Federal Judge to Supreme Court: "STFU". Really?????

Federal Judge to Supreme Court: "STFU".  Really?????


It's a story that only a rule of law nerd would catch and pay attention to.  A sitting U.S. federal judge, angry about recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions regarding Obama Care and the requirement for corporations to provide coverage for, shall we say, "controversial" women's contraceptive services, blogs that the Supreme Court is causing more harm than good and needs to, in this judge's words, "just stfu." 


The underlying cases and controversies aren't what caught my attention.  (You can read the story at http://cnn.it/1ojSYz7)  What troubled me is that like it or not, the United States Supreme Court represents the highest judicial decision-making body in the land, and this lower court judge's public and juvenile reaction is the kind of thing that casts doubt on the legitimacy of one of our three branches of government on which we depend for rule of law in this country. 


The fact is that courts often get decisions wrong.  I spent nine years as a trial lawyer in federal court with a 90% win-loss rate, which is darn good.  But I still spent an uncomfortable amount of time trying to explain to my clients why a seemingly rational judge could irrationally gut my client's legally meritorious case.  Judges have opinions, agendas, and emotions; laws are often ambiguous, contradictory, or so poorly written that no one quite knows what they mean.  Sometimes, the evidence in a case just doesn't come out the way you think it should.  It's an iterative, incredibly imperfect process (Japanese internment, anyone?) but it is a process that reflects the U.S. Constitutional, legal, and political structure.  Disrespect it and you throw the legitimacy of the entire government into question. 


In the end, the only thing that really makes a justice system work is if the people who participate in it -- lawmakers, judges, lawyers, law enforcement officials, and litigants -- believe that it is legitimate and worth resorting to.  Otherwise, you have Somalia, or Syria, or Russia -- places where there is little confidence that anyone in the government is willing or able to do the right thing.  The legitimacy of the judicial system is more important than the legitimacy of an individual decision, because it's the system that enables enforceability.    


This federal judge, the stfu guy, knows that very well.  His own canon of judicial ethics mandates that he keep his opinions to himself in order to protect the legitimacy of the higher courts' decisions, which he will now be bound to apply.  For whatever reason, however, he's decided that he is now above the rules.   It's wrong and it's dangerous, and frankly, this particular judge needs to stfu.

Empathy and the Power of Conflict to Make Us Forget

I was traveling during the last four weeks, and it seems as though the world went to hell in a hand-basket while I was away.  Ukraine is getting more complicated, not less; the level of violence in Syria has reached a point where it's not even shocking us anymore; Kenya is spiraling into a level of instability and no one is seriously talking about it; Sudan doesn't even make the news, nor does anything else in Sub-Saharan Africa it seems; and now Iraq has imploded.  And of course, we've totally given up on the kidnapped Nigerian girls. (#bringbackourgirls was nice while it lasted.)  There are so many things I could say about each/all of these, and probably will at some point, but all I can think of today is this:

In each and every conflict, real people are involved.  They bleed.  They mourn.  They fear.  They pray.  They hope.  They suffer.  They die.  They see their lives explode in front of them, but can do nothing about it.  They worry over their children, and panic over their safety and their future.  They see everything they've ever dreamed of, worked for, or believed in go up in smoke.  They find themselves fighting disease, hunger, thirst, destitution, loss, chaos and despair -- all at the same time. 

Because the fact is that most people involved in a conflict are not really involved in the conflict.  They're just there.

Funny thing is, however, the bigger the conflict, the less we think about the human cost.  All this week, I've been following the news from Iraq, and then it hit me.  What is the one thing no one is talking about?  That's easy -- it's the impact this crisis is having on the hundreds of thousands of ordinary Iraqis who were, before now, just trying to live out their lives with some semblance of normalcy.  So just for a few minutes, let's take the time to empathize with them.  And then let's not forget.