AnnotatedOpinions.com

Of the thousands of judges staffing courts in the United States, none is as powerful and less accountable to citizen complaints and scrutiny as the hierarchy of federal jurists appointed to lifetime terms. . . While the constitutional purpose of that arrangement is to insulate sitting judges from political or public influence on their rulings, it has also made it difficult to remove an incompetent or criminal-minded individual. Only the U.S. House of Representatives has the power to initiate impeachment proceedings against such jurists, and only the U.S. Senate can remove them from office.  

As reported by the Chronicle’s Lise Olsen, federal judges have committed a wide range of inappropriate, unethical and sometimes illegal acts while keeping their six-figure salaries and eluding exposure. In a review of more than 3,000 allegations of judicial misconduct over the past decade, Olsen found only seven judges faced formal disciplinary action and only two were recommended by colleagues for impeachment. . .  

In response to the complaints that judicial scrutiny is lacking at the federal level, earlier this year Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa and Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., introduced legislation that would create an independent inspector general for the federal judiciary. . .  

The legislation, which has not come to a vote, would set a four-year term for the inspector general, who would be appointed and subject to removal by the Supreme Court chief justice. . .  

[AO: Yes, yes, and yes. This Chronicle identifies an issue that deserves attention. But here is why we must thread carefully.  

As the Chronicle explains, the constitution purposely puts hurdles in the way of removal of federal judges. These hurdles are meant to “insulate sitting judges from political or public influence on their rulings.” So far, the system setup by our Constitution has been successful in protecting the federal judiciary and as a result we must be careful so that our tinkering does not produce unintended consequences.   

The proposal for the appointment of an inspector for the federal judicial may seem innocuous. Yet in that proposal lies the potential for political manipulation. The inspector, who would be a political appointee, may come to wield immense power over the judiciary even if that individual is subject to removal by the chief justice of the Supreme Court. Such power will likely reflect the political ideology of the politician who appoints the inspector. A Republican president may appoint a very different inspector general from one a Democratic president might appoint. This decision will have an effect on how the inspector general brings the pressures of her office to bear on judges.   

We saw a version of this in the US Attorneys General firings during the George W. Bush administration. It’s one thing for an administration to pressure or otherwise influence prosecutors. We don’t need the executive branch to also have the power to pressure federal judges.  

The Chronicle has identified an issue that deserves attention. However, appointing an inspector general may not be the best solution in light of the potential for abuse.]

• Thanksgiving fare [USA Today]
• United we gather: Thank goodness for Thanksgiving: A break from divisions [Chicago Tribune]
• ‘I have never cooked a turkey’ [Chicago Tribune]
• You Say Potato, I Say Yam: A starring ingredient on many Thanksgiving tables is a reminder of our national history. [New York Times]
• No complaint? No thanks [Chicago Tribune]

State Courts at the Tipping Point: State budget cuts are impeding core court functions, forcing court closures and narrowing of access to justice. [New York Times]

Race haunts politics: Will it ever be OK to go there without name-calling? [Chicago Tribune]

A home remedy: Paid sick leave could help deter spread of swine flu [Houston Chronicle]

Reform isn’t illegal: Congress has every authority to force every American to buy health insurance. [Washington Post]

False Alarm on Abortion? What is being overlooked in the abortion debate is the other benefits that expanded health insurance coverage could bring to women’s reproductive health. [New York Times]

A pro athlete’s lament: U.S. health care discriminates [USA Today]

Europe’s bland new leaders: Last week, Europe’s presidents and prime ministers finally had the chance to select an EU president and a foreign minister. [Boston Globe]

Who’s watching Glenn Beck? [LA Times]

Rhode Island bishop errs in targeting Patrick Kennedy: Bishop Thoms J. Tobin is within his rights to ask Representative Patrick Kennedy to refrain from seeking Holy Communion. Yet the standard to which the bishop is holding Kennedy for his views on abortion is unfair. [Boston Globe]

Keeping Personal Data Private: There are many important issues competing for Congress’s attention, but passing a law to keep people’s personal information safe should rank high on the list. [New York Times]

Concussions: Colleges should follow the pros – If the House Judiciary Committee can humble the National Football League into taking concussions more seriously, then it should reconvene to admonish the National Collegiate Athletic Association. [Boston Globe]

Sisters in arms: Remembering women who count their beatings in the once-fair country of Zimbabwe. [Washington Post]

