In another excellent post, Jeff Gamso uses the sad and incredible story of Georgia Judge Amanda Williams to raise a pervasive problem and make the necessary point. It’s not novel, or we wouldn’t have to attribute this quote to Edmund Burke:
All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
Gamso notes that our legal system suffers from three types of problems, The first two are honest and systemic. The former is unfortunate, but founded in the fact that it’s a system run by people, and people are not perfect. The latter is the subject of a thousand posts, rules that fail to serve their purpose and, perhaps, the reality that no system can adequately fix all the problem mankind can create.
But the third type, reflected by Williams, is inexcusable.
It’s the stuff of the charges against Chief Judge Williams. It’s the actions of the corrupt, former juvenile-court judges in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. It’s in the work of the forensic folks who don’t actually do the tests or honestly and accurately report the results but testify to what will help make the case. It’s the testilying cops and the prosecutors and judges who let them get away with it. It’s the prosecutors who cheat. It’s the gropers and molesters at TSA and the Maricopa County Deputy who paws through defense lawyer files while the lawyer is giving a sentencing speech. It’s Joe Frank Cannon who slept through Calvin Burdine’s death penalty trial. And it’s the judges who can’t bring themselves to admit that when the lawyers or the jurors nod off during a trial the conviction should automatically be reversed.
This third kind isn’t human error and it isn’t systematic failure. It’s instead a function of the venal and corrupt, of the lazy, of the dishonest, of those seeking preferment, of the morally and ethically challenged.
The reason Williams serves so well as an example is that she’s been on the bench for 20 years. This wasn’t a single instance of wrongdoing, or corruption, or abuse. This is a judicial career. And not until 20 years later did anything happen.
And that’s the point. Aren’t we all tough, macho gladiators fighting the good fight, throwing caution to the wind, forsaking our self-interest to stand up for those people, those ideals, those beliefs, that we hold dear? What a load of crap.Let’s assume for a moment that Judge Williams is in fact guilty of all the things the JQC charges. She’s been on the bench for over 20 years. How did she get away with it? And for so long? Oh, she’s been under investigation, reports say, for over a year now. So maybe 19 years before anyone started looking into it?
19 fucking years of corruption?
How did the judges in Luzerne County get away with it?
How does Sheriff Joe?
Who the hell allowed Joe Frank Cannon to try a capital case?
The answer, sadly, is that we all did.
Do you fear making an enemy? Does your body start to shake whenever the notion of speaking truth to power comes over you, until the feeling passes? Will you call out a corrupt judge? What about a corrupt colleague, fast asleep while a man’s life is on the line? Of course you do. No one wants to be the bad man, the person who says something mean or unpleasant about others. You want to be liked and embraced, part of the tribe.
And as I’m too often reminded, it’s really all about making money (and the rest of it is all a game we play to appear tough to our intended audience so they will want to throw money at our feet). Clients want to hire people they like, and so your every waking moment is spent making yourself likeable, and avoiding doing anything that might make you a pariah. Pariahs don’t get rich.
When news broke of Joe Paterno, the nation wondered how he, and how his protege Mike McQueary, could turn the head away and do nothing to smash Jerry Sandusky’s head open with great force. Is it different to watch a diseased man rape a child? Yes, but only in degree. We see wrong all the time and do nothing. Perhaps this was so wrong, so inescapably a demand for immediate action, that it crossed a line that no normal person could ignore.
We ignore wrong all the time. We think it’s not our problem, not our responsibility. Let someone else take the weight, be the heavy. Let someone else take the risk of trying and failing, Because if they don’t succeed, they will surely become the enemy of many, and we certainly don’t want to make enemies. Even if they do succeed in staring venality in the eye and saying, “no, I will not turn away and do nothing,” there’s a very good chance that all our weak, sniveling, self-aggrandizing brothers will walk to the other side of the street to get away from us.
Gamso raises the specter of Amy Bach’s Ordinary Injustice, which informs us that the wrongs aren’t always revealed by flaming conflagrations, but more often by smoldering piles of ash that seem to have always been there. We walk right past them, just as we always have.
Philosophers ponder why we exist. I have no answers. But when you die, do you hope that whoever delivers your eulogy says “he never offended anyone”? No me. Not Jeff Gamso. Are you the good man who does nothing?
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It’s not always safe standing up to certain judges. There are specific judges who have destroyed the finances of and then careers of attorneys through sanctions and the appellate presumptions of appropriate sanctions at the trial. And even if you’re vindicated, you’re now poor, unlicensed and the judge has full immunity (even if they didn’t, the signaling mechanism of how the judge treated the “affronter” will keep any other attorney on notice).
What would you tell those lawyers who stood up to a corrupt judge and their fellow bar members ignored the situation? Who can afford to be a martyr when the systemic problem consumes them?
Taking action doesn’t necessarily mean being stupid. Be effective, not foolish, but don’t be a gutless wonder and live in fear.
I think the problem is being effective without the judge making you out to be “foolish”. In particular cases of perceived unfairness you can move for reconsiderations, recusals, contacting the JQC. But judges can be vengeful like any other people.
I think the bigger issue is self-interest among the bar. Similarily situated lawyers with shared problems rarely communicate with one another for all sorts of reasons; attorney-client confidences, fear of moving first, etc. are very real.
Essentially it seems the biggest gripe is how long it took to remove a particularly bad judge. Compare that to the random judge who does several horrible acts over a career. Nobody helps other attorneys for free stand up to judicial wrongs.
I don’t think you’re getting the point here at all. There are plenty of excuses for doing nothing, and you really don’t need to search for “bigger issues” that justify it.
If only you put that effort into thinking of ways to do good instead of ways to explain the problems.