we had excellent divorce judges. There, the problem is not an avoidance of juries (there are no juries in divorce cases), just incompetence. Most divorce judges aren't expert in divorce, and some of them aren't even expert in presiding over a non-jury trial.
By the way, California law requires that the California supreme court be in Sacramento, which is the state capital. The supreme court illegally sits in San Francisco, not Sacramento. The court admits that it should be in Sacramento. As far as we know, the court lies that it is in Sacramento but that the court visits other cities in California, and that San Francisco merely is one of the cities occasionally visited. Publicly supplying home addresses of judges (which we do here in this website) is part of proving their lies and illegal host city.
Is there any remedy for any of the problems discussed on this webpage?
Judges can be sued for money. If a judge intentionally breaks the law, the victim can sue for money to compensate him. Details of the applicable law vary from place to place. For example, maybe proving a judge's reckless (not necessarily intentional) violation of the law is enough for a plaintiff to win. The burden of evidence is only a preponderance. One may think that it is difficult to prove (even by a mere preponderance) that a judge did something knowing his coduct to be illegal (or reckelssly disregarding its illegality, or whatever the local standard happens to be). After all, a judge might claim that he negligently thought that his conduct was legal. This kind of evidentiary dispute often happens in criminal cases. The prosecutor claims that the defendant intentionally shot his wife. The defendant claims that he was negligently cleaning his gun and it accidentally discharged twice, causing his wife's tragic death. If the jury believes the defendant, he wins.
The actual outcome of such a case (victim suing a judge for money damages) might depend on several phenomena. One is the prejudice of the jury. In some parts of America, a jury is inclined to believe anything a police officer says. In other parts of America, a jury is inclined to believe nothing a police officer says. The correct term for this jury phenomenon is prejudice. We guess that the same communities that are skeptical about police testimony would be skeptical about judges' testimony, and might therefore be appropriate places to sue a judge for money.
Consider a case, based on suing the people who are judges of the California Supreme Court, for knowingly, illegally acting in concert to not work in Sacramento (except during brief, occasional visits). We are under the impression that the Court has said (we don't know in what context) that it has a legal duty to have its normal place of work in Sacramento (which is a correct statement of the law) and that Sacramento was in fact the Court's normal place of work (which was a factual lie). That the judges eat, sleep, and do other things in and near San Francisco is evidence tha they work there. Everyone knows that the California Supreme Court is in San Francisco. Let us assume that a plaintiff in federal trial court alleges various ways that harm befell him because the Suprmeme Court is in San Francisco. First, an expert witness testifies that the site of a court heavily influences how judges work, and that the California Supreme Court probably would have ruled for the plaintiff (as a litigant before in it in a prior case) had the Court been in Sacramento. This is a highly technical, factual issue that requires expert testimony: how site actually affects the outcome of judicial work done at that site. Second, the expert testifies that not everyone is willling to live in every California city, that the California Supreme Court would have different judges on it if it were in Sacramento (because some people are willing to live in Sacramento but not in San Francisco), that judges who are Sacramento-preferrers tend to agree with the plaintiff's legal theory in his prior Supreme Court case (more than judges whoa are San Francisco-preferrers), that having the Court in San Francisco would have caused it to be staffed by judges unlikely to rule for the plaintiff, and that the plaintiff therefore lost his prior California Supreme Court case. By the way, in making these and similar arguments, the plaintiff might also claim that the summary-writing clerks influence the outcome of the case, that they would work differently in Sacramento than in San Francisco, etc. There is a factual question of how work is affected by where one lives and works. Do not assume that, if you can't figure it out, experts can't. Rember that the plaintiff needs a mere preponderance. We have not done the research necessary to know if this kind of expert opinion evidence would get a plaintiff to a jury.
We are under the impression that, in some places, if a defendant does something knowing it to be illegal, he must compensate all victims, not merely intended victims. What if an appellate lawyer in Sacramento (or in any place closer to Sacramento than to San Francisco) claims, in a case brought against the people who are judges of the California Supremem Court, that his income is less, and his expenses higher, because those defendants act in concert to cause the California Supreme Court to illegally work in San Francisco?
Have plaintiffs successfully sued defendant-judges for money as compensation for knowingly illegal conduct by those judges? We are under the vague impression that there was at least one such case in California. We will recount the case as well as we can remember it. A mentally retarded woman in California was sterilized as the result of a court order in a proceeding in which she did not have a lawyer. She was sterilized without her knowledge or consent. Later, she tried to have a child. Her attempt to have a child was unsuccessful, which lead to her discovery that she had been sterilized. We are under the impression that the eventual outcome of the case (it went to an appellate court) was that the defendant (the trial court judge who had signed the sterilization order) had to pay money to the plaintiff out of his own pocket. If future cases rely on this one, and if we correctly report it on this page, those cases might be most likely to succeed if they involve sterlilization or something similar to sterilization (maybe medical treatment or abortion, for example).
