Posted by:  Charles | July 14, 2009 7:26 AM

Why is People For the American Way going after Ricci?

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/71660.html

Posted by: Doriss Day | July 14, 2009 11:47 AM

I strongly oppose the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor. I stand four-square behind Sen. Jeff Sessions. It would not be her public misstatements that bother me, but the fact that they were repeated publicly and recorded over a period of years. Her hubris is unchecked. A high percentage of her decisions which have reached the Supreme Court, at both trial and appellate level, have been reversed. The numbers were released yesterday.

Her 17 years as a federal judge and jurist are touted as qualifications. They are more than any other sitting justice on S.C. I suggest this is liability and a cause for concern. She has decided over 3,000 cases at the appellate level and 400 cases on the federal bench. Do we really want another professional decider on the S.C., with a life appointment, who has done little in her life other than legal work?

If you know any attorneys, just look at them. This is not a healthy profession or lifestyle. Eventually this stuff drives you batty.

I would rather have someone like a Dianne Feinstein, who exhibits a fine analytical ability, even though not legally trained. Or, from the Republican bench, someone like a Sheila Bair, another good lady thinker with an independent streak. Chief Justice Earl Warren was not legally trained. But that did not hamper his performance or tenure on the bench. Just as war is too important to be left to the generals, so is jurisprudence too important to be left to the judges and justices of America. I hope everybody catches my drift. Some of you may have crossed swords with some of these highly qualified, overeducated stooges in black robes, as I have.

The sad fact is, the federal courts--and plenty of state courts as well--have painted themselves into a corner of irrelevance and absurdity. In some cases, stupidity. Does anyone really think anything will change in the wake of Ricci? Cities and towns across the country will continue doing what they've been doing all along;... nepotism, cronyism, favoritism, corruption, incompetence, racially profiling and stomping on the rights of individual citizens incapable of defending themselves against gross governmental intrusion into private affairs.

Gross violations of due-process and "Constitutional" rights will most likely go unchecked, as there is no fail-safe method to stop them, and no established mechanism to enforce Constitutional rights and due-process protections.
The state is already able to charge anyone with any crime, anywhere, any time, without consideration of the facts--without functionable oversight or accountability--and get away with it in real time. That is what I told the 2nd Circuit Court in my own oral hearing on April 3, 2008.

Sotomayor was not on my panel, but one of her mentors was: Guido Calabrese. I was not impressed. One of the biggest problems with the 2nd Circuit is the percentage of cases which are "unpublished," between 40 and 60% in any given year. Prof. Jesse Allen (N.Y.U. Law School) has written about these issues.

What does this mean? It means that once decided by the court, a case is not given a reference number. It cannot be cited in any future case before the court as precedent or case history. The court thus affords itself the privilege of reversing itself in any future similar cases without having to explain the logic of its reversal. This flies in the face of 200 years of American jurisprudence. It is illogical and does not make any sense.

The practice was seldom used before 1990, but took off after 1989 when case loads increased dramatically and the courts were unable to keep up. The practice is more prevalent in some circuits than others. The 2nd Circuit, on which Sotomayor sits, is one of the worst abusers. It is a shortcut to make the court's work easier, which has so far been upheld by the Supreme Court and the Congress. Likewise, the S.C. heard only 67 cases last session. Almost 9,000 cases were denied certiorari. They were "docketed," but not heard. One of those cases was mine, Doriss v. City of New Haven, et al, #06-4907 and 5487.

You have a Constitutional right to "petition the sovereign for redress of grievances," but the sovereign, through the courts, is not required to "hear" you. They [the courts] look for every excuse under the sun to "dispose" of cases, and distort and torture the English language in so doing. In fact, the legal profession has its own language which its practitioners go to "law school" in order to learn. This archaic Esperanto is so far removed from "common law" that it frequently leaves the rest of us common folk scratching our heads. Try reading some appellate and supreme court decisions, if you do not believe me.

The legal profession today is nothing more nor less than a mutual admiration society, well-paid, and a class which is permitted to pass judgment upon the citizenry while itself remaining essentially immune from accountability for malfeasance and/or error.

Last year, there were 9,000 persons or parties who felt that they had legitimate constitutional issues which needed to be examined by the highest court in the land were denied "justice." One of those was me, in Doriss v. City of New Haven, et al.

Being denied cert is no way makes my cases, or anyone else's cases, any the less valid. The judicial system is simpley broken. It does not work. Obviously, It does not work the way it is supposed to work. It is a crap-shoot, often rigged behind the curtain pretexts and pre-determinations, to the detriment of, guess who? The courts seem to be constitutionally incapable of doing the Right Thing in any kind of predictable or consistent fashion.

The courts have a loud bark but very little bite, except in the criminal justice arena where million of nonviolent offenders are warehoused at tremendous public expense. In spite of these high incarceration numbers, the net effect on so-called crime is negligible. Academic studies have shown this indisputably. For every Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), there is Kelo v. New London (2006).

From Sotomayor's record, I see nothing which inspires me to think she would do anything to improve jurisprudence on the high court. She appears more than willing to play along to get along. This is precisely the wrong candidate for a job which is so powerful and has so much potential real-world consequences.

It is ironic that Al Franken, the comedian, now finds himself a freshman senator sitting on this confirmation hearing. He is in the awkward position of trying to effect a sober evaluation where a bit of humor would be in order. These hearings are, after all, a joke and a charade, a dog-and-pony show, a walk-through.

The reality is otherwise: Sonia Sotomayor is no Douglas Souter. Nor is she a John Marshall Harlan or a Hugo Black.