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What IS Marriage, Anyway?
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May. 16th, 2008 @ 08:53 am
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Well, I see where the California Supreme Court on a 4-3 vote just overturned six thousand or more years of common definition of the institution of marriage, which is stylish of them.
Now I happen to believe in the federal system and if another state wants to define the terms of intercourse (I'm using this in its broadest meaning) between its citizens, who am I to comment? Of course, in this case 61% of the voters of the state already defined marriage as quite the opposite of what the court just determined.
What I do have a huge objection to is judges who believe they, and they alone, have the right to turn the commonly held meaning of constitutions topsy-turvy and find that in 2008 it means something completely different from when it was adopted. When constitutional rights can be redefined at whim, then they mean nothing at all, and the risk of tyranny by robe becomes very great indeed. This is the second state court to reach the same conclusion (many others did not), and both by 4-3 votes.
*******
I do prefer, however, that both judges and politicians be straight (I'm using this in its broadest meaning) about what they are saying and doing, and to that extent at least the California court puts all the marbles on the table instead of that wishy-washy "civil union" "compromise" imposed in Vermont and discussed elsewhere. What kind of gobbledy-gook is that?
After all, what is a civil marriage if not a "civil union", that is, a relationship between two people solely defined by the state with provisions for a beginning, a middle and an end. In most states civil matrimony involves a whole lot less than the traditional notions of permanent families. So if you're going to toy with the notion of civil unions, then call it what it really is, civil matrimony with such meaning as the state defines, the lowest common denominator of the understanding of human relationships.
**********
I often hear conservatives and others freak out when things like this happen, blaming the "gay lobby" and the "gay agenda".
I don't see it that way.
If the definition of marriage is getting fuzzy, it isn't because of some interest group or other. WE have made the meaning of marriage obscure by our own actions as a society over the last . . . well, my lifetime.
When I was in elementary school, I only remember two of my friends having divorced parents, and those were whispered about in shocked disbelief. It didn't affect our relationship with the kids, they were still our friends. We just felt terrible for them. One of them, raised by his father, pretended his mother was dead. He kept that up for years, even though here in small town America we all knew the truth. We were deep into high school when one day, out of the blue, he said to me, "My mother's not dead, you know."
"Yeah, I know." And that was that.
The old social norm of saving yourself for marriage, even if honored as much in the breech as in the observance, went out the window completely with the dawn of The Pill and the coming of the drug era. We once used pejorative terms like "shacking up" and "playing house", activities which later became recognized by the federal government as "POSSLQ", Persons of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters, which prompted Charles Osgood to write his famous poem, - There's nothing that I wouldn't do
- If you would be my POSSLQ
- You live with me and I with you,
- And you will be my POSSLQ.
- I'll be your friend and so much more;
- That's what a POSSLQ is for.
Matrimony, which used to be the sacrosanct institution for the unifying spiritual power of sexual relations and the procreation and raising of children in a harmonious unit has become totally cheapened by the customs of the day. Sex is for the moment, children a commodity that can be accepted, rejected or tossed in a bin behind the abortuary.
If people of the gay persuasion look at the way we have dumbed down marriage to a simple piece of paper defining the property interests of the parties, who can blame them when they say, "Well, why can't we have that, too?"
Perhaps if we had a better idea of what matrimony is, or should be, we wouldn't even be having this discussion.
Buy my novel The Evil Has Landed
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Tragic Family Court Tale
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Aug. 31st, 2006 @ 02:02 pm
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Chief Scout in the greater Boston area sends along this sad story from the Globe. Reminds me of why I don't miss Family Court.
The Boston Globe
August 26, 2006
Roxbury MA (AP) - A seven-year-old boy was at the center of a Boston courtroom drama yesterday when he challenged a court ruling over who should have custody of him. The boy has a history of being beaten by his parents and the judge initially awarded custody to his aunt, in keeping with child
custody law and regulations requiring that family unity be maintained to the degree possible.
The boy surprised the court when he proclaimed that his aunt beat him more than his parents and he adamantly refused to live with her.
When the judge then suggested that he live with his grandparents, the boy cried out that they also beat him.
After considering the remainder of the immediate family and learning that domestic violence was apparently a way of life among them, the judge took the unprecedented step of allowing the boy to propose who should have custody of him.
After two recesses to check legal references and confer with child welfare officials, the judge granted temporary custody to the Boston Red Sox, whom the boy firmly believes are not capable of beating anyone.
