| Subject: * * Lost Confidence in the Legal Fraternity * * |
| From: |
| Date: Sat, 23 Apr 2022 16:54:10 -0700 |
| To: "www.jail4judges.org" |
"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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