Restoring Dignity to the Law: judiciary

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Iowa Judges Will Start Going Outdoors

Because Iowa has one of those screwy judicial retention measures that means judges who interpret the state constitution to let gay people marry will be hitting the bread line, the judiciary is now reaching out to Iowa's vast, slick P.R. industry:

At one point, Paul asked the crowd for a show of hands. How many drive Volvos and drink lattes?

Two or three. Maybe four.

"Trade the Volvo for a pickup truck with a gun rack."

The line drew a laugh, but Paul wasn't being totally facetious about charges of elitism. The message: Take off the robe and get out into the community. Talk to people. Show them who you are.

Being apolitical isn't the same as being a hermit, so I'm a bit lost as to why Iowa's judges need to be told to participate in the community. I'm a bit concerned that active judges going out of their way to meet-and-greet the scary proletarian class will wind up making the state judiciaries more overtly political than they already are.

For example, I think this is extremely misguided:

"To a limited extent, the response has to be political. Whether we like it or not, the office has been politicized by people who wanted to have our judges not retained. We need to be more engaged. But any campaign should be educational. Get to the civics behind it."

Okay - so on one hand you're telling judges not to be elitist, but on the other, you're telling them to become educational and tell people how things work? How do you think the average blue-collar conservative will take a mini-lecture on constitutional interpretation?

I'm all for encouraging judges and justices to be active members of the community, the same as any public servant. But active judges have no business going on political education campaigns that are nothing more than thinly-veiled political campaigns to retain themselves. The average person will see right through the difference, and as a result public confidence in the judiciary will be weakened because it will become just another political branch similar to the governor's office or the legislature.

To the Iowa judges, I'm sorry that you live and work in a state with a flawed constitution and an ignorant public that's made your offices outposts of political fervor. It could be worse; you could be a 1L at Drake or Creighton. But the answer is not for you to become more political in response if you believe in the principles underlying an independent judiciary. Sorry if it costs you your jobs, but I happen to think the prestige and integrity of the legal system is more important than you setting a precedent of active judges campaigning to keep their present gig on a retention vote. It's bad enough judges and would-be judges have to campaign in general elections.

About RDTTL

I am a current law student who dreads the end of the conveyor belt and wishes to see positive change in the legal community.

To me, a dignified profession is one that is respected, one whose members serve as ambassadors for its social value, one that lets its practitioners lead healthy, productive, and active civic lives, and one where the members of the profession take active steps to protect the profession's honor.

It is self-evident that the legal profession has problems on that front (or all of those fronts, if you want to break it down). Lawyers are twice as likely to kill themselves as the average person. They are significantly more likely to become depressed or alcoholic. Along with other factors, an oversupply of labor has led to smaller salaries for most - putting the ability to have families or manage debt at risk - while making attorney work an impossibility for others. Last year roughly 1/3 of recent juris doctor recipients did not have jobs. Legal process outsourcing makes it far less likely that they'll ever get them.

These issues existed before the recession and extend beyond its effects. This blog explores these issues and seeks to provide helpful information and commentary, especially with regards to legal education, the reform of which I believe would aid many the other issues that prevent the law from being a fully-dignified profession.

I have chosen to use pseudonymous speech for roughly the same reasons outlined by zerohedge, even though I don't think the risk of retaliation is that high in my case (of all the professors I've had, I can only think of one who would "retaliate").

If you wish to contact me, please leave a comment. In the interest of simplifying my life, I am cutting my email addresses down, including the one that used to appear here, which has become unmanageable due to spam.