A plaintiff could sue judges (or clerks who do a judge's work, maybe) for the harm the plaintiff suffered because clerks did much of the judging. There are many ways this might happen, we guess. For example, imagine that a plaintiff petitioned for a writ in a previous case and a California appellate court's writ clerk caused him to lose (or an adversary petitoned for a writ and won). Then, at a higher level, the plaintiff won. Thus, he eventually won but only because he went higher than the writ clerk. He now, in a separate case, sues (for money compensation) the appellate judges who should have done the job that the writ clerk did. He has an expert witness testify that, if judges (not a write clerk) had decided the writ petition case, they would have decided it for him (the plaintiff in the subsequent case). The amount of money he wants is at least the amount of money it took to take the case to a higher level, where he won. Let's imagine that he eventually won the prior case but victory was delayed because of the decision that illegally had been delegated to a writ clerk. Then the judges would be personally liable for harm caused by the delay.
We guess that one could depose the defendant-judges and the writ clerk to ask them, for example, what role they have in deciding writ petition cases generally and that case in particular.
Does a litigant have an absolute right to have a case judged by a judge (without a non-judge wriiting a crucial summary of the paperwork, for example), even in the absence of harm? What if a plaintiff against a judge can merely prove that, in a prior case, the plaintiff lost after the judge relied on a summary written by a clerk (without being able to prove that the outcome probably would have been different had the judge not read someone else's summary)? In other words, what if the plaintiff can prove everything except damages? We feel that, for public policy reasons, a judge should pay compensation to any losing litigant if the judge allowed anyone else to do the judge's work, and the judge's work includes reading the paperwork.
Imagine a case in which the problems we complain of (clerks illegally judging, and California Suprmeme court siting not in Sacramento) cause a different outcome than would otherwise occur, and the outcome is a death. For example, perhaps the case is a death penalty case, and the death penalty is imposed as a result of the matters we complain of. Perhaps the outcome of the case causes a death. For example, a person is released from prison as a result of the matters we complain of (for example, clerks judge the case), and kills someone as a result of release. For an opposite example, imagine that, as a result of the matters we complain of, someone is not released from prison, and kills someone as a result of his being in prison. A prosecutor notices that a death has resulted from the matters we complain of, thinks that the matters we complain of are felonies, prosecutes the judges involved for first degree murder under the felony murder rule, and the judges eventually are legally executed for first degree murder. Thus, this website would have caused legal imposition of the death penalty. We guess that death is a kind of great bodily harm. Thus, it is possible that this website might cause legal, great bodily harm (by legally causing legal imposition of the death penalty). It is impossible for this consistently harmless website to illegally cause great bodily harm, as discussed at great length elsewhere in this website. We neither intend nor expect to cause great bodily harm.
In many state court systems (not in the federal courts), judges run for election and re-election. It is common for judges to pay a bribe ("make a political contribution") in exchange for a political party's nomination for a judgeship. What would happen if often, when a lawyer bribed a political party for a nomination to be a judge, another party's candidate won the election? The price paid for nominations would plummet, hurtubg all bribe-taking parties. As a result, it is common for the two, biggest political parties to decide between themselves which party will win each judgeship. For each fixed judicial election, the party that is not supposed to win either nominates no one or nominates the other party's candidate. The name for this practice (namely: the party that is not supposed to win, nominating the other party's candidate) is called cross-endorsement. The chairmen of the parties' county committees negotiate the agreements (your party wil get that judeship, mine will get that one, etc.). In some places, a party's judicial nominating convention then formally nominates the bribe-payors whom the chairmen have already collusively approved. How do the people who have to formally nominate (for example in some places, participants in the judicial nominting convention) know whom to nominate? Somehow, the chairmen tell the members of their respective parties. In New York state one year, the two major parties negotiated a multi-county agreement (an agreement explicitly assigning judgeships in Westchester and other counties) which was read out loud at the beginning of judicial nominating conventions so that convention participants would know for whom to vote. Participants obediently voted. This particular judgeship-fixing agreement gave rise to a court case. Early in that case, it was obvious that the judge was sympathetic to the plaintiff, who was opposed to the fixed nominations. Suddenly one day, the judge switched sympathy, obviously inclined to decide for the defense. What made the judge suddenly reverse his attitude? Some people said, "One call does it all." By the way, raading felonious, judgeship-fixing agreements out loud at judicial nominting conventions is not done anymore in New York, as far as we know.
