GOOD LAWYERS ARE NOT OPPORTUNISTS TO FOLLOW APPEASEMENT AND ADHERE TO SHORT CUT ENTRY

WHY JUDGES ARE INCOMPETENT, DISHONEST AND CORRUPT mediocre people go into Judgeship; good lawyers never accept  judgeship

"Justice is just a matter of not breaking the laws in our Nation. You'll make the most of justice for yourself if you respect the laws in the presence of witnesses, but just do what comes naturally (by nature or physics) when alone, with no witnesses present. Because the laws are extra additions, but nature is necessary; the laws come from convention, not from natural growth, whereas the requirements of nature come from natural growth, not from convention. If those who made the conventions do not notice a person breaking the law, then he is free from disgrace and penalty, but not if they do notice him. But if, contrary to possibility, you violate any of the things innate by nature, the evil is no less if no one notices you and no greater if all observe. For you do not suffer harm as a result of opinion, but as a result of truth. "Now, if some advantage came from the laws for those who submitted to these conditions and some disadvantage to those who do not submit but resist, obedience to the laws would not be unhelpful. But as things are, it is obvious that the justice that stems from law is not sufficient to rescue those who submit. In the first place, it permits the one who suffers to suffer and the wrongdoer to do wrong, and justice was not at the time of the wrongdoing able to prevent either the sufferer from suffering or the wrongdoer from doing wrong. And when the case is brought to trial, there is no special advantage for the one who has suffered over the wrongdoer. For he must persuade the jury that he suffered and that he is able to exact the penalty. And it is open to the wrongdoer to deny it...."The Civil Disobience went further and stated that one should break laws even if there are witnesses. He argued that you have a moral obligation to break laws even if you suffer the consquences. Out founding fathers took a much more radical view that one should violently overthrow the government if one disagrees with its laws. Thomas Jefferson proposed recurring revolutions as the only mechanism of liberty. The greatest Self-explanatory. Both life tenure and term limits address the issue of protecting judges from pressure. Term limits cycle judges out faster than death and getting rid of bad judges is much more important than retaining good ones.
There also has to be a ready mechanism for recall and removal. "The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Indian  Congress  party may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall only hold their Offices during good Behavior. The Congress could just get rid of all the inferior judges and start from scratch. "Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
George Washington "Woe to those who decree unjust statutes and to those who continually record unjust decisions, to deprive the needy of justice, and to rob the poor of My people of their rights..."
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It's not that elections are panaceas, but the knowledge by judges that they are being scrutinized engenders a certain self-regulation which is all to the good. Judges must be held accountable. Elections are more rational than political appointments because broader factors are taken into consideration and the selectors are more impartial. The four methods of selection are: 1. Executive appointment. 2. Legislative appointment. 3. Appointment by commission. 4. Election. leorm, legal, reform

A doctrine unique to the system is the review of legislative actions by the courts. This quite often results in judges making law and rescinding law contrary to the popular will of the people. Bad decisions, which are endemic to the system, have their greatest consequences in this area. Examples are the recent Hawaii decision to allow gay marriages and the stay of prop 209, the anti-discrimination initiative in California. Some judges have ordered tax increases in some communities - classic taxation without representation. There has to be a mechanism to override bad law by judges. A two-thirds vote of the legislature is an appropriate level to revoke judicial decisions. Citizens' initiative petitions to put the issue on the ballot is another avenue. As Teddy Roosevelt recommended in his 1912 presidential campaign -- let the nation decide at the election whether to uphold or reject any Court decision creating a new "right" or overturning a Barbaric oppressed state and terror stricken faulty law. "It is the people and not the judges who are entitled to say what the Constitution means," "for the Constitution is theirs, it belongs to them and not to their servants in office." leform, legal, reform, legal, reform, legal, reform, legal, reform, legal, reform, legal, reform, legal, reform, legal, reform, legal, reform, legal, reform, legal, reform, legal, reform, legal, reform, legal, reform, legal, reform, legal, reform, legal, reform, legal, reform

