U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE LYNN S. ADELMAN CHANNELS “COURTSIDE” — BLASTS ROBERTS & COMPANY FOR AIDING THE FORCES SEEKING TO DESTROY OUR DEMOCRACY — “Instead of doing what it can to ensure the maintenance of a robust democratic republic, the Court’s decisions ally it with the most anti-democratic currents in American politics,”

Fred Barbash
Fred Barbash
Legal Reporter
Washington Post

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/03/11/lynn-adelman-roberts-trump/

Fred Barbash reports for the WashPost:

Lynn S. Adelman, a U.S. district judge in Milwaukee, has riled conservatives by publishing a blistering critique of the Supreme Court’s record under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., focusing on a string of decisions that he argues have fostered “economic inequality,” “undermined democracy” and “increased the political power of corporations and wealthy individuals” at the expense of ordinary Americans.

Adelman also criticized President Trump, who he wrote ran as a populist but failed to deliver “policies beneficial to the general public. … While Trump’s temperament is that of an autocrat,” Adelman wrote, “he is disinclined to buck the wealthy individuals and corporations who control his party.”

The article by Adelman was all the more unusual because it went after the chief justice directly. Roberts, he said, was “misleading” in his 2005 confirmation hearing testimony when he pledged to be a passive “umpire” calling balls and strikes.

Adelman called that metaphor a “masterpiece of disingenuousness,” saying the court under Roberts “has been anything but passive” as its “hard right majority” has actively participated in “undermining American democracy.”

As president, Donald Trump has repeatedly accused federal judges of being political and beholden to the presidents who appointed them. (JM Rieger/The Washington Post)

The article, entitled “The Roberts Court’s Assault on Democracy,” is scheduled for publication in an unspecified forthcoming issue of the Harvard Law & Policy Review, which describes itself as the official publication of the liberal American Constitution Society. It was published in full at SSRN this month.

Adelman, appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton in 1997, is a former Democratic state senator in Wisconsin and Legal Aid Society trial lawyer. Perhaps his best-known decision nationally was a 2014 ruling striking down Wisconsin’s voter ID law. 

His broad critique of the Roberts court, with particular reference to its decisions on voting rights and campaign finance by corporate interests, is not an uncommon one — coming, that is, from liberal scholars or political leaders, including former president Barack Obama.

But coming from a sitting federal judge in a journal article accompanied by such a blunt attack on Roberts, not to mention Trump, it has attracted uncommon attention.

. . . .

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Read the complete article at the link.  

So I’m not the only one to note the Chiefie’s “Taneyesque” performance, particularly on issues involving the rights of migrants, refugees, Muslims, and other persons of color. He has joined the regime in “Dred Scottifying” those with brown skins who are entitled to the protection of our Constitution and our laws, which Trump has eliminated without legislation, relying largely on transparently fraudulent “national security rationales.”  

But, Roberts hasn’t been much good for African Americans or other minorities either, joining his right winger activist colleagues in disingenuously dismantling key parts of civil rights and voting rights protections and turning an intentionally blind eye to partisan gerrymandering carried out by the GOP to disenfranchise minorities. Election results get skewed and folks actually die as a result of these intentional miscarriages of justice to further a toxic right wing agenda aimed at destroying America’s democratic institutions, promoting inequality, and institutionalizing privilege. As Judge Adelman said “the transformation of the Supreme Court from what he described as a defender of ordinary people and ‘subordinated groups’ to an enabler of an ‘anti-democratic’ Republican agenda.” Right on, Judge A!

I also found this comment telling:

Adelman was unapologetic. “I think it’s totally appropriate to criticize the court when there’s a basis for it,” he said. “Judges are encouraged to comment on the law because we have a particular interest, knowledge and familiarity.”

Compare that with the “muzzling” of the Immigration Judiciary by the Executive reported recently on Courtside. https://immigrationcourtside.com/2020/03/03/🤡🤡clown-court-report-as-due-process-goes-into-death-spiral-regime-muzzles-immigration-judges/

And, as I constantly point out, the Immigration Courts aren’t “courts” at all. They are blatantly unconstitutional “star chambers” run by the Executive Branch with the complicity of the Article III Judiciary who see their work daily and know full well that they are often “rubber stamping” final orders sending folks into potentially life-threatening exile with only a transparently thin veneer of “due process.” But, according to Roberts and his gang, brown-skinned refugees aren’t entitled to even access this process in a reasonable manner, let alone receive the fair hearings to which they are entitled before being “orbited” to potential death in foreign lands. What if it were his wife and kids? I’ll bet their lives would get more consideration.