Read and comment on my novel The Evil Has Landed. Free!
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The Longest Day
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Aug. 27th, 2006 @ 08:55 pm
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The out of town lawyer couldn't help it. She didn't know the territory, so when her client told her that the child's grandfather couldn't have been the one abusing him, the lawyer naturally bought into the tale of the other older guy with the same first name who maybe the kid thought of as a surrogate grandfather. Yeah, he must be the one.
I'll spare you the details. The third party "grandfather" had nothing whatever to do with it, but that didn't keep out of town lawyer from subpoenaing him and dragging him into family court and asking him all sorts of embarrassing questions and treating him as a hostile witness. All for nothing.
When the lawyers had all finished their questions, he was about to step down, but I stopped him.
"Wait a second. The Court has a few questions of its own."
We judges like to refer to ourselves as "The Court". Always be wary of anybody who thinks their first name is "The".
"Sir, if you can recall, can you tell The Court where you were at approximately 6:00 a.m. on June 6, 1944?"
*************
He was 18 years old, just one of thousands of scared young privates on board a landing craft, being tossed around on rough seas on the English Channel heading straight for a piece of Hell called Omaha Beach. Like a lot of men that day he got cut down early on and fell bleeding behind some rocks where he passed out.
They found him on the second day.
Months and months in the hospital, rehabilitation, and finally he came home and rebuilt his life and raised a family in his home town and minded his own business.
Every once in a while, like when The Longest Day premiered at the Mohawk Theater in 1962, he would make a public appearance and maybe tell his story to whatever new young reporter they had working that week.
I saw that movie in the theater in 1962, when I was 11, and again when they re-released it in 1964 for the twentieth anniversary of D-Day, and numerous times on television, and again this afternoon. There's just something about the film and the event that gets me in the gut.
Maybe because Dad was one of those guys in England waiting to be shipped across to help out, as he was a couple of weeks later. Maybe because it's just one of those moments in history when great forces and great ideals converge to form a few hours that will be remembered forever.
Maybe it's because of that dream I had once about wandering to the edge of a cliff and finding a monument there and looking down over the cliff to the beaches and sea. In my dream I somehow knew it had something to do with D-Day, but I didn't know what.
I recognized the spot when Reagan spoke there on June 6, 1984. It is called Pointe du Hoc.
******************
Out of town lawyer squirmed uncomfortably at her table as "grandfather" told his story.
No one else had any further questions, so I let the hero step down and leave the courtroom.
Law Guardian felt sorry for out of town attorney, so she made a motion to strike all the testimony about 1944 on the grounds that it was irrelevant to the current proceeding.
"Your motion is carefully considered and, respectfully, denied," The Court said.
Read and comment on my novel The Evil Has Landed. Free!
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Mystic Dwarves
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Aug. 20th, 2006 @ 09:05 am
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It took three years, but a Filipino judge has been removed from the bench for consulting with three invisible dwarves.
In a letter to the court he said: "From obscurity, my name and the three mystic dwarves became immortal."
However, the Supreme Court said dalliance with dwarves would gradually erode the public's acceptance of the judiciary as the guardian of the law, if not make it an object of ridicule.
Now this just goes to show the cultural differences between some countries.
Several years ago I had a litigant in a custody case appear before me in Family Court. The evidence from a prior proceeding had indicated, among other things, that he regularly conversed with three spirits: one named Barney, one named Aunt Bea, and a third one, who resembled a smelly old woman, who refused to give her name (to him, that is; none of them testified in court). He was able to fill us in on a lot of the secret details of the life of the mother of his children because he could send the spirits down to her trailer to spy on her. It seems she didn't have the gift, so she couldn't see them, so it was a perfect setup for him.
In the previous proceeding another judge had ruled that he could not have unsupervised visitation until he had undergone a psychological evaluation, so I ruled from the bench to dismiss his current petition because he still had not done so.
The litigant interrupted me and started screaming, saying, among other things, "WHY?? I DON'T UNDERSTAND THIS!! WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO GET A PSYCHOLOGICAL EVALUATION???"
Whereupon your usually genial host and kind-hearted judge replied, "Because it appears to me that you are more than a little nuts."
I was, of course, duly and publicly admonished by the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct for that remark.
I've often wondered whether they had three extra commissioners sitting that day.
Read and comment on my novel The Evil Has Landed. Free!
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What Can We Do?
