US Legal System Totally Corrupt
EG Warman
Judge Tells Harvard Law School
By Geraldine Hawkins
March 7, 2003
From: http://www.rense.com/general35/corrupt.htm
Quote:
The American legal system has been corrupted almost beyond
recognition,
Judge Edith Jones of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit,
told the Federalist Society of Harvard Law School on February 28.
She said that the question of what is morally right is routinely
sacrificed to what is politically expedient. The change has come
because legal philosophy has descended to nihilism.
"The integrity of law, its religious roots, its transcendent quality
are disappearing. I saw the movie 'Chicago' with Richard Gere the
other day. That's the way the public thinks about lawyers," she
told the students.
"The first 100 years of American lawyers were trained on Blackstone,
who wrote that: 'The law of nature dictated by God himself is binding
in all counties and at all times; no human laws are of any validity
if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all force
and all their authority from this original.' The Framers created a
government of limited power with this understanding of the rule of
law - that it was dependent on transcendent religious obligation,"
said Jones.
She said that the business about all of the Founding Fathers being
deists is "just wrong," or "way overblown." She says they believed
in "faith and reason," and this did not lead to intolerance.
"This is not a prescription for intolerance or narrow sectarianism,"
she continued, "for unalienable rights were given by God to all our
fellow citizens. Having lost sight of the moral and religious
foundations of the rule of law, we are vulnerable to the destruction
of our freedom, our equality before the law and our self-respect.
It is my fervent hope that this new century will experience a revival
of the original understanding of the rule of law and its roots.
"The answer is a recovery of moral principle, the sine qua non of an
orderly society. Post 9/11, many events have been clarified. It is
hard to remain a moral relativist when your own people are being
killed."
According to the judge, the first contemporary threat to the rule of
law comes from within the legal system itself.
Alexis de Tocqueville, author of Democracy in America and one of the
first writers to observe the United States from the outside
looking-in, "described lawyers as a natural aristocracy in America,"
Jones
told the students. "The intellectual basis of their profession and
the study of law based on venerable precedents bred in them habits
of order and a taste for formalities and predictability." As
Tocqueville saw it, "These qualities enabled attorneys to stand
apart from the passions of the majority. Lawyers were respected by
the citizens and able to guide them and moderate the public's whims.
Lawyers were essential to tempering the potential tyranny of the
majority.
"Some lawyers may still perceive our profession in this flattering
light, but to judge from polls and the tenor of lawyer jokes, I doubt
the public shares Tocqueville's view anymore, and it is hard for us
to do so.
"The legal aristocracy have shed their professional independence for
the temptations and materialism associated with becoming businessmen.
Because law has become a self-avowed business, pressure mounts to
give clients the advice they want to hear, to pander to the clients'
goal through deft manipulation of the law. While the business
mentality produces certain benefits, like occasional competition to
charge clients lower fees, other adverse effects include advertising
and shameless self-promotion. The legal system has also been wounded
by lawyers who themselves no longer respect the rule of law,"
The judge quoted Kenneth Starr as saying, "It is decidedly unchristian
to win at any cost," and added that most lawyers agree with him.
However, "An increasingly visible and vocal number apparently believe
that the strategic use of anger and incivility will achieve their
aims.
Others seem uninhibited about making misstatements to the court or
their opponents or destroying or falsifying evidence," she claimed.
"When lawyers cannot be trusted to observe the fair processes
essential
to maintaining the rule of law, how can we expect the public to
respect
the process?"
Lawsuits Do Not Bring 'Social Justice'
Another pernicious development within the legal system is the misuse
of lawsuits, according to her.
"We see lawsuits wielded as weapons of revenge," she says. "Lawsuits
are brought that ultimately line the pockets of lawyers rather than
their clients. The lawsuit is not the best way to achieve social
justice, and to think it is, is a seriously flawed hypothesis. There
are better ways to achieve social goals than by going into court."
