Month: November 2015

A. Who we are and what we stand for

1. We are a group of advocates of honest judiciaries committed to the single issue of exposing judges’ wrongdoing and bringing about judicial reform.
2. We welcome to the group all people committed to our single issue and who are prudent and disciplined enough to keep all their other personal and public issues and agendas to themselves.
3. We are non-denominational and non-confessional. We do not involve either any god or religion in this effort.
4. We are apolitical. We neither campaign in favor or against any party or candidate.
5. We are neither indifferent to, nor ignorant of, the key role that politicians play in allowing judges to engage in wrongdoing with impunity and the key role that politicians must be maneuvered into playing to expose wrongdoing judges and bring about judicial reform.

B.  The circumstances enabling judges’ wrongdoing

6. We recognize that Republicans and Democrats alike have connivingly recommended, endorsed, nominated, confirmed, appointed, campaigned for, and donated to, candidates to judgeships. Thereafter, they have protected judges as “their men and women on the bench”.
7. Politicians have disregarded for decades the annual report under 28 U.S.C. §604(h)(2) that shows how federal judges exonerate themselves from any accountability by systematically dismissing 99.82%* of complaints against them.

* http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org/OL/DrRCordero-Honest_Jud_Advocates.pdf >jur:10-14

or http://1drv.ms/1IkvhB8 >jur:10-14

or http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org/jur/DrRCordero_jud_unaccountability_reporting.pdf >jur:10-14

 

8. Politicians have also provided judges with wrongdoing-breeding and –concealing secrecy by authorizing them to hold all their adjudicative, administrative, policy-making, and disciplinary meetings behind closed doors.
9. These are the enabling circumstances of judges’ wrongdoing: unaccountability, secrecy, coordination, and risklessness. They are the focus of our exposure of judges’ wrongdoing.
10. Legislative efforts to bring about judicial reform are doomed to failure because politicians will not voluntarily act against their own interest by exposing the wrongdoing of those whom they put on the bench. Nor will they divest themselves of the power to keep putting their own men and women on the bench.
11. Politicians will only reluctantly expose judges’ wrongdoing if forced to choose between appearing to come to the defense of a public outraged at judges’ wrongdoing and being voted out of, or not into, office.

C. The need to inform and outrage the national public

12. Only an outraged public can force politicians to expose judges’ wrongdoing and undertake judicial reform.
13. The public of New York or Florida are not interested in the wrongdoing of the judges of California or Alaska, and vice versa; this holds true for the public of each state with respect to the other states’ judicial wrongdoing.
14. The national public can only be outraged at the wrongdoing of the judges of the only national jurisdiction, the Federal Judiciary. That jurisdiction is our initial target. Since it is the model for its state counterparts, what happens to it will have a decisive impact on the state judiciaries.

D. The need for advocates with professional skills and attitude

15. Federal judges are the most power public officers in our country since they are the only ones with a life-appointment and power over people’s property, liberty, and all the rights and duties that determine people’s lives.
16. Exposing the wrongdoing of powerful federal judges requires that we have professional skills in crafting arguments, devising and implementing strategy, advocating our single issue in public, lobbying, and fundraising.
17. We need professional skills and attitude to cause the public to take us seriously, join our effort, and make the donations that we need to pay for ads, travel, meetings, etc. Our professionalism will earn us the respect of the public at large and the powerful allies that we need.
18. Neither judges nor the public will take us seriously, much less give us money or volunteer work, if we appear as mere “disgruntled losers in court”; given to whining; using unprofessional, foul language; making claims and accusations that we cannot prove but that can get us tied up in ruinous and time-consuming retaliatory defamation suits; espousing conspiracy theories that will brand us as a bunch of freaks. Unprofessionalism will lose us the respect of the public at large and the powerful allies that we need.

E. The need for prudence and discipline focused on the single issue

19. Being a victim of judicial wrongdoing does not mean that one automatically has the skills or the attitude necessary to expose the wrongdoing of judges, never mind federal judges. .
20. Being a participant in this group does not turn one’s story of judicial victimization into a factual, accurate, and complete presentation of a case, deserving of the uncritical acceptance by all the other participants, for a party to a case is by definition biased toward his or her story and can only present one side of the story.
21. A competition among us for the title of victim of the most egregious case of judicial wrongdoing is divisive of the group and useless to advance our common issue.
22. We do not discuss our personal, local cases, for they are similar to thousands or even scores of thousands of other state and out-of-state cases and hold no interest but to the person who is a party to it each respectively.