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Apr. 21st, 2006 @ 12:55 am
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One evening some years ago when I could have been home watching Seinfeld, I found myself on a panel at the middle school discussing the problems of teenage hoodlums in the community before a large group of very angry parents.
At the time I was both a City Court Judge and the attorney for the Department of Social Services where, among other things, I dealt with child abuse cases and placement of juvenile delinquents. I was somewhat amused to see one of our graduates in the audience with her mother, both of them applauding wildly at every mention of cracking down on the wayward youths of our fair city.
I didn't have any kids in the middle school being harassed on their way home. Mine were safely in St. Mary's where they were receiving a fine education in a quiet atmosphere.
"Judge Going, what can we do? How do we stop this?"
Part of me gets a chuckle when I'm looked on as the Answer Man. I got the City Court job because no one else wanted it. I did no campaigning and didn't even attend the meeting where I was nominated. I ran without opposition. (Actually, that's not true. I had plenty of opposition, just no opponent). But by simply donning a robe and taking an oath of office, suddenly I was looked upon as though I possessed the Wisdom of the Ages. I admit, it can go to your head. Especially when they stand up when you walk into a room.
"You want to know what you can do. Well, that's not easy, but you can all do something. Let me tell you a story."
And so I told them about the Alternatives to Incarceration program we had established wherein minor offenders performed community service projects as part or all of their sentence. I sat on the advisory board. The director had forms for every participant, quite detailed. He also did home visits.
After a couple of years he compiled statistics. The age group was primarily 16 to 25.
Number of adult criminals married and residing with spouse: zero.
Number of teens residing at home where father and mother are married and living together as a family unit: zero.
"People ask me, what percentage of the kids who appear in my court and Family Court come from broken homes. The honest answer is: all of them.
"You want to know what you can do. Well, you can't solve all the problems of the world by yourself, but you can at least make an effort to take care of your own little corner of the universe. You want to do something for your kids? Start at home."
*********************
I wandered into the parking lot after the meeting and opened my car door.
Some punk kid had rifled my glove compartment and swiped all my spare change.
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Quis Custodiet Custodes?
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Apr. 2nd, 2006 @ 09:47 pm
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Not too many of you know who Thomas Spargo is. A few days ago he was in the news briefly when the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct announced that they were removing him from office as a Justice of the New York State Supreme Court. That really came as no surprise, since they had already decided to do that several years ago, even before he entered his present office, for reasons that will be evident if you continue.
Tom Spargo at one time was counsel to the New York State Republican Party. In the process he learned a whole lot about election law, and became probably the foremost expert on the subject in the State of New York. He became very much in demand around petition gathering and election time, and had clients across the political spectrum.
For whatever reason, he ran for the post of part-time Town Justice in the Town of Berne, a sparsely populated area mostly in the Helderberg Mountains south of Albany.
He was allowed under the rules to maintain a private practice, with a few non-relevant limitations. Which is how he happened to be in the State of Florida in November and December of 1980 when the whole world was watching. Tom Spargo was one of those people who was there when the three election inspectors, all Democrats, decided unilaterally to move their review of the hanging chads behind closed doors.
You may remember the scene of the neatly-attired Republicans storming the office in outrage, and ultimately preventing the stealing of the presidential election in the backroom. Spargo was seen in one of the shots, and his long personal nightmare began.
When a judge is removed from the bench, it is little-noted that the charges which initiated the investigation are unfounded. Such was the case here. Nothing about Bush v. Gore survives as an offense. But Spargo had the audacity to challenge the authority of the Commission in Federal Court, and initially he won. This only served to enrage the Commission Staff and the Commission itself.
Meanwhile, Spargo got himself elected to State Supreme Court (which in New York is a lower-level court). Every iota of his judicial career now became open to scrutiny on a long-term fishing expedition, because the sad fact is that once you challenge the authority of the Commission on Judicial Conduct, or deny the allegations against you and force them to prove their case with actual evidence, you are doomed. Every day of your judicial career will then be spent defending yourself. In Spargo's case he quickly ran up legal bills of $140,000 to keep a job that pays $136,000 a year.
Every year plenty of good judges throw in the towel and resign rather than fight. Because you can't fight. Because you can't win.
Judges running for election always give hand-outs to the voters. Pens are popular and can be expensive. I gave out emery boards ("And you can use them on your sparkplugs, sir!") which ran a couple of cents each. Spargo, they say, gave out five dollar gift certificates outside a convenience store to four or five people and (horrors!) bought a few rounds of drinks at local watering holes. I'll bet that shocked the heck out of the Commission.