Jones said that employment litigation is a particularly fertile field
for this kind of abuse.
"Seldom are employment discrimination suits in our court supported by
direct evidence of race or sex-based animosity. Instead, the courts
are asked to revisit petty interoffice disputes and to infer invidious
motives from trivial comments or work-performance criticism.
Recrimination, second-guessing and suspicion plague the workplace when
tenuous discrimination suits are filed creating an atmosphere in which
many corporate defendants are forced into costly settlements because
they simply cannot afford to vindicate their positions.
"While the historical purpose of the common law was to compensate for
individual injuries, this new litigation instead purports to achieve
redistributive social justice. Scratch the surface of the attorneys'
self-serving press releases, however, and one finds how enormously
profitable social redistribution is for those lawyers who call
themselves 'agents of change.'"
Jones wonders, "What social goal is achieved by transferring millions
of dollars to the lawyers, while their clients obtain coupons or token
rebates."
The judge quoted George Washington who asked in his Farewell Address,
"Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the
sense of religious obligation desert the oaths in courts of justice?"
Similarly, asked Jones, how can a system founded on law survive if
the administrators of the law daily display their contempt for it?
"Lawyers' private morality has definite public consequences," she
said.
"Their misbehavior feeds on itself, encouraging disrespect and
debasement of the rule of law as the public become encouraged to press
their own advantage in a system they perceive as manipulatable."
The second threat to the rule of law comes from government, which is
encumbered with agencies that have made the law so complicated that
it is difficult to decipher and often contradicts itself.
"Agencies have an inherent tendency to expand their mandate," says
Jones. "At the same time, their decision-making often becomes
parochial and short-sighted. They may be captured by the entities
that are ostensibly being regulated, or they may pursue agency self-
interest at the expense of the public welfare. Citizens left at the
mercy of selective and unpredictable agency action have little
recourse."
Jones recommends three books by Philip Howard: The Death of Common
Sense, The Collapse of the Common Good and The Lost Art of Drawing
the Line, which further delineate this problem.
The third and most comprehensive threat to the rule of law arises
from contemporary legal philosophy.
"Throughout my professional life, American legal education has been
ruled by theories like positivism, the residue of legal realism,
critical legal studies, post-modernism and other philosophical
fashions," said Jones. "Each of these theories has a lot to say about
the 'is' of law, but none of them addresses the 'ought,' the moral
foundation or direction of law."
Jones quoted Roger C. Cramton, a law professor at Cornell University,
who wrote in the 1970s that "the ordinary religion of the law school
classroom" is "a moral relativism tending toward nihilism, a
pragmatism tending toward an amoral instrumentalism, a realism
tending toward cynicism, an individualism tending toward atomism,
and a faith in reason and democratic processes tending toward mere
credulity and idolatry."
No 'Great Awakening' In Law School Classrooms
The judge said ruefully, "There has been no Great Awakening in the
law school classroom since those words were written." She maintained
that now it is even worse because faith and democratic processes are
breaking down.
"The problem with legal philosophy today is that it reflects all too
well the broader post-Enlightenment problem of philosophy," Jones
said. She quoted Ernest Fortin, who wrote in Crisis magazine: "The
whole of modern thought has been a series of heroic attempts to
reconstruct a world of human meaning and value on the basis of our
purely mechanistic understanding of the universe."
Jones said that all of these threats to the rule of law have a common
thread running through them, and she quoted Professor Harold Berman
to identify it: "The traditional Western beliefs in the structural
integrity of law, its ongoingness, its religious roots, its
transcendent qualities, are disappearing not only from the minds of
law teachers and law students but also from the consciousness of the
vast majority of citizens, the people as a whole; and more than that,
they are disappearing from the law itself. The law itself is
becoming more fragmented, more subjective, geared more to expediency
and less to morality. The historical soil of the Western legal
tradition is being washed away and the tradition itself is threatened
with collapse."