F. More than money, we need powerful allies

23. Money is not indispensable initially to expose judges’ wrongdoing. The Tea Party did not form thanks to receiving grants from any government or private entity. It was organized precisely by people who did not want to give out any more of their money to either the government or anybody else. More important than receiving money is gaining powerful allies and rallying the power of victims of wrongdoing judges.

1. Journalists and politicians as potential powerful allies

24. The most powerful potential allies are journalists and politicians even if they are interested only in their own professional and political advancement and have no interest whatsoever in honest judiciaries. We think and act strategically by applying the principles “he who benefits me by working for himself is my friend” and “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”.
25. Journalists are indispensable because they control the means of disseminating our information about judges’ wrongdoing and have enough credibility for their information to be believed and outrage the national public.
26. Politicians are very important because they can use our information to attack their opponents and thereby attract journalistic coverage for our single issue. Presidential candidates are the politicians who can best satisfy both conditions.
27. The expectation of drawing support from the huge untapped voting bloc of the people dissatisfied with the judicial and legal systems can induce politicians to consider making of judicial wrongdoing exposure and reform a central issue of their campaign and thereby appear as national Champions of Justice.
28. How to approach presidential candidates by networking with people that can put us in touch with officers of their campaigns, especially with their chiefs of staff, so that we can make a presentation of how they can benefit from tapping that huge voting bloc is described in the article at * >ol:311.
29. Politicians can also score points against their opponents by revealing two unique national cases of wrongdoing judges in connivance with other officers at the top of government. That can induce them to denounce judges’ wrongdoing at a press conference or in an interview with a national media outlet and thereby launch a Watergate-like generalized media investigation of the nature, extent, and gravity of judges’ wrongdoing.
30. The content of those two unique national cases and the plan for investigating them is described at * >ol:191§§A,B, E.

2. The power of victims of wrongdoing judges can be developed methodically

31. Each advocate can organize victims of wrongdoing judges at the local, court level and continue developing a core of victims through the courts in his or her city, in adjacent cites, and throughout the state. Eventually they can join into a national movement for judicial accountability and reform.
32. Each advocate can identify other victims of the same wrongdoing judge; bring them together to search for that judge’s patterns of wrongdoing; and on the strength of statistically significant pattern-based evidence affecting many people, rather than a personal, subjective, partiality-suspect anecdotic story, move to recuse or disqualify a judge, or persuade journalists that there is a story of judicial wrongdoing worth investigating because it can give journalists what all those who are ambitious want: a career-advancing scoop on widespread wrongdoing coordinated among judges and between them and other insiders.
33. The method for identifying other victims of the same wrongdoing judge and searching for patterns of wrongdoing has been set forth in the article at * >ol:274.

G. The strategy: to inform and outrage the public and place our issue at the center of the presidential campaign

34. The national televised hearings and the investigations conducted by journalists and presidential candidates into the nature, extent, and gravity of wrongdoing should expose judges’ wrongdoing as their and their Judiciary’s institutionalized modus operandi.
35. The institutional pervasiveness of wrongdoing in the judiciary and the circumstances enabling wrongdoing between conniving politicians and judges will cause the national public to realize the far-reaching reform necessary to detect, punish, and deter it, and scare politicians away from opposing reform and induce them to opportunistically support it.
36. Only after full exposure of wrongdoing will it make sense for us to advocate in earnest our proposals for reform.
37. Our initial strategy has two steps and for taking them we need journalists and politicians:

a. to inform the national public about judges’ wrongdoing; and

b. to outrage the national public to the point where it forces politicians to take a stand in favor of judicial wrongdoing exposure and reform or risk being voted out of, or not into, office.

38. The strategy’s intermediate objective is to turn our single issue into a decisive one of the primaries, the nominating convention, and the presidential campaign and election; and cause politicians to call for nationally televised hearings on judicial wrongdoing and reform similar to those held by the 9/11 Commission and the Senate Watergate Committee.
39. The strategy’s long term objective is judicial reform that includes such measures as the establishment of citizen boards of judicial accountability empowered to publicly receive and investigate judicial complaints, and hold judges and their judiciaries liable to compensate the victims of their wrongdoing; and if the constitutional convention petitioned by 34 states is held, a key role in drafting the article on the judiciary.