I guess as proof of malfeasance, they point out that though the Town of Berne is heavily Democrat, he won by 85 votes out of 1,200 cast. And now I think you can see what this whole thing is really about.
Some friends of his put together a legal expense fund to, I assume, not only defend Spargo, but also to pay for some much-needed court action to curb the abuses of the commission. This became the mortal sin of mortal sins, and on the flimsiest evidence and raw conjecture (which is even obvious from the decision they themselves wrote, which ignores any evidence to the contrary and focuses on the bare minimum needed to convict) they decided that he was pressuring lawyers to contribute. It is so much baloney, and that's the best they could do.
Judges, as a rule, bend over backwards to protect the rights of the accused, a tradition ingrained on the collective psyche by the Bill of Rights via Magna Carta. In New York, judges themselves have no such protections.
The Commission , an appointed body, serves as investigator, complainant, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner. Appeal is only to the State Court of Appeals, another non-elective body. The People who elected the judge have no say whatsoever in his fate.
The Commission alone has the power to decide what constitutes a violation of judicial ethics. A large minority of the Commission, and the Commission Staff, have held to the position that a judge may not accept the endorsement of the Right to Life Party. I have been told by former Deputy Chief Administrative Judge Joseph Traficanti that at least pre-Lewinsky, some members of the commission held to the belief that ANY relationship between a judge and an employee, no matter how consensual, constituted sexual harassment because of the power differential. Others have felt that consensual is ok. Who decides? The majority of the Commission. They adapt the facts to the nearest possible violation of the canon of judicial ethics.
This is not meant to be a direct comparison, but Professor Daniel Moriarty of Albany Law School has pointed out that three cultures in the twentieth century adopted similar rules for their criminal code. Those three were Stalinist Russia, Nazi Germany, and the puppet government of the free city of Danzig. Not exactly worthy precedent.
Most troubling of all in a case like this is that nearly every issue comes down to WHO IS TELLING THE TRUTH.
So how many members of the Commission have had the opportunity to examine the credibility and demeanor of Tom Spargo and his accusers? Exactly none. How many of them actually read the several days worth of transcript? It is unlikely that ANY have done so.
And the standard of proof for judges? Not proof beyond a reasonable doubt, not clear and convincing evidence, but rather the bare minimum "preponderance of the evidence" which means that one arbitrary peppercorn more weight on one side or the other is enough to decide the whole case, to decide whether a person elected by the people shall be removed from office.
In the course of the investigation, the rankest form of hearsay is accepted, and they who have become jurors in the case had already been exposed to every rumor from every source, thus risking bias, and had been forced to prejudge every aspect of the case before a single word of sworn testimony was received.
The Commission answers to no one, so it should come as no surprise that they frequently violate their own rules and governing law. Contrary to the rules, members of the commission routinely are given ex parte briefings on the cases before them by the members of their staff who are serving as prosecutors. There is nothing resembling a level playing field.
"Quis custodiet custodes?" said the Roman Juvenal.
"Who will guard the guards?"
********************
And so, Tom Spargo becomes the latest victim of this tyranny, and hopefully the final victim of Bush v. Gore, but I doubt it.
Aside from a letter of support to him, which went unanswered, I have had no contact whatsoever with Tom Spargo since the summer of 1980 when, though a bare acquaintance, he arranged to get a balcony pass for my pregnant wife at the Republican National Convention in Detroit, Michigan. It was an act of kindness and graciousness which seemed to come so easily to him that I determined it must be habitual. Such virtues will carry him well in his forced retirement.
Hang in there, Judge.
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STOP!
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Mar. 7th, 2006 @ 12:33 pm
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ITEM: European Human Rights Court rules that human petri-dish embryos have no right to life and that mother may not have them implanted without consent of the father.
ITEM: Netherlands debates proposal for post-birth abortion (i.e. infanticide). Apparently there is no right to life after birth either.
ITEM: Parents appeal ruling in UK that permits doctor to end life support for a child, over the objection of the parents, when, in the opinion of the doctor, child does not have a quality of life worth living.
ITEM: High Court in Ohio rules that there exists a cause of action for wrongful life, thus pressuring doctors, through their insurance companies, to recommend abortion if there is the slightest chance of producing a defective child.
And that's just the last few days.