Judge Jones concluded with another thought from George Washington:
"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to prosperity, religion
and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim
the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great
pillars of human happiness - these firmest props of the duties of
men and citizens."
Poster's note: Interesting to note that Washington distinguished
between "men" and "citizens" - the former being free will entities,
and the latter being the Roman concept of a slave bestowed with
freedom upon the promise of military service and tribute to Caesar.
How many Americans are "men"? And, how many are "citizens"?
Upon taking questions from students, Judge Jones recommended Michael
Novak's book, On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense.
"Natural law is not a prescriptive way to solve problems," Jones said.
"It is a way to look at life starting with the Ten Commandments."
Natural law provides "a framework for government that permits human
freedom," Jones said. "If you take that away, what are you left
with? Bodily senses? The will of the majority? The communist view?
What is it - 'from each according to his ability, to each according
to his need?' I don't even remember it, thank the Lord," she said to
the amusement of the students.
"I am an unabashed patriot - I think the United States is the
healthiest society in the world at this point in time," Jones said,
although she did concede that there were other ways to accommodate
the rule of law, such as constitutional monarchy.
"Our legal system is way out of kilter," she said. "The tort
litigating system is wreaking havoc. Look at any trials that have
been conducted on TV. These lawyers are willing to say anything."
Potential Nominee to Supreme Court
Judge Edith Jones has been mentioned as a potential nominee to
the Supreme Court in the Bush administration, but does not relish
the idea.
"Have you looked at what people have to go through who are nominated
for federal appointments? They have to answer questions like, 'Did
you pay your nanny taxes?' 'Is your yard man illegal?'
"In those circumstances, who is going to go out to be a federal
judge? People who have accomplished nothing. In other words,
federal employees."
Judge Edith H. Jones has a B.A. from Cornell University and a J.D.
from the University of Texas School of Law. She was appointed to
the Fifth Circuit by President Ronald Reagan in 1985. Her office
is in the U.S. Courthouse in Houston.
The Federalist Society was founded in 1982 when a group of law
students from Harvard, Stanford, the University of Chicago and
Yale organized a symposium on federalism at Yale Law School.
These students were unhappy with the academic climate on their
campuses for some of the reasons outlined by Judge Jones. The
Federalist Society was created to be a forum for a wider range
of legal viewpoints than they were hearing in the course of
their studies.
From the four schools mentioned above, the Society has grown to
include over 150 law school chapters. The Harvard chapter, with
over 250 members, is one of the nation's largest and most active.
They seek to contribute to civilized dialogue at the Law School
by providing a libertarian and conservative voice on campus and
by sponsoring speeches and debates on a wide range of legal and
policy issues.
The Federalist Society consists of libertarians and conservatives
interested in the current state of the legal profession. It is
founded on three principles:
1) the state exists to preserve freedom,
2) the separation of governmental powers is central to our
Constitution and
3) it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to
state what the law is, not what it should be.
http://www.massnews.com/2003_Editions/3_March/030703_mn_
american_legal_system_corrupt.shtml
Unquote
Posted by:
Eldon Warman
http://www.detaxcanada.org
Vincent Henry Bartning
One matter your supposed speech by Judge Jones brings to mind involves
Muslims and justice and 9/11. I hope I don't mishandle corruption,
but certainly injustice has existed in the United States for quite
some time. However, the main example that comes to mind involves my
complaints about school at the federal level since 1992 and my better
behaviors than those of my friends or peers without my being as
successful. Unfair treatment with women presents another example, and
it frightens me to complain about it.
>However, "An increasingly visible and vocal number apparently believe
>that the strategic use of anger and incivility will achieve their
>aims.
>Others seem uninhibited about making misstatements to the court or
>their opponents or destroying or falsifying evidence," she claimed.
>"When lawyers cannot be trusted to observe the fair processes
>essential
>to maintaining the rule of law, how can we expect the public to
>respect
>the process?"
