"The Fraternity: Lawyers and Judges in Collusion" is the name of the book.
When I began
practicing law in 1946, justice was much simpler. I joined a small
Tucson practice at a
salary of $250 a month, excellent compensation for a beginning lawyer.
There was no paralegal staff or expensive artwork on the walls.
In those days, the judicial system was
straightforward and efficient. Decisions were handed down by judges who
applied the law as outlined by the Constitution and state legislatures.
Cases went to trial in a month or two, not years. In the courtroom, the
focus was on uncovering and determining truth and fact.
I charged clients by what I was able to accomplish for them. The clock
did not start ticking the minute they walked through the
door.
The legal profession has evolved dramatically
during my 87 years. I am a second-generation lawyer from an Irish
immigrant family that settled in Yuma. My father, who passed the Bar with a
fifth-grade education, ended up arguing a case before the U.S. Supreme
Court during his career.
The law changed dramatically during my years in the profession. For
example, when I accepted my first appointment as a Pima County judge in
1957, I saw that lawyers expected me to act more as a referee than a
judge. The county court I presided over resembled a gladiator
arena, with dueling lawyers jockeying for points and one-upping each
other with calculated and ingenuous briefs.
That was just the beginning.
By the time I ended my 50-year career as a trial attorney, judge and
president of southern Arizona's largest law firm, I no longer had
confidence in the legal fraternity I had participated in and, yes,
profited from.
I was the ultimate insider, but as I looked back, I felt I had to write
a book about serious issues in the legal profession and the
implications for clients and society as a whole.
The Fraternity: Lawyers and
Judges in Collusion was 10 years in the
making and has become my call to action for legal
reform.
Our Constitution intended that only elected lawmakers be
permitted to create law.
Yet judges create their own law in the judicial system based on their
own opinions and rulings. It's called case law, and it is churned out
daily through the rulings of judges. When a judge hands down a ruling
and that ruling survives appeal with the next tier of judges, it then
becomes case law, or legal precedent. This now happens so consistently
that we've become more subject to the case rulings of judges rather
than to laws made by the lawmaking bodies outlined in our
Constitution.
This case-law system is a
constitutional nightmare because it
continuously modifies Constitutional intent. For lawyers, however,
it creates endless business opportunities.
That's because case law is technically complicated and requires a
lawyer's expertise to guide and move you through the system.
The judicial system may begin with enacted laws, but the variations
that result from a judge's application of case law all too often change
the ultimate meaning.
When a lawyer puts on a robe and takes the
bench, he or she is called a judge. But in reality, when judges look
down from the bench they are lawyers looking upon fellow
members of their fraternity. In any other area of the
free-enterprise system, this would be seen as a conflict of
interest.
When a lawyer takes an oath as a judge, it merely enhances the ruling
class of lawyers and judges. First of all, in Maricopa and Pima
counties, judges are not elected but nominated by committees of
lawyers, along with concerned citizens.
How can they be expected not to be beholden to those who elevated them
to the bench?
When they leave the bench, many return to large and successful law
firms that leverage their names and relationships.
The concept of "time" has been converted into enormous revenue for
lawyers. The profession has adopted elaborate systems where clients are
billed for a lawyer's time in six-minute increments. The paralegal
profession is another brainchild of the fraternity, created as an
additional tracking and revenue center. High-powered firms have
departmentalized their services into separate profit centers for
probate and trusts, trial, commercial, and so forth.
The once-honorable profession of law now fully functions as a
bottom-line business, driven by greed and the pursuit of power and
wealth, even shaping the laws of the United States
outside the elected Congress and state
legislatures.
Thanks to Greg Slaughter [email protected] for forwarding this article to J.A.I.L. Contact information for the author of the article was not supplied. The article was posted on the Lex_Rex Egroup. -j4j
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