Meanwhile, the girl who was permitted to die by the State of Massachusetts to support a prosecution for murder against her assailant, is eating and otherwise demonstrating improvement.
Ah, those slippery slopes.
A couple of decades ago, no more, courts were beginning to decide "new life" issues, such as the rights of natural mothers to visit or have custody of children brought into the world through "surrogate parent" contracts, and the rights of women to get pregnant after the death of their partners with all the financial implications that could have. (Is sperm an inheritible commodity? Are embryos?)
All of these Brave New World situations could have been avoided if courts had had the guts to rule that absent guidance from the legislative branch, such arrangements are void as against public policy, and if legislatures had had the guts to ban procedures that detract from the dignity of human life.
Where will it stop? In China they already rip babies from the womb when the government determines that they are inconvenient. Are we really that much more civilized here in the West?
Take a good look, folks. This is who we already are.
When will someone yell, "STOP!"?
And will anyone listen?
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The Slippery Slope
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Feb. 1st, 2006 @ 12:19 pm
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Roe v. Wade was a horrible decision in so many different ways. By unilaterally deciding that unborn children have certain rights of protection at different stages of development, loosely defined on an in-exact continuum, the Supreme Court left open for future courts the grizzly job of determining who lives and who dies.
I don't miss the bench. I can't imagine having to examine, let alone rule on, with deference to precedent, a case like the one that came down from
the Second Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday, striking down the federal Partial Birth Abortion Act.
If I understand Judge Chester Straub's dissent correctly, he appears to be arguing that the procedure itself takes the case out of the precedent arena, because the "gruesome and inhuman procedure" results in a birth process which creates rights of citizenship in the child, thereby eliminating the artificial issue of "potential life".
Some argue that the removal of a fetus during a D & X is not birth.” See Farmer v. Planned Parenthood of Cent. N.J., 220 F.3d 127, 143 (3d Cir. 2000). However, “birth” is the “passage of the offspring from the uterus to the outside world.” Dorlands Illustrated Medical Dictionary 207 (27th ed. 2000). The removal of a fetus from its mother surgically does not mean that it is not born, as a fetus removed from its mother via a cesarean section is certainly “born.”
Moreover, I disagree with the contention of the Farmer court that the intent of the mother governs whether a child is born or aborted. See Farmer, 220 F.3d at 144. A child born prematurely, even though its mother does not intend it to be born, is not necessarily an abortion. Indeed, the statute that the majority relies on for its definition of a “person” defines “born alive” to include “any member of the species homo sapiens . . . regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, cesarean section, or it may not be “deprive[d] . . . of life . . . without due process of law,” U.S. Const. amend. XIV, § 1. At this point, the mother’s right to privacy, autonomy, and bodily integrity are waning in importance, and the fetus’s increases in strength. Just as viability is the point during the gestation of the fetus when the interest of the State in potential life become paramount, see Casey, 505 U.S. at 869, birth14 induced abortion.” 1 U.S.C. § 8. If the intent of the mother controls the scope of her right to destroy her offspring, there is no reason why she should not be able to destroy the child after it has completely been separated from her body.
I disagree with Chief Judge Walker that the fact that the Act is not limited to post-viability abortions necessarily vitiates the compelling interest of the State in preventing the procedure to distinguish abortion from infanticide. Once a fetus is born, its viability ceases to be relevant to determining the constitutional protections to which it is entitled.
Ah, there's the rub. Once we start distinguishing abortion from infanticide we have to find a point where "gruesome and inhuman" becomes merely "gruesome", so that it will pass constitutional muster.
Judge Straub's dissent makes perfect sense to me (there are many other interesting issues contained in it.) If this ultimately makes it to the Supreme Court, I suspect we will be hearing his words again.
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Keeping the Loco in loco parentis
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Nov. 4th, 2005 @ 09:23 am
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The Federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals came down with an interesting case yesterday, which I have not read in its entirety, which raises some fascinating legal and constitutional questions. It involves parental rights, among other things, but the issues are clouded in the somewhat strange fact pattern. So let's just discuss this for now from a cultural perspective.
The parents of young elementary school children were asked to allow their children to participate in a study about attitudes. Each parent executed a consent form. Whether it was informed consent remains an issue. As I understand it, there was no mention of sexual content. These are some of the questions the 7-10 year olds were asked to rate as to how often they thought about these things:
a. "Touching my private parts too much."
b. "Thinking about having sex"
c. "Thinking about touching other people's private parts."
d. "Thinking about sex when I don't want to."
e. "Washing myself because I feel dirty on the inside."
f. "Not trusting people because they might want sex."
g. "Getting scared or upset when I think about sex."
h. "Having sex feelings in my body."
i. "Can't stop thinking about sex."
j. "Getting upset when people talk about sex."