I also appreciate Judge Adelman’s “spotlighting” the disingenuous testimony of Roberts and other right wingers under oath before the Senate when they “feigned impartiality” to disguise their anti-democracy agenda (without, of course, losing the support of the rightest Republicans who were “licking their chops” at finally getting their long-awaited “judicial wrecking crew” in place).

As one of my esteemed Round Table colleagues said recently:  “In the words of Balzac, ‘to distrust the judiciary marks the beginning of the end of society.’”

Unhappily, thanks to Roberts and other complicit Article IIIs, we’re there. Which is exactly how Trump and his supporters want it!

In reality, judges were among those inside Germany who might have effectively challenged Hitler’s authority, the legitimacy of the Nazi regime, and the hundreds of laws that restricted political freedoms, civil rights, and guarantees of property and security. And yet, the overwhelming majority did not. Instead, over the 12 years of Nazi rule, during which time judges heard countless cases, most not only upheld the law but interpreted it in broad and far-reaching ways that facilitated, rather than hindered, the Nazis ability to carry out their agenda.

 

United States Holocaust Museum, Law, Justice, and the Holocaust, at 8 (July 2018)

How soon we forget!

So much for the bogus ”passive “umpire” calling balls and strikes.”

Due Process Forever! Complicit Courts Never!

PWS

03-11-20

COMPLICITY HAS COSTS:  Article III Judges’ Association Apparently Worries That Trump, Barr, GOP Toadies Starting To “Treat Them Like Immigration Judges” — Do They Fear Descent To Status Of Mere Refugees, Immigrants, “Dreamers,” Unaccompanied Children, Or Others Treated As “Less Than Persons” By Trump, 5th Cir., 11th Cir., 9th Cir., & The Supremes’ “J.R. Five?” 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/02/18/judges-meeting-trump/

Fred Barbash
Fred Barbash
Legal Reporter
Washington Post

Fred Barbash reports for the WashPost:

By

Fred Barbash

Feb. 18, 2020 at 3:16 a.m. EST

The head of the Federal Judges Association is taking the extraordinary step of calling an emergency meeting to address the intervention in politically sensitive cases by President Trump and Attorney General William P. Barr.

U.S. District Judge Cynthia M. Rufe, the Philadelphia-based judge who heads the voluntary association of around 1,100 life-term federal judges, told USA Today that the issue “could not wait.” The association, founded in 1982, ordinarily concerns itself with matters of judicial compensation and legislation affecting the federal judiciary.

Republicans defend Barr as Klobuchar looks forward to testimony

Lawmakers and White House counselor Kellyanne Conway commented Feb. 16 on President Trump’s tweets and the conduct of Attorney General William P. Barr. (The Washington Post)

On Sunday, more than 1,100 former Justice Department employees released a public letter calling on Barr to resign over the Stone case.

More than 1,100 ex-Justice Department officials call for Barr’s resignation

A search of news articles since the group’s creation revealed nothing like a meeting to deal with the conduct of a president or attorney general.

Rufe, appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, could not be reached for comment late Monday.

The action follows a week of turmoil that included the president tweeting his outrage over the length of sentence recommended by career federal prosecutors for his friend Roger Stone and the decision by Barr to withdraw that recommendation.

In between, Trump singled out the judge in the Stone case, Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court in Washington, for personal attacks, accusing her of bias and spreading a falsehood about her record.

“There are plenty of issues that we are concerned about,” Rufe said to USA Today. “We’ll talk all this through.”

Trump began disparaging federal judges who have ruled against his interests before he took office, starting with U.S. District Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel. After Curiel ruled against Trump in 2016 in a pair of lawsuits detailing predatory marketing practices at Trump University in San Diego, Trump described him as “a hater of Donald Trump,” adding that he believed the Indiana-born judge was “Mexican.”