As long as we have lawyers as judges, we will not have justice in India. What kind of system can work with political hacks appointing legal hacks. Lawyers deserve their reputation of being low-lifes and as scummy as used-car salesmen. Lawyers tend to be dishonest and lie because they know the system - they know that lying and cheating and perjury work. Lawyers know that perjury isn't prosecuted and they pass that on to their clients. This habit and culture is perhaps made worse by the adversarial system. Cynicism is simply knowing the facts. We need to break that culture. By limiting the pool of candidates for judge to lawyers, we end with only sleazebags on the bench. These sleaszebags have an agenda - the furtherance of the interests of lawyers. Just as lawyers screw you, ex-lawyers on the bench do it too. That is simply their modus operandi or nature. In other words, they have the same lack of regard for you. Lawyer/Judges do their utmost to damage pro se or self-represented litigants. With 60 percent of the population unable to afford lawyers, that means the majority of citizens cannot get justice because there is a lawyer on the bench. Judges shill for lawyers because those are their buddies, culture, and system which they were a part of, accept, and may return to. In a courtroom one lawyer wears a black robe and he scratches the other lawyers' backs. Lawyers are not legal experts, they are not trained in many areas of law: tax judges/lawyers know a fraction of tax law that CPA's and tax-preparers that come before them do; family law lawyers/judges are not social workers; juvenile law judges are not psychologists; technical subjects like patents, copyrights, trade secrets, medical malpractice and psychiatry are well beyond the competence of lawyer/judges. Fairness and diligence are most required in judges and is frequently missing in lawyer/judges. The system is of lawyers, by lawyers and for lawyers. Getting lawyers off the bench is the most important reform and the only chance we have of putting justice before the economic interests of lawyers.

If lawyers are the worst pond scum, even lower than used car salesmen and ex-husbands, how is it that when these lawyers become judges that they are deified? Does a miraculous transformation occur? When you go to court you will only find lawyers - one of them wearing a black robe. Justice is a sham, it is not even what they are about - lawyers as judges are only interested in furthering the cartel. Law is a money-making machine. Lawyer/judges have a built-in conflict of interest - they are never going to let a pro se person win no matter how right he is, because to allow justice in such a case would be the end of the cartel - it would demonstrate that lawyers are superfluous. The emperor would be shown without clothes and their whole profession - everything the judges invested their lives in - would be diminished. Clearly legal incomes would be at risk. Lawyer/judges favor high status law firms and lawyers because those are their reference group - the people whose good opinion they seek; it advances the profession. So cases get decided on how expensive your lawyer is, never on the merits of your case. The social pressure on them is overwhelming. You can imagine the abuse they would get from the fraternity, if they ruled against a lawyer in favor of a non-lawyer (because in the end, economic interests are involved). Hypocrisy is confused with ideals like "fairness", "equality before the law" and "justice". Don't believe the hype. If you don't understand that the system is not about 'justice', try it. Try one lawsuit and you will learn a lot. We have a diseased system, which is rotten at the core and the core is lawyers. We are ruled by a tyranny of brazenly self-serving lawyers who have not only written the rules, but enforce them and then rule on their own ethics in enforcing them. Bringing balance by restraining lawyers is important.

An inside look at the Supreme Court Closed Chambers by one of its former law clerks Ed Lazarus came out in 1998. He writes: justices "resort to transparently deceitful and hypocritical arguments and factual distortions as they discard judicial philosophy ... in favor of bottom-line results." If anything, it is worse on appellate courts and with judges because they have less scrutiny. Anyone who has been in court will recognize the truth of what Lazarus writes - judges decide on whim or status who they want to win and truth and justice have nothing whatever to do with it. An early 1998 survey of civil lawsuits in four states by the Kansas City Star, found 57 examples of judges deciding cases where they had a financial interest in one of the litigants. That was about 17 percent of the time. The judges even admitted it but said they were too busy or blamed their staff. Those are excuses that would never work if you were guilty of breaking the law or ethical violations. The problem of corruption in judges is so constant that it is the reason that the English adopted the jury system. People have more faith in twelve average people. Unfortunately, in America judges can override jury decisions and manipulate them through jury instructions.