H. The expected outcome of the video conference

40. We want to hold:

a business conference on the single issue of judicial wrongdoing exposure and reform advocacy;

b. among people with skills and professional attitude;
c. on a concrete proposal studied by all, consisting of this white paper of common principles and the articles enlarging upon them at ol:190, 274, and 311; and

d. discussed constructively with the aim of agreeing on realistic action that recognizes that time is of the essence: We must not miss the special opportunity that the presidential campaign offers to advance our single issue.

41. The objective of the conference is to start the process of identifying a nucleus of people who can work together harmoniously and cost-effectively as the steering committee of a group dedicated to advancing our single issue with a view to developing a Tea Party-like national movement for judicial accountability and reform.
42. If thanks to our recognition of the imperative need to join forces and our self-discipline to work prudently and in the common interest we succeed, we all can become We the People’s Champions of Justice.
43. In that spirit, I invite you to a video conference to be held on Sunday, December 13, at 1:00 p.m. EST on Skype. My Skype name is DrRCorderoEsq.
44. Skype has a limited capacity to provide an interactive video feed. Therefore, to assess the technical requirements of the conference, it is necessary that those who want to connect to the conference as well-prepared advocates to discuss the white paper(next) and its supporting articles(* >ol:190, 274, 311) or as attendees to listen to the discussion let me know.

I look forward to hearing from you.

 

Dare trigger history(* >jur:7§5)…and you may enter it.

* http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org/OL/DrRCordero-Honest_Jud_Advocates.pdf

 

Sincerely,

Dr. Richard Cordero, Esq.
Judicial Discipline Reform
New York City

Dr.Richard.Cordero_Esq@verizon.net, CorderoRic@yahoo.com, Dr.Richard.Cordero.Esq@cantab.net, Dr.Richard.Cordero.Esq@outlook.com

www.linkedin.com/pub/dr-richard-cordero-esq/4b/8ba/50/

NOTE: Given the interference with Dr. Cordero’s email and e-cloud storage accounts described at * >ggl:1 et seq., when emailing him, copy the above bloc of his email accounts and paste it in the To: line of your email so as to enhance the chances of your email reaching him at least at one of those addresses.

* http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org/OL/DrRCordero-Honest_Jud_Advocates.pdf

Continue reading White paper on common principles for the video conference of Advocates of Honest Judiciaries

A. The stages of dealing with a problem such as judges’ wrongdoing

1. In dealing with a problem, there are several stages. In principle, they can be identified as follows:
   a. recognizing a situation as a problem;

b. examining the problem to understand its nature, extent, and gravity;

c. devising a strategy to solve the problem (a proposed solution without a strategy is only wishful thinking);

d. implementing the strategy while ascertaining its effect to modify it as needed to solve the problem;

e. managing the situation resulting from a problem-solving strategy so as to maximize its benefit, prevent the recurrence of the problem, and forestall the emergence of new ones.

B. Judges’ wrongdoing analyzed in a study based on official statistics

2. As far as judicial wrongdoing goes, we have empirical knowledge of the nature, extent, and gravity of the problem. Many of us have experienced it first-hand. Some of us have paid a very high price for trying to expose it. All of us are victims of wrongdoing judges.
3. In addition, there is scholarly knowledge of the problem. It has been analyzed in my study of the judiciary and its judges, titled and downloadable as follows:

Exposing Judges’ Unaccountability and
Consequent Riskless Wrongdoing:
Pioneering the news and publishing field of
judicial unaccountability reporting*

* http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org/OL/DrRCordero-Honest_Jud_Advocates.pdf

or http://1drv.ms/1IkvhB8

or http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org/jur/DrRCordero_jud_unaccountability_reporting.pdf

If these links do not download the file in Internet Explorer, download either of the following browsers, install it, copy the first link above into the browser’s search box, and hit ‘Enter’. If the file, which has over 780 pages and is more than 52 MB in size, does not download, try using the other links:

Google Chrome: https://www.google.com/chrome/
or
Mozilla-Firefox: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/firefox/download-and-install.