***********************
While you are pondering the appropriateness of the above for such an age group and returning your jaws to their natural position, let me interrupt the flow of my narrative (it's ok; Melville did it all the time) and tell a little story about definition of terms. I do this to point out the general uselessness of such a survey without a clear understanding of what the words mean to the surveyees.
I began practicing in Family Court just after the HLA paternity test was introduced (later augmented by DNA testing). Before that nearly every paternity case went to trial, because the older blood tests only served to exclude a person who was not the father in about 10% of the cases. (Now it is in the 99% range inclusive). Therefore the proof rested on actual testimony of times, dates and circumstances of sexual relations.
About a year earlier, young attorney Rick Partyka was assigned to represent a paternity defendant. The Department of Social Services Attorney, John Kosinski, brought the case to seek child support to reimburse the county for welfare costs. The other names are fictional.
DSS Attorney Kosinski puts Miss Doe on the stand and quickly elicits the important facts: date of her last period, opportunity and access on May 3, May 5, May 6, May 8, etc. He sits down.
Well-prepared Mr. Partyka cross-examines.
"Isn't it true that when you had sex with my client on May 3rd that he used a prophylactic on that occasion?"
"Yes, that's true."
"And isn't it also true that he used a prophylactic on May 5th?"
"Yes."
"And he also used a prophylactic on May 6 and May 8, didn't he?"
"Yes."
"And isn't it true, Miss Doe, that on each and every occasion that you had sexual relations with my client, he used a prophylactic?"
"That's right. Yes."
Partyka sits down triumphant.
"Re-direct, Mr. Kosinski?"
"Just a couple of questions, your honor. Miss Doe, when you were answering Mr. Partyka's questions, he used a big word: 'prophylactic'. Let me ask you this, do you know what 'prophylactic' means?"
"I think so, yes."
"Well, tell us in your own words what it means?"
She blushed. "It means he came."
**********************************
Says the Court:
…there is no fundamental right of parents to be the exclusive provider of information regarding sexual matters to their children, either independent of their right to direct the upbringing and education of their children or encompassed by it. We also hold that parents have no due process or privacy right to override the determinations of public schools as to the information to which their children will be exposed while enrolled as students. Finally, we hold that the defendants’ actions were rationally related to a legitimate state purpose.... …In summary, we hold that there is no free-standing fundamental right of parents “to control the upbringing of their children by introducing them to matters of and relating to sex in accordance with their personal and religious values and beliefs” and that the asserted right is not encompassed by any other fundamental right. In doing so, we do not quarrel with the parents’ right to inform and advise their children about the subject of sex as they see fit. We conclude only that the parents are possessed of no constitutional right to prevent the public schools from providing information on that subject to their students in any forum or manner they select.
And how about this little comforting thought found in a footnote: "I understand answering questions may make my child feel uncomfortable. If this occurs, then, Kristi Seymour, the research study coordinator, will assist us in locating a therapist for further psychological help if necessary."
******************************
Here is my thought for the day: if there are certain fundamental rights reserved to the people, and the right to raise and educate your children as you see fit isn't one of them, then what is?
I realize that this is probably long-settled law ("super-precedent"), but what right does the government have to enforce compulsory education anyway? Every single state requires it.
There was no such animal at the time the constitution was adopted. Public education was the brainchild of Horace Mann in the 19th century. (The site of his birth is across the street from the first Brunelli's Supermarket in Franklin, MA. That's an inside-family thing.) We all accept it as the right of government now. Children can be pulled from their homes and placed in custody for not attending school and their parents charged with child neglect. Why?
[Personal to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee: I'm just attempting to provoke discussion and thought here. Nothing should be construed as reflecting any opinion I might have or be used as the basis for conjecture as to how I might rule on a particular issue which might come before me.]
**********************
John Kosinski had a Christmas party later that year. As Rick Partyka and his wife were leaving, John shook his hand and said, "Glad you could prophylactic, Mr. Partyka. I hope you can prophylactic again next year."
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That's Character, Gentlemen
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Aug. 15th, 2005 @ 11:05 pm
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When I was a freshman at our parochial high school (lo those many years ago) one of the seniors suffered a head injury in the last football game of the season. They rushed him to the hospital and lucky for him it was just a minor concussion. Unlucky for him, as it happens, his blood alcohol count was higher than .00.