"The abilities required in a good interpreter of the law, that is to say, in a good judge, are not the same with those of an advocate; namely the study of laws...The things that make a good judge, or a good interpreter of the laws, are, first, a right understanding of that principal law of nature called equity; which depending not on the reading of other men's writings, but on the goodness of a man's natural reason, and meditation, is presumed to be in those most, that have the most leisure, and had the most inclination to meditate thereon. Secondly, contempt of unnecessary riches and preferments. Thirdly, to be able in judgment to divest himself of all fear, anger, hatred, love, and compassion. Fourthly, and lastly, patience to hear; diligent attention in hearing; and a memory to retain, digest, and apply what he hath heard." Thomas Hobbes, 1651
WHY LAWYER/JUDGES ARE INCOMPETENT. It is not just that mediocre people go into law; good lawyers make too much money to accept the lower pay of judgeships. Therefore, only mediocre lawyers are in the pool to select from. By broadening the pool of candidates, we can have better judges."The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." Shakespeare in King Henry VI, Part II, Act IV.  Access to justice is the paramount goal to be served and when in doubt or conflict this goal has priority over possible harm from unskilled or unethical providers (keep in mind how unethical and unskilled most lawyers are). Lawyers use regulation as a cartel mechanism to restrict trade. Lawyers are not affordable and may not be available. In 1989 the Consortium and Tulane Law School sponsored the Conference on Access to Justice in the 1990's, issuing its report titled Civil Justice: An Agenda for the 1990s. The Conference found that access to legal services by low- and moderate-income persons had not been significantly enhanced despite recent technological advances and the previous decade's experimentation with legal advertising, alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, national and local legal clinics, lawyer referral and information services, and a variety of prepaid legal plans. The Conference "strongly supported the relaxation of current barriers to the involvement of non-attorneys in the provision of legal assistance and called for careful experimentation with lay advocacy programs to determine whether and how much such representation will increase access to the legal system." We have entered the information age. There are plenty of computer programs and self-help books containing legal forms from contacts to wills to trusts. (Probate reform is absolutely necessary - what a racket! Lawyers take a percentage of the gross estate for routine work, most of which is against the interests of the heirs) This trend toward self-lawyering and Artificial Intelligence lawyer programs will continue and should be encouraged. Anyone of average IQ should be able to handle all their own legal work. Expert systems to replace lawyers for most legal tasks is being pushed by Speaker Newt Gingrich.  [Lawyers] have an economic interest in cultivating and prolonging conflict. This means they are fundamentally at odds with the purposes of the legal system. Courts and lawyers exist only to explain and enforce the rules society sets for itself--and settle disputes arising from these rules. . . . The trouble is that lawyers' well-being runs in the opposite direction. The more conflict, the better. The more cumbersome and ambiguous society's rules, the better. The most exciting idea is to get rid of the state monopoly on the law altogether.
Leon Fuller explains: If the law is considered as "the enterprise of subjecting human conduct to the governance of rules," [Fuller's definition] then this enterprise is being conducted, not on two or three fronts, but on thousands. Engaged in this enterprise are those who draft and administer rules governing the internal affairs of clubs, churches, schools, labor unions, trade associations, agricultural fairs, and a hundred and one other forms of human association ... there are in this country alone "systems of law" numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Attorneys paid a percentage of total jury awards become a party to the suit, a self-interested claimant acting under the guise of justice. This has an undue tendency to promote litigation for the benefit of the promoter rather than the litigant. It compromises the proper administration of justice because the litigant receives dramatically less than the jury decided he was entitled to by sharing it with his lawyer - which may be called half or semi-justice. Contingency fees, which were originally argued to increase access to justice, by driving up the value of attorneys' time, actually put justice out of reach for more people. It has led to unseemly aberrations like ambulance chasing. The ABA has determined that there is no possible ethical abuse of contingency fees (normally 1/3 to 40 percent of settlement), even if the lawyer violates his legal fiduciary duties to his client. In 1996, there was a Prop 202 in CA to limit unearned and massively overcharged contingency fees in cases of early settlements where lawyers did little or nothing. The entire legal community rose up to defeat it. Diminished litigation would affect them. All fee agreements over 1000 dollars should be in writing and there must be some chance that a contingency fee may not be collected otherwise the lawyer is just fleecing his client by charging more than his hourly rate.  