CommentsONE MAN’S OPINION--In Europe, there were myths about the legitimacy of royalty.
When King Arthur pulled the word from the stone, his sovereignty was confirmed. "Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil, is rightwise king born." Centuries later, King James I promoted the concept of the Divine Right of Kings. It attempted to affix the religious notion of GOD’s authority on the king. People who were not the king did not like the idea so much.
In 1776, The Declaration of Independence stated that each person’s inalienable rights including Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness were self-evident. The purpose of government is to secure these rights and when the government fails, it loses its legitimacy. Individual inalienable rights are a myth; more realistically they are goals.
The preamble to the US Constitution followed up and declared that one of its purposes was to secure the blessing of liberty in addition to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice and provide for general welfare. In brief, the US Constitution established a government which would seek to realize the goals of the Declaration. One should notice that while the inalienable rights are myths; the US Constitution’s purposes are facts. Whether or not one likes individual inalienable rights, the Constitution’s purpose is to make then real.
The founding fathers believed that a republic was the best form of government to advance individual inalienable rights. The Republic recognizes that men of ill will always grasp at power, and once they obtain it, they use it to harm or destroy others. They found democracy to be an especially poor form of government as too often it turns to mobocracy where the majority decimates the minority. The Republic, where power balances power, had the best chance to thwart power lust. A century later in 1887, Lord Acton summed up the guiding principle of the US Constitution, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.”
The Problem of the Judiciary
The Constitution protected the Judiciary, as an institution, from the other two branches of government by making the judges’ tenure and their decisions independent from the both the legislative and executive branches. By giving the Supreme Court the final word on the constitutionality of Congress’ laws and the President’s action, the founding fathers lay the basis for the myth of judicial integrity. In Federalist Paper 81, Hamilton explained courts’ need to be free of control by the legislature: “And there is a still greater absurdity in subjecting the decisions of men, selected for their knowledge of the laws, acquired by long and laborious study, to the revision and control of men who, for want of the same advantage, cannot but be deficient in that knowledge.” (Translation: Judges are men of character who merit their position; while legislators can be fly-by-night fools.) Underlying Hamilton’s reasoning, one sees the founding fathers’ fear of mobocracy.
The founding father’s supposition that judges would be men of character evaded the reality that dishonorable men will seek out judgeships. At this point, we can separate discussion of Supreme Court justices from judges at the trial and appellate court levels. For much of the nation, the latter have become predatory institutions victimizing the people.
The Dismantling of Myths
In the 1950's, 1960's and even thereafter, the priesthood benefited from the myth of the moral integrity of Catholic priests http://bit.ly/3eqzQ3u . To the extent the Church was an authoritarian institution, parishioners accepted without question the moral integrity of priests. In the Church’s everyday mythology, priests were above reproach. The very victims who complained were dealt with very harshly by the hierarchy both inside the church and in the courts. Starting in the 1980's, enough stories were circulating to gnaw at the myth. Eventually the worldwide plague of priests’ sexual abuse and the role of the Church itself in concealing and perpetuating pedophilia became public knowledge.
Soon thereafter, a similar debunking of the Boy Scouts’ integrity took place. The Boy Scouts’ homophobia turns out to have been a mentally twisted coverup of widespread sexual abuse of adolescent boys. As a result, the Scouts have filed for bankruptcy
Wherever Power Is Unchecked, Abuse Is Unchecked
On the one hand, there is a need for a populace to accept the decisions of courts without the police’s physically enforcing each order. This quasi voluntary compliance is gained by the myth of judicial integrity. Just as we once believed that men of the cloth had integrity and that Scout leaders were decent role models, we accept the myth that judges have integrity. We falsely believe that they are selected based on merit and not by political opportunism. While judges like everyone else make errors, we believe they attempt to get it right. Like altar boys in 1965, an increasing number of us realize that the judiciary is devoid of integrity and has become the nation’s most powerful institution of oppression.
Judges are no longer selected due to judicial temperament based on years of learning and moral rectitude. They are primarily political opportunists, frequently former prosecutors who gain political and financial support by railroading minorities into long prison terms. United States has about 4.4 percent of the world's population but we have 22 percent of the world's prisoners.
Judges are the gate keepers to the prisons. Yet, we do not question the idiotic corollary that Americans are 500 times more likely to commit crimes than the people in rest of the world. As Judge Alex Kozinski noted in January 2015, the state of California had an epidemic of attorney misconduct, but beneath his observation lurks pervasive judicial corruption. Judges encourage lying jailhouse informants, the falsifying evidence and a plethora of other unconstitutional ploys to railroad defendants into long prison terms.
Family Courts are nightmares of abuse, while Probate and Conservatorship courts have become forums for judges to financially rape the elderly.
How long before the myth of judicial integrity disintegrates like the myth of priestly celibacy and Scout leaders make good role models? Black Lives Matter has brought to the nation’s consciousness that our problems are systemic. It is not one or two Bull Connor’s or the misuse of police dogs to attack peaceful protestors. The judicial system itself is corrupt.
The most potent step which each person can take is to bluntly call out predatory judges, be they racists, anti-Semites, child or elder abusers. No more namby-pamby circumlocutions to dissemble the judicial evil! We need to debunk the myth of judicial integrity and end judicial immunity.
(Richard Lee Abrams is an attorney. He lives in Los Angeles.)
-cw
