Merry Christmas, Richard, and to Hell with you

By today's date nine years ago, I was ordered to answer a letter sent from the office of the Disciplinary Counsel of Louisiana. I was told I must respond by December 26, 2002 or face additional sanctions.


Merry Christmas, Richard.


The way this office works is to inflict as much pain as possible on the presumed innocent. A presumption of innocence does not apply to a lawyer placed in their sights. The presumed guilty must suffer. A letter in response to a demand from the disciplinary counsel is supposed to be penned in pain.


The office of the Disciplinary Counsel of Louisiana could have written to me on December 1, 2001, or January 1, of 2002. Or a year before, or a year later.


There was no particular urgency, because the concern of the Disciplinary Counsel of Louisiana was something I had done in 1999: I had complained in confidence to the Fifth Circuit Judicial Council about the misconduct of a federal judge. The  Disciplinary Counsel of Louisiana also objected th my having filed two recusal motions, also in 1999.


But the office of the Disciplinary Counsel of Louisiana wanted to send me a Christmas letter. So they did. There was nothing to stop them.


My response was sent back by return mail.


I wrote to the office of the Disciplinary Counsel of Louisiana that I was telling the truth in my motions of recusal directed to a federal judge. I told the office of the Disciplinary Counsel of Louisiana that I had spoke the truth when I wrote in confidence to the Judicial Council of the Fifth Federal Circuit.


I pointed out that the Judicial Council never bothered to investigate my accusations.


There is nothing that requires supervising circuit court judges to investigate the misconduct of a district judge.


I asked the the office of the Disciplinary Counsel of Louisiana to forward my letter - and theirs if they like - to the US attorney for Louisiana. 


Send them the whole file. Please.


Since the office of the Disciplinary Counsel of Louisiana is not going to investigate the judge, send the paperwork to the US attorney. Since the judges on the Fifth Circuit are not going to investigate a judge they are supposed to supervise, send the paperwork that you have from me to the US attorney. Please.


No response to this request was ever made to me. You have to cooperate with the office of the Disciplinary Counsel of Louisiana, when they write to you.


But when you write to the office of the Disciplinary Counsel of Louisiana, this office does not have to cooperate with you.


The office of the Disciplinary Counsel of Louisiana is there to prosecute you. They are there to inflict as much pain as possible - even before you are found guilty of any violation of the ethical rules that govern the conduct of lawyers in Louisiana.


The office of the Disciplinary Counsel of Louisiana is not there to uncover the truth.


Turns out, one of the unwritten rules for lawyers is: don't complain in confidence about the misconduct of a federal judge because you will be punished if you do.


If you discover your judge is taking gifts from lawyers in his court - let it go.


If you discover your judge is bending the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to benefit the boys who are gifting him - let it go.


If you discover your judge is in business with lawyers, who bring cases before him - let it go.


If you file a confidential complaint with the supervising judges on the Fifth Circuit and your judge lets opposing counsel in your clients' case know that you are the one who complained about him - let it go.


If you discover that the supervising judges are not going to do anything with your confidential complaint - let it go.


If you find out that your judge is free to make decisions touching on his own financial interests - let it go.


Let it all go, boy - says the office of the Disciplinary Counsel of Louisiana, because we are here to protect the judges. We work for judges after all, and they have as much interest in protecting an officer of their court from a be-robed miscreant on the federal bench as a moo cow has in the outcome of the Kentucky Derby.


Oh, and since you did not let it go, since you actually expected the judge to be held to an ethical standard of some kind, we are going to put you before a committee of lawyers who practice before the judge you pissed off. 


Boy, we are going to take away your law license. 


We are going to wreck your ability to have an income as a lawyer.


Just go away, boy. Since you think we are here to get to the bottom of things, just you go away.


You hold a law license at the pleasure of our judges, and they sure don't want anyone making waves about judges getting $$ from the lawyers. They do that themselves.


Merry Christmas. 

HYPERLINKED TO AN ERRATUM

Do money gifts to judges effect their rulings?