I've seen a "strategic use of anger and incivility" firsthand, and it
was by another Conrell-graduated lawyer too. However, he got his
undergraduate at the University of Maryland. He also got a good deal
of money from a San Jose State student, etc., and my First Amendment
rights get violated with impunity, and there's an abuse of the process
besides! There's also a violation of U.S. Code Title 42, SS1982 et.
seq. because I don't believe I have equal access to the courts.
>
>"We see lawsuits wielded as weapons of revenge," she says. "Lawsuits
>are brought that ultimately line the pockets of lawyers rather than
>their clients. The lawsuit is not the best way to achieve social
>justice, and to think it is, is a seriously flawed hypothesis. There
>are better ways to achieve social goals than by going into court."
>Jones said that employment litigation is a particularly fertile field
>for this kind of abuse.
Justice has to happen somewhere. Why not in court? However, I think
you make me raise guns too high here because I think protecting civil
rights presents a great importance. How can you do it if it does?
>"Seldom are employment discrimination suits in our court supported by
>direct evidence of race or sex-based animosity. Instead, the courts
>are asked to revisit petty interoffice disputes and to infer
invidious
>motives from trivial comments or work-performance criticism.
>Recrimination, second-guessing and suspicion plague the workplace
when
>tenuous discrimination suits are filed creating an atmosphere in
which
>many corporate defendants are forced into costly settlements because
>they simply cannot afford to vindicate their positions.
>
>"While the historical purpose of the common law was to compensate for
>individual injuries, this new litigation instead purports to achieve
>redistributive social justice. Scratch the surface of the attorneys'
>self-serving press releases, however, and one finds how enormously
>profitable social redistribution is for those lawyers who call
>themselves 'agents of change.'"
>
>Jones wonders, "What social goal is achieved by transferring millions
>of dollars to the lawyers, while their clients obtain coupons or
token
>rebates."
So much major injustice happens in court, there's no wonder unfairness
happens everywhere there. You said even Judge Jones says that the
"American legal system has been corrupted almost beyond recognition."
I can't even speak my mind about it though. What am I supposed to do,
sue? (LOL) I thought of again taking Karate yesterday among other
things...
>
> Poster's note: Interesting to note that Washington distinguished
> between "men" and "citizens" - the former being free will entities,
> and the latter being the Roman concept of a slave bestowed with
> freedom upon the promise of military service and tribute to Caesar.
> How many Americans are "men"? And, how many are "citizens"?
>
>Upon taking questions from students, Judge Jones recommended Michael
>Novak's book, On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense.
>"Natural law is not a prescriptive way to solve problems," Jones
said.
>"It is a way to look at life starting with the Ten Commandments."
Is natural law starting with the Ten Commandments? Lawyers will tell
you the law starts there, and they will tell you otherwise. However,
what about natural law being the law of nature rather than the law of
God? Whether having it the law of God makes it the best of both
worlds also presents at least an issue. I am confused though...
>Natural law provides "a framework for government that permits human
>freedom," Jones said. "If you take that away, what are you left
>with? Bodily senses? The will of the majority? The communist view?
>What is it - 'from each according to his ability, to each according
>to his need?' I don't even remember it, thank the Lord," she said to
>the amusement of the students.
Blocks appear here too for me, but I'm thinking about asking my dad, a
Stanford MBA, B.S.E.E. from Arizona State, etc. whether he things the
Supreme Court's communist. If they are, what can we do about it?
Moreover, why can't a lawyer remember what a fellow lawyer, Lenin,
certainly worked on a lot?
>"I am an unabashed patriot - I think the United States is the
>healthiest society in the world at this point in time," Jones said,
>although she did concede that there were other ways to accommodate
>the rule of law, such as constitutional monarchy.
I don't know. I'm taking a lot of political science classes. I had
gotten "As" in five of 'em before I attempted changing my major, but
since the attempted change, the GPA in the classes is no better than
my previous major of Spanish, if not worse, and it's taken a lot more
money and time to try to improve the GPA by switching to political
science.