The struggle after the fight: Pakistan can’t just kick out the Taliban. It must rebuild its tribal areas, too. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

Mahmoud Abbas, the Mideast’s big loser: A reported deal for an Israeli-Palestinian prisoner swap has benefits for all involved, except the weakened Palestinian Authority leader. [LA Times]

Caring for the elderly: It’s ironic that at a time when thousands of Americans are struggling to find appropriate care for their failing parents, the field of geriatric medicine appears to be vanishing. [Boston Globe]

Don’t Forget the Gulf States: Unless Congress acts quickly, more than 6,000 housing units for poor families might never get built in the Katrina-ravaged Gulf states. [New York Times]

Her love of ‘little plants’ lives on [USA Today]

To befriend or unfriend, that is the question [Chicago Tribune]

Obama is right to acknowledge China’s might: For better and worse, the U.S. and Chinese economies are intertwined, and that makes America stronger, not weaker. [LA Times]

For Palin, reality goes rogue: The former vice-presidential candidate dwells on the most damaging accusation against her — that she rang up $150,000 in luxury clothing purchases. Too bad that her defense is
preposterous. [Boston Globe]

Studying Palintology: Here’s something useful that George W. Bush can put his money into. [Washington Post]

Our rogue Evita: Sarah Palin follows in the footsteps of Eva Peron. [Washington Post]

Obama’s Judicial Nominations: The White House and the Senate should speed up judicial nominations and confirmations to restore balance to the federal courts. [New York Times]

Time for a ruling on judge: Eight months after President Obama nominated him to the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, a jurist from Indiana may finally have a chance at confirmation from the Senate. [LA Times]

Madoff: A piece of the (malef)action: The convicted Ponzi schemer’s belongings are being auctioned off. Good news for his victims, but it’s still sad that his infamy lends exorbitant value to mundane objects. [Boston Globe]

Puppets in Congress: It is disturbing that so many members of Congress were willing to repeat a biotechnology company’s talking points in the Congressional Record. [New York Times]

Gitmo, Illinois: Plans for moving some Gitmo prisoners prisons in Illinois is no reason for panic [Chicago Tribune]

Democracy – it’s not for everyone: In the past half century, the record of democracies in some regions of the world has been spotty. [Boston Globe]

Shaming undermines justice: Americans may cheer the idea of retributive punishment, but such judgments threaten the principles of our legal system. [USA Today]

What the Future May Hold: For future generations, we need to remember that infrastructure is linked to the health of the economy, the environment and the viability of the nation as a whole. [New York Times]

Their Future Is Ours: The country is stumbling under the challenge of integrating the children of immigrants, who need more supportive policies and programs. [New York Times]

Pandemic politics: How did we get to a point where H1N1 means something different to everyone? [Washington Post]

Veterans Day

·       A set of dog tags, a clipping, a father revealed: A reflection on Veterans Day of a son trying to reconcile two very different sides of his father. [Boston Globe]

·      On Veterans Day, feeling the cost of war: Afghanistan was abstract, until my friend’s flag-draped coffin came home. [LA Times]

·      Healing our troubled vets: Suicide, homelessness, stress disorders — caring for today’s veterans will be a long-term and costly commitment. [LA Times]

·       Homeless on Veterans Day: Washington and communities across the country should support a national drive to end veteran homelessness. [New York Times] 

·      Recalling ‘Mother of Normandy’: A Frenchwoman dedicated herself to tending the graves of American troops. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

·      Veterans Day [USA Today]

·    Standing tall in harm’s way: Still Army-strong – The image of a traumatized military stemming from Fort Hood doesn’t square with reality. [Washington Post]

·    Taking care of our military: It used to be said that for kids, the military took care of its own. Now help is needed. [Washington Post]

Cruel and unusual: No life without parole for juvenile offenders The Supreme Court should rule against life without parole for juvenile offenders. [Houston Chronicle]

A National Disgrace: A court’s overt disregard for the central role of judges in policing executive branch excesses has frightening implications for safeguarding civil liberties. [New York Times]

Obama’s duty to tamp down anti-Muslim bias [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

Dithering heights: Filibustering Republicans and three Democratic enablers bring the Senate to a halt. [Washington Post]

Pawlenty: GOP’s newest ideological enforcer [Boston Globe]