Good question. Just don’t expect judges to answer it.

Some months ago Vernon Palmer, a professor at Tulane Law School, wrote to each of the Justices of the Louisiana Supreme Court to ask them to make available details of campaign contributions to the judges from litigators who appear before them and before the courts that the Justices supervise.

Professor Palmer received no response. A second letter from Professor Palmer likewise was ignored by the busy Justices.

No response to an inquiry is, of course, a response. None of your damn business.

A coordinated non-response is also revealing. When a covey of judges sitting on the same judicial bench, ignore a letter from a law school professor, it’s reasonable to conclude that those seven people have made a joint decision to stiff-arm the prof.

CONCLUSION NUMBER ONE:

This set of state Supreme Court Justices are not about to respond when a law professor asks them to account for their ethics.  

The Justices will not even be polite when an inquiry is directed to them about their own conduct. They will not even answer the mail. Why let anyone get into all that when we can take the money and pretend the gift does not influence our decisions.  

And so, Professor Palmer, ignored by judges who would not facilitate his research, went a fateful step further. Working with John Levendis, associate professor of economics at Loyola University in New Orleans, the scholars tracked electoral contributions to the Justices against their decisions for or against the gift giver. In 2008, their study was published in the law review of Tulane Law School. Vernon V. Palmer and John Levendis, "The Louisiana Supreme Court in Question: An Empirical and Statistical Study of the Effects of Campaign Money on the Judicial Function," Tulane Law Review, Vol. 82, Issue 4, 1291-1314 (2008).

To the surprise of no one, the article’s conclusions pointed to a correlation between the gifting of judges and favorable decisions benefitting the gift givers. The conclusion was tentative. No one made a claim of a definitive association. More research would be required.

At this point hysteria set in at the Louisiana State Supreme Court. The Court engineered a fusillade of personally hostile critiques directed at the authors of the report.

A couple of Louisiana litigators hustled into print in the very next edition of the Louisiana State University law review with their own critique of the Palmer-Levendis study. The musings of a couple lawyers, with business before the very court that has been criticized, cannot be taken seriously as an objective critique of statistical research. Their article is worthless. 

The attorneys’ fly-by at serious research is nothing more than an acolyte's benediction. The lawyers' document, hurried into print at a fawning law journal, is a proffer of absolution, a solemn pantomime, the making of the dollar sign over the bowed heads of the judges. In the name of the gold, the sliver and the greenback. Aaaaamen. 

The Justices, blessed and renewed by this put-up job, transformed the acolytes’ encyclical into a press release and posted it at the high court’s website. See E. Phelps Gay and Kevin R. Tully, “Rebuttal of  ‘The Louisiana Supreme Court in Question: An Empirical and Statistical Study of the Effects of Campaign Money on the Judicial Function’,” June 12, 2008.http://www.lasc.org/  (If the document is removed by the time you look for it, let me know. You should also visit http://www.tulanelink.com/tulanelink/electorappoint_08b.htm. ) 

A transparently worthless diatribe against two scholars was not enough for the Justices. They were not yet satisfied that Professors Palmer and Levendis had been put in their place. Fortunately, Tulane Law School rode to the further rescue of the state Supreme Court Justices.

The age-old incestuous exchange of favors is taboo in some cultures. But according to our French Quarter and Uptown New Orleans observations, party-time happily happens between the be-robed and the be-deaned at the B-law schools of Louisiana. (Now. Now. I am a graduate of one of ’em.)  

Enough background. Lo, the (then) Dean of Tulane’s Law School sent a letter of “apology” to each of the Justices of the Louisiana Supreme Court. This was done even though reports in what used to be called “the press” find Professor Palmer standing behind his research. 

Never you mind. While the Justices of the Louisiana Supreme Court were pleased to ignore Professor Palmer’s earlier letters, they were so thrilled to receive Dean Ponoroff’s abject letter of apology that they post it, too, at the Court website. http://www.lasc.org/

In his letter, Dean Ponoroff implied that the authors of the Study essentially disowned their own research. Dean Ponoroff wrote that the scholars, now under attack by a dean or two, had “reviewed their underlying data” and then “advised the Tulane Law Review that there were numerous errors in the recording of the data that formed the basis of their study [. . .].”