I also bring up "poli sci" because of Plato's claiming to like
democracy only a little better than tyranny. Whether he was joking
presents an issue, but it's a concept, especially in our "democratic
republic" as William Shirer called our form of government in his 1961
book, _The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler_.
>"Our legal system is way out of kilter," she said. "The tort
>litigating system is wreaking havoc. Look at any trials that have
>been conducted on TV. These lawyers are willing to say anything."
Blocks abound here...
>The Federalist Society was founded in 1982 when a group of law
>students from Harvard, Stanford, the University of Chicago and
>Yale organized a symposium on federalism at Yale Law School.
>These students were unhappy with the academic climate on their
>campuses for some of the reasons outlined by Judge Jones. The
>Federalist Society was created to be a forum for a wider range
>of legal viewpoints than they were hearing in the course of
>their studies.
Regarding whether the Supreme Court's communist, I just spoke to my
dad, Member of the Board of Directors for a nonprofit to help families
of U.S. KIA, The USA KIA/DOW Family Foundation, and he's a Stanford
MBA and was number one in his class at UCLA for his Master of Finance
there, and he doesn't think they're communist, but he thinks they're
conservative. Regarding that recent "3 Strikes and You're Out" law
they thought constitutional, he thinks opponents should document
extreme cases to bring to California voters so that it can be
overturned. He, like other members of my family, attended schools you
list here that began the Federalist Society.
>"In those circumstances, who is going to go out to be a federal
>judge? People who have accomplished nothing. In other words,
>federal employees."
>Jones recommends three books by Philip Howard: The Death of Common
>Sense, The Collapse of the Common Good and The Lost Art of Drawing
>the Line, which further delineate this problem.
>
>The third and most comprehensive threat to the rule of law arises
>from contemporary legal philosophy.
Well, I'm still reading _Walden_, and I'm not getting as far as I
should. _The Summons_ is next though. However, my school's law and
society-type classes get taught by a rather arrogant guy whom I've
complained about already I believe. He's supposed to be "laid back,"
but he certainly uses the "N-word" a lot. He also gets pretty
negative emotionally for someone who's "laid back."
_The Lost Art of Drawing the Line_ sounds good. I've tried to draw it
regarding a San Jose Police invasion of my apartment back in June of
2000. However, the federal courts try for "political expediency"
instead of what's "morally right" as Judge Jones says. They did serve
the other party though through a U.S. Marshall.
>Judge Edith H. Jones has a B.A. from Cornell University and a J.D.
>from the University of Texas School of Law. She was appointed to
>the Fifth Circuit by President Ronald Reagan in 1985. Her office
>is in the U.S. Courthouse in Houston.
Well, she certainly made a timely and excellent speech. I give her
credit for that. I'd say she sounds like she'd be a good justice, but
I'd rather see her replace a fellow conservative at the moment.
Thanks,
Vincent
Member, Board of Directors for Incorporation, USA KIA/DOW Family
Foundation (Copyright)
"The United States of America honors the memory of John W. Rich"
--Presidential Memorial Certificate, KIA 1944
"The United States of America honors the memory of Louis Bartning"
--Presidential Memorial Certificate, KIA 1951
"Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy forget in
time that men have died to win them." FDR
"The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his
early share and numerous succeeding investments in them." Henry D.
Thoreau, _Walden_, 1854, p. 33
"; and I am resolved that I will not through humility become the
devil's attorney." ibid., p. 32
-- Wilfred Owen, "Insensibility"
Happy are men who yet before they are killed
Can let their veins run cold.
Whom no compassion fleers
Or makes their feet
Sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers.
Happy are those who lose imagination;
They have enough to carry with ammunition.
Happy the soldier home, with not a notion
How somewhere, every dawn, some men attack....
But cursed are dullards whom no cannon stuns...
By choice they made themselves immune
To pity....