Trump keeps lashing out at judges

President Trump has a history of denouncing judges over rulings that have negatively affected him personally as well as his administration’s policies. (Drea Cornejo/The Washington Post)

Faced with more than 100 adverse rulings in the federal courts, Trump has continued verbal attacks on judges.

Rufe’s comments gave no hint of what the association could or would do in response.

Some individual judges have already spoken out critically about Trump’s attacks generally, among them U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman, a colleague of Jackson’s in Washington, and most recently, the chief judge of the court in Washington, Beryl A. Howell.

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In reality, judges were among those inside Germany who might have effectively challenged Hitler’s authority, the legitimacy of the Nazi regime, and the hundreds of laws that restricted political freedoms, civil rights, and guarantees of property and security. And yet, the overwhelming majority did not. Instead, over the 12 years of Nazi rule, during which time judges heard countless cases, most not only upheld the law but interpreted it in broad and far-reaching ways that facilitated, rather than hindered, the Nazis ability to carry out their agenda.

 

— United States Holocaust Museum, Law, Justice, and the Holocaust, at 8 (July 2018)

How soon we forget!

Will Trump & Barr eventually separate Article III Judges’ families or send them to danger zones in Mexico or the Northern Triangle to “deter” rulings against the regime? Will Mark Morgan and Chad Wolf then declare “victory?” Will their families be scattered to various parts of the “New American Gulag” with no plans to reunite them? Will they be put on trial for their lives without access to lawyers? Are there costs for failing to take a “united stand” for the rule of law, Constitutional Due Process, human rights, and the human dignity of the most vulnerable among us?

Why does it take the case of a lifetime sleaze-ball like Roger Stone to get the “life-tenured ones” to “wake up” to the attacks on humanity and the rule of law going on under noses for the past three years?

Complicity has costs!

Due Process Forever; Complicit Courts Never!

PWS

02-18-20

NO, IT’S NOT “OBAMA JUDGES IN THE 9TH CIRCUIT” – Federal Judges Across The Spectrum & Throughout The Country Are Handing Scofflaw Prez A Record Number Of Well-Earned Defeats!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/11/22/trump-judicial-fantasy-what-chief-justice-roberts-could-have-told-him-didnt/

Fred Barbash reports for the WashPost:

Late Monday, a U.S. district judge in San Francisco blocked the Trump administration from denying asylum to migrants who crossed the southern border illegally, saying the president violated a “clear command” from Congress to allow them to apply. Trump’s reaction was to add “Obama” judges, specifically those sitting on the 9th Circuit out West, to his list of those responsible for what he calls the nation’s “open borders.”

“This was an Obama judge,” the president said. “And I’ll tell you what, it’s not going to happen like this anymore. Everybody that wants to sue the United States, they file their case in — almost — they file their case in the 9th Circuit. And it means an automatic loss no matter what you do, no matter how good your case is.” He strung out the theme on Thanksgiving, demonizing the judges who, he tweeted, will be responsible for “bedlam, chaos, injury and death” for not letting law enforcement do their jobs.

His attack on Judge Jon S. Tigar, who issued the temporary order on asylum, was sufficient to arouse Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Roberts said in a statement. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”

Trump clashes with conservative chief justice over judiciary

Chief Justice John Roberts pointedly defended the independence of the federal judiciary on Nov. 21 after President Trump criticized the courts.

As unusual as Roberts’s comments were, he could have said so much more, like maybe, you’ve got to be kidding, Mr. President, if you think your judicial problems are confined to “Obama” judges in a single circuit.

He could have noted that the number of rulings against his administration’s actions now stands somewhere in the range of about 40 to 50, according to a rough estimate by The Washington Post. Norman Siegel, writing at Law.com in January, counted 37 “major” losses, and that was in January, before numerous other rulings that thwarted Trump administration decisions.

And he could have observed that all of this is a bit of a surprise. All presidents lose cases. But a losing streak of this magnitude for a president is a new phenomenon.

Despite the endless decades of rhetoric about “judicial activism,” judges at the district court level are generally a timid lot when it comes to confronting presidents. Historically, they are inclined to do what former federal judge Nancy Gertner calls “duck, avoid and evade.”