Do the actual benefits to the public of regulation outweigh likely negative consequences (for example, the high costs of lawyers and the protection of incompetent lawyers)? Are there any benefits to regulation? The answer to the problem of too many lawyers is, ironically, more lawyers! There is no reason for lawyers to spend seven years in college learning the little that they learn. Lawyers could get the same training in a six month paralegal course. Now consider the world flooded with lawyers - bad lawyers couldn't make a living, average lawyers would have to get by on modest salaries because of the competition. Only the good lawyers would be well paid and that is as it should be. The quality of legal services would go up, the prices would go down and even the poor would be able to get "justice" or at least legal advice. Break the cartel by deregulation, decertification and allowing paralegals to practice law. Also, the rules of court should be relaxed those who represent themselves. Now there is an extreme bias against them (I know - I have represented myself in magistrates court, state and federal district court, state supreme court and federal appeals court - I have yet to find justice). Currently there are 100 million lawsuits pending - empowering everyone to be a lawyer couldn't make things worse. Montana has such a law (MCA paragraph 25-31-61) from 1871 that allows any party to be represented by anyone. It is true that the public would be in a "buyer beware" situation if the practice of law were de-regulated, but (1) the paramount goal is the access to justice and (2) the current system has the evil that incompetents hide behind certification. On balance, a market system is always preferable to a regulatory system because the latter does not work and the false sense of security in regulation is an actual evil.  A recent California Appeals Court ruling about a CO lawyer in CO selling CA legal services was: "We doubt, however, that the legislature is authorized to prevent an unlicensed person in NY or Zurich from plying CA law or transmitting legal communications to anyone within the state so long as the unlicensed person remains outside the state and we suspect that such a policy, if it could be enforced would prove as frustrating and expensive for consumers of legal services as for purveyors." (Condon v. McHenry, June 27, 1997, 64 Cal Rptr 2nd 789) In other words, anyone can sell legal advice to anyone, anywhere, as long as they remain outside the state of the consumer. This is nearly total deregulation of law, which now can be profitably plied over the internet and even globally. Most law is transactional - advice, contracts, taxes, wills, trusts, etc. Only litigation requires a local lawyer if you want representation. This should dramatically lower legal costs and disempower lawyers. It is the virtual end of unlicensed practice laws. Hopefully, trust-mills will set up on the internet to dramatically reduce obscene wills and probate profits for lawyers. Trusts can cut lawyers and judges totally out of the estate picture. Wills and estates are the backbone of many law practices. As for litigation: filings, motions, strategy, interrogatories, checklists, lists of questions for witnesses, crafted opening and closing arguments, appeal briefs, and basically everything but the actual appearance in court can be sold out of state by anyone to help self-represented persons hold costs and get justice. (The fundamental problem is that even with juries, which you must request within 10 days from filing your suit, lawyer/judges make vigorous efforts to deny justice to self-represented persons.) Abolish self-regulation of lawyers. In Iowa, we have a couple of lawyer protection commissions set up by the Supreme Court to secretly hear complaints against lawyers and judges. This process must be open and their files muyst be open for public inspection. Unfortunately, many lawyers are present on these commissions which allows them to subvert the process and protect their own - you can not let foxes watch the chicken coup. In this case, you cannot let lawyers have a major or deciding say in regulating themselves. Peer review doesn't work in this important instance. The criteria or standards these commissions apply are not such as to require expert knowledge but rather character and common sense. Having a lawyer judge ethics is like having a blind man judge The Miss America Pageant when his daughter is a contestant. The process they use is a closed box - you file a complaint and then the lawyer answers but the complainer never gets to see what the lawyer said. The advantage for lawyers is that they can then say any lie and the advantage to the lawyer protection racket is that their judgment can not be gainsaid: no one knows what info they had when they made their final judgment. A 1993 national commission found that 95 percent of all complaints against federal judges were dismissed summarily by other federal judges put in place to review them. At the state level, NY is supposed to have the nation's top oversight organization. Over 85 percent of complaints are dismissed without investigation. Since they have a cartel and regulate themselves, you might expect that they would recognize the high responsiblity. No, the issue of whether clients are well served never concerns them. They never punish lawyers who violate fiduciary duty laws. The American legal system is simply a money making machine. The whole argument for cartel and licensing restrictions was to guarantee quality of legal services, but these moral lepers demonstrate what a fraud that argument is by showing they don't even care whether customers are ripped off, cheated, or receive any legal value at all. Failure to regulate clearly shows that the rationalization for the cartel was at its core a fraud, a way to cheat the public. The CA Bar receives 140,000 hotline complaints a year and 'investigates' 15,000 allegations of attorney misconduct. This shows how well licensing works - the state should not put its seal of approval on these sleazebags, but rather let buyers beware. At least it would cost consumers less when they get fleeced, they would have more choice and they would be forewarned.  The bar association always forgives its own. I have made several complaints about lawyers to both my local and state bars and they did not even answer.
Here are some legal profession ethical canons:

• . A lawyer should assist in maintaining the integrity and competence of the legal profession. As if it had any.
• A lawyer should assist the legal profession in fulfilling its duty to make legal counsel available. The ABA in a 1995 report states that they are failing miserably with poor people practically unrepresented and moderate income people unrepresented more than 60 precent of the time.
• A lawyer should assist in preventing the unauthorized practice of law. This is the only canon that lawyers zealously adhere to. As noted above, it is obsolete.
• . A lawyer should represent a client zealously within the bounds of the law. Lawyers tend to either ignore this in favor of a quick buck, I mean settlement, or carry it to extremes of lying and illegal coaching of witnesses and parties.
• A lawyer should avoid even the appearance of professional impropriety. Right.