Before the game even ended, the administration discovered the booze on the team bus.
Ah, those were the days. A school-wide assembly was called. We stood in the crowded auditorium and listened intently as four perpetrators were identified by name. Each received a suspension from school, each banned from all athletic activities for the remainder of the school year. For the seniors, that meant no chance at all to play on the championship basketball and baseball teams. It was the ultimate disgrace, akin to Chuck Conners having the buttons ripped off his shirt before being kicked out of the fort in the old Branded television show.
And then an amazing thing happened. When the assembly ended, a student emerged from the crowd and approached the principal.
"Father, when they were passing the bottle around, I took a swig, too."
He took the same punishment, and to this day I still look at him with awe.
Three years later and now we were seniors at the new high school. A bunch of us were hanging around the guidance office one day with Father Gustas, and somebody wondered out loud about how a Catholic school managed to grab this obviously brilliant and over-qualified biology and human physiology teacher.
"I'll tell you how," said Father Gustas. "He was doing biological research at one of the top pharmaceutical companies in the country, making three or four times what we're paying him. Then one day they assigned him to work on a team developing a 'morning after' birth control pill. They were only working on animals, not humans, but he knew where it was going. He quit. And came here."
He paused and looked us over.
"That's character, gentlemen."
I thought of that today, reading an article on the Web from the Lincoln, Nebraska Journal-Star about the death of Judge Joseph W. Moylan who served over twenty years as Douglas County Judge.
Back in 1993 Nebraska had a parental notification provision for minors seeking an abortion. Under certain circumstances that notification could be waived by a judge. Such a case came before Judge Moylan. He reviewed the case carefully and determined that under the law he was required to grant the relief requested.
And so he resigned.
He resigned!
At the height of his fame, in the prime of life.
Said Moylan at the time: "My personal belief is that someday we'll all meet at the final judgment and give an accounting of our lives. I've got a lot of things I wish I didn't have to account for, and I don't care to add something like this to the list."
I've always been in favor of parental notification, but when I became a Family Court Judge and there was some talk about a similar law in New York, it dawned on me that I might find myself in the same situation. I wrote about the struggle judges sometimes face here, afterwards, when talk is cheap.
Judge Moylan made his decision when his career, his reputation, and his family's future were on the line.
That's character, gentlemen.
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Ye shall be as gods
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Mar. 26th, 2005 @ 10:23 am
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Whittaker Chambers called it the world's second oldest religion: "Ye shall be as gods." That temptation in the Garden has manifested itself in many forms over the centuries. Currently it's hanging out in a courtroom in Florida and similar places.
I've been on the bench. I know what it's like to be all-powerful. Every decision I rendered was with the sure knowledge that there was very little likelihood of being overturned on appeal, or even of an appeal being taken. Part of my training as a Family Court Judge came from Judge Judy. Several of us spent an afternoon with her in New York County Family Court and learned the importance of including certain phrases in our decisions: "This Court has had the unique opportunity to examine the credibility and demeanor of the witnesses in this case." That was a good one. What Appellate Court could overturn you on factual issues with language like that? The prevailing party has always "met the statutory standard of proof." From other judges I learned to dismiss strong opposing arguments by writing, "The mere fact that . . .", etc.
And so it is that Judge Greer can make life and death decisions based on conflicting testimony, and never be overturned. He, after all, had the unique opportunity to examine the credibility and demeanor of the witnesses. The mere fact that Michael Schiavo never mentioned his wife's wishes for seven years, and that no one else ever remembered them until after her court-appointed law guardian suggested Michael might not be credible, has no bearing on the decision. All a judge need do is reject the credibility of people he doesn't want to believe and accept the testimony of people he does, and then fill his decision with language from statutes and case law which support his result, and that is that! It's very easy. And it actually is "due process of law."
Once in a while a case like this comes along when very reasonable people can ask, "What judge in his right mind could find clear and convincing evidence of Terri's physical state or her intention to die based on this conflicting testimony?" But absent wrong-doing, the trier of fact will receive great deference from the courts above and the courts beside.
That's the way the system works. I HOPE everyone understands that now.
And yet, one need not have years of legal training and judicial experience to suspect that something is really wrong with a system that not only allows but even DEMANDS that an innocent disabled woman be starved to death.
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