Writing “on behalf of Tulane Law School” the Dean informed the wounded Justices that “the law review will issue an erratum on its website.” The same “erratum” will be sent, wrote the Dean, to all subscribers; electronic archives will likewise be “hyperlinked” to the erratum.

Wow. A “hyperlink” to an “erratum” means this could be serious business. Or is this erratum hyperlink merely a measure of the reach of state Supreme Court justices, who are seriously pissed? I move and second: seriously pissed.

What is also serious is that two supposedly scholarly publications at two law schools within the jurisdiction of a state Supreme Court, were pre-empted so as to placate the ire of the Justices.

The demeaning manipulation of the two publications (and their student staff) point to an entrenched subservience by important members of the Louisiana legal community.  Everyone on both banks of the Mississippi is just shocked at the notion that leading legal lights are judicial acolytes. For the past two years, this episode has been the buzz of Mardi Gras and JazzFest, too. Yeah. Right.  

But even a trivial “critique” and a so-sorry letter from a law school dean were not enough.

The justices realized that a rushed-into-print bogus rebuttal, written by beholdin’ officers of their own court, plus an abject apology by a law school dean, who had no part whatsoever in any scientific assessment of peer-reviewed research, might be seen as cartoonish. Yep. It is. 

So, the state Supreme Court engineered a further “study” by three economists, who zealously joined the chorus of denunciation.

It would be one thing for scientists (for the sake of argument, let us think of economists as scientists) to conduct their own study. This sort of professionalism would involve an extended period for research and at least an attempt to place their own results in a peer-reviewed journal, where a debate might be engendered about the impact of campaign contributions upon judicial decisions.

That is not what happened. Why not? An actual debate among scientists would not permit the Justices to retain control of the process of character assignation directed at those who had criticized them.

So, the three economists –Moe, Larry and Curley in this episode – published their work at . . . you guessed it . . . the website of the Louisiana Supreme Court. http://www.lasc.org/  (If the item has been removed by the time you hunt for it, go to: http://www.tulanelink.com/tulanelink/electorappoint_08b.htm.)

How much public money did the Justices pay the economists for their “research?”

Good question. But that question likely will not be answered by the Justices. They receive and publicize letters that please them and ignore the rest of their mail. I bet they won’t even hyperlink this question to an erratum.

CONCLUSION NUMBER TWO:

Louisiana State Supreme Court Justices “continually decide cases involving their own donors without recusing themselves” 

Worthwhile to emphasize is that the authors of the original study have not disowned the measured conclusions they reached. On Sept 15, 2008, Professor Palmer said, despite the court-sponsored criticisms, that “the study's conclusions, broadly speaking, are the same.” Palmer added that a central finding in the study has not been disputed: justices “continually decide cases involving their own donors without recusing themselves.  That right there is the most important part of the study.” See Note 10 and commentary at: http://www.tulanelink.com/tulanelink/electorappoint_08b.htm.

By the way, there is other research on the influence of gifts-to-deciders, which has not been engineered into print by lawyer suck-ups, and judges’ hired-gun hacks.

These studies indicate that gifts of any size create an unconscious inclination by the recipient to want to do favors for the gift-giver.

Recent studies of brain activity indicate that “Gifts affect the decision-making process in ways that are very hard to control,” said Michael J. Friedlander, director of the Baylor University neuroscience department. Friedlander, again: “Even when you are aware of it, even when you want to be objective, you can't help it.” (“Doctors moving to limit gifts from drug firms,” Baltimore Sun, May 20, 2008.) See also MAY IT PLEASE THE COURT by Richard Baldwin Cook (Nativa LCC, page 178, at Amazon.com or lulu.com for e-book download.)

Moe, Larry and Curley apparently know nothing about these studies.

Wop. Wop. Wop.