“Now,” she wrote in the April issue of NYU Law Review, “I am not so certain. . . . Perhaps ‘judging in a time of Trump’ ” is different, she wrote. “It is one thing to ‘duck, avoid and evade’ when you believe that official actors are acting more or less within constitutional bounds. It is another to do so when you are concerned about real abuse of power.”

An abuse of power was what Tigar found: “Whatever the scope of the President’s authority,” he wrote, “he may not rewrite the immigration laws to impose a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden.” Trump did not discuss Tigar’s actual findings.

The biggest defeats have included four decisions blocking the president’s travel ban before the Supreme Court finally upheld its third iteration; his attempt to rescind Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, blocked by at least four courts; and the proposed ban on transgender people in the military, stopped in its tracks by no fewer than four judges, with two of the rulings upheld by appeals courts. Judges in Chicago and Philadelphia, as well as California, temporarily stopped Trump’s “sanctuary cities” crackdown.

Trump calls court ‘totally out of control’

President Trump slammed the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit Nov. 22, telling reporters it was “very unfair to law enforcement.”

A total of five rulings, by judges in Oregon, New York and the District of Columbia, among other places, enjoined the administration from cutting off funds to teen pregnancy prevention programs that failed to preach abstinence to the satisfaction of the Department of Health and Human Services.

This doesn’t count environmental rulings, like the Nov. 8 one halting construction of the Keystone XL pipeline issued by a judge in Montana. Judge Brian Morris was indeed appointed by President Barack Obama, though he clerked for the most conservative chief justice in modern history, William H. Rehnquist.

Roberts could have noted that those defeats have come at the hands of judges appointed not just by Democratic presidents but by Republicans dating all the way back to Ronald Reagan.

It was U.S. District Court Judge Dana M. Sabraw, for example, a California jurist appointed by President George W. Bush, who ripped the administration repeatedly for its family separation debacle.

And how could Trump forget that it was his own appointee, Timothy J. Kelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who slapped down the effort to ban CNN’s Jim Acosta from the White House.

Many of these judges do indeed sit on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit (which covers a vast swath of territory of nine states — California, Nevada, Arizona, Montana, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, Alaska and Idaho — and Guam and Northern Marianas, and is a traditional target for conservatives).

But as noted, rulings thwarting Trump have also come from judges sitting in New York, Maryland, the District of Columbia, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Massachusetts, Virginia, Michigan and beyond.

While there’s no scientific way of comparing judicial rhetoric, Republican appointees outside the 9th Circuit have actually seemed more inclined than others to lecture the president about the Constitution.

One of the toughest dressings-down came from a decision blocking Trump’s “sanctuary cities” crackdown written by Judge Ilana Rovner, appointed by President George H.W. Bush to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, based in Chicago. In a decision joined by a Gerald Ford appointee and a Reagan appointee upholding a lower-court ruling by a Reagan appointee, she lit into the Trump administration for assuming powers to withhold money not granted to it by Congress to punish states and cities that didn’t go along with efforts to round up those in the country illegally.

Her message to Trump and then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, translated, was basically, who do you think you are?

Our role in this case is not to assess the optimal immigration policies for our country. . . . The founders of our country well understood that the concentration of power threatens individual liberty and established a bulwark against such tyranny by creating a separation of powers among the branches of government. If the Executive Branch can determine policy, and then use the power of the purse to mandate compliance with that policy by the state and local governments, all without the authorization or even acquiescense of elected legislators, the check against tyranny is forsaken.

There was one possibly accurate observation in Trump’s comments: He said his losses sometimes seem “automatic.”

Based on the record, that’s not far from the truth.

But Roberts would never say that.

***************************************************

Much of what Trump says are outright lies or racist, White Nationalist false narratives. While sadly that has proved to sometimes be a “winning” political strategy  (because of a system that allows minority rule), it’s seldom a good litigating strategy in the 21st Century.

So, it’s hardly surprising that Trump is a “Big Loser” in court. It’s predictably outrageous for Trump to make the bogus claim that the courts are “out of control.” In fact, Trump and his scofflaw Administration are totally out of control, particularly in their often illegal and always immoral immigration policies. Indeed, until next January when the Democrats retake control of the House, the Federal Courts have actually been the only meaningful control on Trump. Perhaps their efforts will be enough to save the country from the greatest existential threat since world War II.  Only time will tell.

PWS

11-23-18