When a judge runs for re-election, how should his work be evaluated? How should we decide whether to re-elect him? In a hotel, there are sometimes questionnaires which hotel guests are asked to fill out and submit to management, to describe their experience at the hotel. In a few restaurants, there are small questionnaires (the entire questionnaire often fits on one side of a card) which diners are requested to complete and mail to a post office box. Many, many businesses have questionnaires for customers and even for recent ex-customers. Very few courts (with the possible exception of Alaskan courts) have questionnaires. Courts don't systematically ask litigants, witnesses, jurors, lawyers, or the public what they think of their courthouse experience (with the possible exception of Alaskan courts, we think). As far as we know, no one powerful in the courts (except maybe in Alaska) cares about the views of litigants, jurors, and witnesses. The views of lawyers are interesting because many lawyers (especially those who often represent clients in hearings, trials, and appeals) know which judges are outstanding and which are terrible. When judges run for re-election, it would be useful for voters to know, among other things, what lawyers think of those judges. There is often a high consensus, among lawyers on both sides of a case, that some judges are great and that some aren't.
It is impossible for the public to get a list of judges in which they are listed in order of the percent of their cases which are modified on appeal. An exceptionally high percent tends to indicate low competence. This appeal-modification-rate information would be useful to voters in deciding whether to vote for a judge running for reelection. Some voters would want to know, for each judge, the recidivism rate of convicted defendants whom he had sentenced. There are many judge-related statisitics which would assist voters to decide whether a judge should be reelected. Few of those statistics are collected, and most of those are kept secret from the public. American courts are opaque (in other words, not transparent). This lack of transparency obstructs meaningful democracy, and promotes corruption and incompetence. Why aren't there many judge-related statistics available to voters? The sale price of judgeships depends on how they long the judgeships last. If the percent of judges who fail to get reelected rose much, there would eventually be a decline in sales income (income from sale of judgeships). Therefore, voters must be kept ignorant of the quality of work judges do. Before the next judicial election in your area, try to find out (60 days before the election, for example) who's running for each judgeship for which there is an election. Merely finding their names (much less: how they compare to other judges, or why they would do a better job than their opponent) can be impossible for an ordinary person. There is an immense amount of information provided about other politicians but almost nothing about judges.
Does a specific judge or courthouse provide better service on Mondays or Fridays, in the summer or winter, in the morning or afternoon, to men or women? This kind of study is necessary to improve service. It is not done.
In many state courts, jurors stand when the judge enters the courtroom. In federal court, the judge stands when jurors enter. Jurors are democracy in the courtroom. When a judge runs for reelection, voters should be able to easily get statistical summaries of what jurors thought of him (and maybe even the full text of all comments of all jurors about him). Some voters would find that useful in deciding whether to re-elect him.
Term limits is a topic you probably already have an opinion on, and we don't care what it is. If you favor term limits, ask yourself why, then ask yourself if those reasons apply to judges.
Courts could supply much information that would help people who have to decide which lawyer to get. For example, a court could supply lists of lawyers who represented someone in a court case in that court, lawyers who represented someone in a trial without a jury, lawyers who represented someone in a jury trial, lawyers who won a trial, lawyers who represented a client in various kinds of court case (for example, criminal cases or eviction cases), etc. For example, if a person were facing eviction, he might a list of lawyers who had won eviction trials in that county). These a re just a few examples. Courts could easily provide a wealth of statistical information useful to buyers of legal service. Some of that information could be provided by a judge about lawyers and events in his courtroom. Much of the information does not need to be provided on a statewide, countywide, or courthouse-wide basis. For example, a judge could tell his clerk to keep certain kinds of statistical information, then put it on a website or post it in a Usenet newsgroup. When judges run for office, they don't promise to run a transparent courtroom, nor do they promise to vote for a presiding judge who will run a transparent courthouse.
Sometimes, federal district court is the right court for a divorce trial. Many federal judges dislike presiding over those trials. Some federal judges make the federal court divorce litigant (who wants the divorce) start a divorce case in state court, and get a judgement there. Then, the federal court merely issues a judgment idnetical to the state court's judgement. This procedure (which results in a trial being in state court instead of federal court) is illegal (because the litigants have a right to a trial in federal court), adds to the case load of the state court system, creates delay, and makes the divorce litigation more expensive to the litigants. When a federal judge doesn't want to do his job (for example, handle a divorce case), he should resign. It's probably a waste of time to try to get a federal judge impeached or prosecuted for refusing to do his job. By the way, there's a saying about federal judges: state judges are appointed, federal judges are annointed.