A comprehensive solution to combustible markets: Barney Frank delineates his committee’s approach to preventing another financial collapse. [Boston Globe]

Cruel, Pointless Games: The case of the American hikers is only the latest example of the Iranian government misusing and undermining its judiciary for political ends. [New York Times]

Bodyguard of lies: The House health-reform bill looked better after I heard a GOP blizzard of falsehoods about it. [Washington Post]

No fount of wisdom for GOP: Health care is much too complicated for
Congress [Chicago Tribune]

The W. and Bill no-show: It’s too bad the two former presidents pulled out of two scheduled evenings of policy debates, er, policy discussions. [LA Times]

After the wall, Bush was right: The celebrations of the 20th  anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall this week failed to note that reunification of Germany was once a topic of great contention. [Boston Globe]

East Germans feel nostalgic for the bad old days [Chicago Tribune]

Army must be on guard for extremism: For Maj. Nidal Hasan, religion might just have been the lens through which his inner disquiet focused itself. [LA Times]

Fort Hood tragedy: Terror or typical workplace violence? [USA Today]

China, the U.S. and Taiwan: The U.S. could use arms sales as leverage to ease tensions between mainland China and Taiwan, pave the way for closer Sino-American ties and promote peace and stability in Asia. [LA Times]

‘One child’ horrors: Chinese government policy is leading to forced
abortions. [Washington Post]

Kabul, Taliban are talking: Karzai’s government is reaching out to the
insurgents – with U.S. support. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

A little steel, please: Afghanistan strategy could use a little passion from a professorial president. [Washington Post]

The Trouble With ‘Zero Tolerance’: Schools should not be criminalizing students for what are essentially normal childhood behaviors. [New York Times]

Getting in holiday spirit when out of work [Chicago Tribune]

Trucks, Trains and Trees: Without a new system for economic development in the timber-rich tropics, the only Amazon your grandchildren will ever know ends in dot-com and sells books. [New York Times]

AS IF digital etiquette isn’t bad enough, the tweeting, texting, and obsessive e-mail checking has started to infect the solemn practice of sitting on juries.  

. . . Increasingly, courts have had to warn jurors that blogging or searching the Web during trial jeopardizes the very foundations of the judicial system. . .   

The problem is widespread enough that legal experts have coined the term “Google mistrials.’’ No verdict has yet been overturned for texting-while-deliberating, but the retrials themselves are costly and gum up the wheels of justice.  

Massachusetts Appeals Court Justice James McHugh . . . thinks court procedures need to adapt, or risk slipping into irrelevance. “The trick is to recognize the changing dynamics of learning . . . and find a  way to harness the capabilities of both.’’ 

This is all very forward-looking. But for now, can’t jurors be weaned from their cellphone dependencies for the few days it takes to conduct most trials? If strict and explicit instructions aren’t doing the job, remove the temptation. Bored or restless jurors can read or practice their Sudoku or write letters. Surprising to some, perhaps, all these things existed before the Internet and can still be done offline.  

[AO: Courts should take a page from the playbooks of schools that have addressed, or at least attempted to address, the problem. The solution is to block wireless communication in courtrooms. While the act of blocking wireless communications is a violation of
the Communications Act, courts can seek an exemption as they serve a critical role in our system.]  

Two hot buttons: Senate and House bills limit coverage for illegal immigrants and abortion. But critics aren’t satisfied. [LA Times]

The Republican Health Plan: The Republican House bill is not reform: it does little to reduce the number of uninsured, and much of the savings on premiums comes from reduced coverage. [New York Times]

As medical costs take over government, Dems duck … [USA Today]

Italy got it right: CIA renditions are wrong – The conviction of 23 Americans in the abduction of Muslim cleric Abu Omar may be largely symbolic, but it sends an important message to the Obama administration. [LA Times]

A Bad Way to Spend Money: Extending the home buyer’s tax credit is wasteful; instead, Congress should help people avoid foreclosure. [New York Times]

A Honduras hijacked by ideology: How Senate Republicans could throw the country into chaos. [Washington Post]

Afghanistan’s forgotten class: After the fall of the Taliban, many Afghan women shed their burqas, opened schools, entered Parliament. [Boston Globe]

Beyond the Spin: Hope didn’t heal the divide: A year after Obama’s election, America’s racial rifts are deep and persistent. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