4. I gathered official statistics from the judiciaries themselves and analyzed them. While you are unlikely to read the hundreds of pages of my study, you can read its executive summary at page ol:190.
5. Upon the basis of such factual and self-incriminating foundation, the problem of judge’s wrongdoing can be traced back to four enabling circumstances: unaccountability, secrecy, coordination (among judges and between them and politicians as well as other insiders of the judicial and legal systems, including attorneys), and risklessness.
   
   C. At the stage of finding a solution through the process of strategizing
   
6. We are past the first two stages of identifying and examining the problem. More cases involving, or articles about, judge’s wrongdoing will only amount to cumulative evidence with no additional probative value.
7. We are at the third stage: Devising a solution and strategizing its implementation.
8. Many solutions have been proposed. However, a solution that does not come with a strategy to implement it is only an address in Fairy Land without directions for getting there. Laying down those directions must take into account the obstacles along the path.
9. “The devil is in the detail” applies here: Strategizing can show whether a solution is realistically attainable taking account of the interests and means against and in favor of any change in the current situation.
10. I have proposed two solutions accompanied with the details of their implementing strategy. They are mentioned below and laid out in detail at * >ol:274 and 311.
    
    D. A business-like conference based on a white paper on common principles
    
11. Those proposed solutions can be discussed at a video conference of advocates of honest judiciaries who are willing and ready to transition from talking about the problem to taking concrete, realistic, and feasible action to solve it.
12. This video conference should be conducted business-like. In the professional world, meetings are held based on a white paper distributed in advanced, studied individually with due diligence, and orderly discussed in the group to achieve consensus for joint action that encompasses agreement on division of labor.
13. A meeting that has no concrete proposal as the basis of discussion is doomed to degenerate into a free-for-all, brainstorming session for dishing out half-baked ideas and jockeying for position. It leads to a frustrating waste of time, hurt feelings, and no action. Such fiasco would be the kind of meeting that only wrongdoing judges would applaud.
14. Advocates that make the effort and spend the time preparing for a business-like meeting give each other the first sign that they are serious about taking action and are reliable in their statements of the action that they commit themselves to undertaking.
15. For advocates to take joint action and for it to be effective, they must hold in common some principles that express their unity-building understanding of the problem, of a concrete, realistic solution, and of a feasible strategy to journey together from the former to the latter. The white paper below proposes those common principles.
    
    E. A conference aiming to build a movement for judicial accountability
16. We can prepare ourselves both intellectually and emotionally so well that we come to the conference determined to contribute our most to make it a success:

An inspiring, forward-looking meeting that elicits the best in each other so that we are willing to work hard jointly to turn it into the first of a series that leads to the building of a steering committee of a national movement for judicial accountability and reform. This is a realistic ambition whose precedent and model is the Tea Party. We can join forces and help each other become nationally recognized Champions of Justice.

17. In that spirit, I invite you to a video conference to be held on Sunday, December 13, at 1:00 p.m. EST on Skype. My Skype name is DrRCorderoEsq.
18. Skype has a limited capacity to provide an interactive video feed. Therefore, to assess the technical requirements of the conference, it is necessary that those who want to connect to the conference as well-prepared advocates to discuss the white paper(next) and its supporting articles(* >ol:190, 274, 311) or as attendees to listen to the discussion let me know.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Dare trigger history(* >jur:7§5)…and you may enter it.

* http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org/OL/DrRCordero-Honest_Jud_Advocates.pdf

Sincerely,

Dr. Richard Cordero, Esq.
Judicial Discipline Reform
New York City

Dr.Richard.Cordero_Esq@verizon.net, CorderoRic@yahoo.com, Dr.Richard.Cordero.Esq@cantab.net, Dr.Richard.Cordero.Esq@outlook.com

Continue reading Principles for Advocates of Honest Judiciaries to hold a video conference on becoming an effective group that exposes judges’ wrongdoing and advocates judicial reform and gives rise to a national movement for judicial accountability and reform

Messrs. Daniel Lewis, CEO; Nik Reed, CEE;
Adam Pingel, VP of Engineering; and Cory Bray, Director of Sales
Ravel Law
San Francisco, CA

Dear Ravel Law Management Team,

I read with great interest the article “Harvard Law Library Readies Trove of Decisions for Digital Age”[1] and reviewed your website[2], which was referred to therein. The article quotes you as saying that you hope to make analytical tools available that will allow “a lawyer to see how a particular judge has responded to certain kinds of motions in the past” and that you and Harvard will “share the entire underlying database with scholars that wish to develop specialized applications”. It also states that the rationale of your partner, Harvard Law School Dean Martha Winow, for opening HLL’s trove to the public is that “Improving access to justice is a priority”.