An important part of judge's work is sentencing someone convicted of a crime after that person loses a trial. This work is particularly important to those who want a less violent society. How does a judge decide what sentence is right for a criminal defendant who has lost a trial? How does he weigh the facts in light of the applicable law? There is much variation among courts. In a California state Superior court (a court that would sentence someone for a serious crime such as using a gun to rob a liquor store), an employee of the county's probation deaprtment investigates, interviews, considers the law, and finally suggests a sentence to the judge. The probation employee's written report, including a suggested sentence, is given to the judge and all lawyers in the case before the sentencing hearing. The probation department does the judge's work. For a criminal defendant who has lost a trial, the judge usually follows the probation officer's recommendation. When a probation department employee (who is working on a sentence suggestion report) introduces himself to you (perhaps because you are a crime witness or a victim, and he wants information or opinion from you), he may claim to work for the judge ("I work for the judge."). Initially, one is tempted to tell the employee that he does not work for the judge, he works for the county probation department. However, the employee's telling the truth. He's doing the judge's job: judging the facts and law to decide what sentence to recommend. Because he does an important part of the judge's work, there is a sense in which the probation department employee does work for the judge. Federal sentencing is much more controlled by law than state court sentencing generally is. Many federal judges dislike the legislation which extensively regulates their sentencing. Sentencing in the state and federal courts tends to be nonmathematical and unscientific. Sincere people consult their hunches and feelings to do what seems fair. In many cases, the judge feels it is fair to show the defendant what happens to defendants who reject the prosecutor's offer. No one, not even the probation department employee or judge, is told the recidivism rate (or other rates of important, post-sentencing conduct) of the people whom the judge sentences.
This paragraph is just a long, detailed example of unethical, brazenly illegal conduct by a courthouse's staff. A lawyer represented a financially poor client whom he never billed. The lawyer never went to any court hearing to get a judge to order that the court pay the lawyer. One day, while talking with a judge's clerk (a real clerk who did clerical work) about a court hearing that she told him he had missed, she asked the lawyer if she should arrange for him to get paid by the court for representing his poor client. She did not say how she would arrange, and he did not imagine anything improper would be done. Without his knowledge or consent, she feloniously changed court record(s) to falsely show that he had been at a hearing at which a judge (the clerk's boss) had ordered that the lawyer be paid by the court. (By the way, this felony rauses a question of whether such changes are commonly done by her or by other clerks in that couirt.) Later in the case, there was some sort of dispute involving whether there had been activity in the case during a certain period of time, whether the lawyer had been at a hearing in the case, something like that. The lawyer signed a truthful, factual statement (alleging his absence from the hearing) incompatible with the feloniously modified court record(s). The opposing counsel did not dispute the factual claim of absence from the hearing (which, in the context of that case, implies that the claim of absence was true). A naive person would guess that the lawyer would have prevailed as to the undisputed, true claim of absence, and that the clerk would have been arrested or at least gotten a ticket for her felonious change of court record(s) (which resulted in the court paying money that would not othersie have been paid). What happened was different. The judge did not claim that he remembered the lawyer's allged presence at the hearing, nor did the judge claim that anyone else remembered. The judge did not claim that the court reporter's transcript (a verbaitm transcript of the hearing) showed the lawyer's attendance. The judge did not claim that the opposing counsel denied the lawyer's absence. The judge did not schedule a hearing (to permit the lawyer to prove that he had not been at the hearing). The judge (perhaps to protect his clerk from the consequences of feloniously changing a court record to cause payment of court funds) merely issued an order that the lawyer's claim (that he had not been at the hearing) was not true because it was inconsistent with the (clerk-modified) court record. The lawyer did not know about the falsity of the court record(s) until he got the court order based on the record(s). It is interesting that the judge was not eager to receive evidence proving the lawyer's absence (which would have proven that the court record(s) were false). A judge has the right to be inclined to decide a dispute based solely on evidence not mentioned by any of the lawyers, but the judge should then schedule some sort of hearing to permit the lawyers to argue about and disprove the evidence that the judge is inclined to rely on. Because, in this case, the judge's purpose seems to have been to protect a felonious clerk (and perhaps also to pretend that he was competently supervising her), it is unsurprising that he did not schedule a hearing to receive evidence and argument about the clerk's court record. The preceding incident is intended to be just one example of crime, brazen lying, and unethical conduct in court by court employees. Interestingly, this incident also illustrates another theme of this long discussion about judges: performance of a judge's work (in this incident, causing issuance of a court order so that a lawyer gets paid court funds) by a non-judge.
Home Addresses of People Most of Whom Are Current or Former Government Officers
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