The vaccine screw-up [Chicago Tribune]

Corzine can blame himself: By Gabriel Gardner There seems to be a consensus developing in the media that this week’s election results suggest a national GOP resurgence. This fails to recognize that the result in New Jersey was actually due to Gov. Corzine’s shortcomings in office. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

GOP at war with itself: Re-education camps with Sarah Palin and Glen Beck? [Washington Post]

What Reagan was really trying to do at the Berlin Wall [LA Times]

Mistrial by Google: Increasingly, courts have had to warn jurors that blogging or searching the Web during trial jeopardizes the very foundations of the judicial system. [Boston Globe]

Tribal Chiefs and the President: President Obama has taken important steps to address the economic and social problems facing American Indians. [New York Times]

Here’s what’s wrong with World Series: It’s still our greatest sports spectacular. But the World Series needs some fixing. So do the American and National League playoffs that lead up to it. [USA Today]

Our heroes, this day and the year-round [USA Today]

What if Congress proposed that every telephone call made or received in the United States should be recorded, just in case something anyone said might later be relevant in a legal proceeding?  

You’d be outraged. . .  

If the law wants to put our conversations under surveillance, it had better first prove to a judge that it has a very good reason for doing so.  

So where is our outrage over the way judges and lawyers now are often able to go back in time and retrospectively listen in on our e-mail and text exchanges?  

[AO: Zorn misses an important point. When your constitutional and statutory rights are infringed, you go to a judge to set things right. Therefore, he is correct when he says “If the law wants to put our conversations under surveillance, it had better first prove to a judge that it has a very good reason for doing so.”   

But consider what we have here. We have a prosecutor subpoenaing e-mails. But what is a subpoena and how does it work? Basically, it is a fancy form of request. Fortunately, on each request of this type, the party who receives the request has the right to ask the judge to quash the subpoena for any number of reasons. In other words, the recipient can require the prosecutor to prove to the judge that she has a very good reason for subpoenaing the e-mails. I don’t see how this is different from what would be required if Congress proposed that every telephone call made or received in the United States should be recorded. ]  

I understand perfectly why Northwestern wouldn’t want such communications made public.  

“The law hasn’t kept up with technology,” said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Up through most of the 1900s, the idea was that when you wrote something down, it was a signal that it was somehow important. Therefore it was reasonable for the law to say that written communication and other documents could be deemed relevant in criminal and civil proceedings.”  

The law still makes this presumption even though instant e-communication in all its forms has removed the last shred of implicit gravitas from the written word.  

[AO: Under the law, there is nothing inherent about written communications that make them more relevant than other forms of communication. The legal standard for admissible relevant information has no special consideration for the mode of communication.]

The View From the Bottom: Policy makers may need to expand relief efforts to ensure the downturn is not followed by a long spell of very weak economic growth. [New York Times]

A healthier debate: ‘If the great American people will only keep their temper, on both sides of the line, the troubles will come to an end, and the question that now distracts the country will be settled.” [Philadelphia Inquirer]

Defending Britain’s Health System: The scary stories you hear about the U.K.’s ’socialized’ medicine are wrong. [Washington Post]

Getting ahead with green jobs: Energy Secretary Steven Chu argues that the new House legislation designed to steer the nation toward cleaner energy is actually an economic imperative, to help seed new industries in the United States. We agree. [Boston Globe]

Time to Legalize Drugs: The war on drugs leads to unregulated, and often violent, public drug dealing. [The Washington Post]

The hawkish case for nuclear disarmament [LA Times]

Will U.S. Recovery Go Global? The world can’t rely on American consumers to carry the global economy. [Washington Post]

Intel’s Human Rights: Regulators should not be fooled by Intel’s appeal of the European Commission decision that the company violated antitrust law. [New York Times]

The next health frontier: Chronic diseases in Africa [Boston Globe]

Partial Justice for the Norfolk Four: The sailors recently granted conditional pardons by Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia should pursue getting their convictions overturned or fully pardoned. [New York Times]

Hollywood’s control freaks [LA Times]

The truth behind Afghan insurgency: The dirty little secret is that the renewed Taliban insurgency could have been avoided. The vast majority of Afghans still hate the Taliban. [Boston Globe]

Standing Up to Mubarak: Will Obama stand up for Egypt’s 83 million  citizens when he meets with the country’s president? [Washington Post]