I am a scholar and my study of judges and their judiciaries is titled:

Exposing Judges’ Unaccountability and
Consequent Riskless Wrongdoing:
Pioneering the news and publishing field of
judicial unaccountability reporting[3].

If the official statistics collected and analyzed there(id. jur:65§§1-3) give you probable cause to believe that regardless of whether lawyers or pro ses^[4] access judicial decisions for free or for a fee judges do not read their briefs,

1. will you continue to be “passionate about delivering ground-breaking new products to the industry”, thus offering a product not fit to attain the intended purpose of enhancing ‘access to justice’ through better researched briefs; or
2. will you use your product in a different way reasonably calculated first to expose judges’ pervasive failure to read briefs and then to lead to profound judicial reform that ensures that access to a law database is added to several new steps(jur:158§§6-8) toward enhancing the chances of ‘accessing justice’?

This alternative confronts you with the choice between being a salesman of an ineffective product and a national Champion of Justice.

Indeed, the federal circuit courts –the model for their state counterparts– dispose of circa 75% of all appeals by reasonless summary orders^66a and up to 16% more by decisions so “perfunctory”⁶⁸ that the judges themselves mark them “not for publication” and “not precedential”⁷⁰, thus turning them into arbitrary, secret, and ad hoc fiats of raw judicial power.

They risklessly issue such decisions because their chief circuit^22a judges dismiss 99.82%(jur:10-14) of complaints^18a against them; with other judges they deny up to 100% of appeals to review such dismissals(24§b). So in the 226 years since the creation of the Federal Judiciary in 1789, the number of its judges –2,217 were on the bench on 30sep13¹³– impeached and removed is 8¹⁴!

If judges strained to read every brief and write excellent decisions in every case, they would not be rewarded with a salary increase or promoted by their chief judges, for those decisions are made by politicians and on other grounds.

Having no deterrence from deciding cases without reading their briefs or incentive to read them, judges skip briefs to work less and make decisions to grab material, professional, and social benefits(ol:173¶93).

If you held your job for life with a salary that could not be diminished¹² and power over people’s property, liberty, and the rights and duties that determine their lives, would you too abuse it for your own and your peers’ gain?

I wish to develop judicial decisions auditing. I have worked out several proposals in detail, from:

1. collecting even the unpublished 9 out of 10 decisions and using their analysis in litigation(ol:274); to
2. conducting academic research on them(ol:60, 115);
3. subjecting them to advanced statistical, linguistic, and literary analysis to develop a high end commercial IT product(ol:42; jur:131§b); and on to
4. showing the need(jur:5§3) for judicial reform in the People’s interest in ‘government, not of men and women, but by the rule of law'(ol:201§§J-K).

I can make a presentation thereon at a video conference or in person. So I look forward to hearing from you.

Dare trigger history!(jur:7§5)…and you may enter it.

Sincerely,

Dr. Richard Cordero, Esq.
Judicial Discipline Reform
New York City

Dr.Richard.Cordero_Esq@verizon.net, CorderoRic@yahoo.com, Dr.Richard.Cordero.Esq@cantab.net, Dr.Richard.Cordero.Esq@outlook.com

__________________________________

[1] http://refreshingnews99.blogspot.in/2015/10/harvard-law-library-readies-trove-of.html 

[2] https://www.ravellaw.com/

[3] http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org/OL/DrRCordero-Honest_Jud_Advocates.pdf

or http://1drv.ms/1IkvhB8

or http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org/jur/DrRCordero_jud_unaccountability_reporting.pdf

If these links do not download the file in Internet Explorer, download either of the following browsers, install it, copy the first link above into the browser search box, and hit ‘Enter’. If the file, which has over 760 pages and is more than 50MB in size, does not download, try using the other links:

Google Chrome: https://www.google.com/chrome/
or
Mozilla-Firefox: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/products/firefox/download-and-install.

This letter with all its ^footnote and (parenthetical) references as active links to their supporting or additional materials is found in the study at page ol:327. Just click on any such reference to jump to its corresponding material.

[4] In the Federal Judiciary, 52% of all appellants are pro ses; see footnotes ^{35, 38, 64} in the study. That percentage has been trending upward for years and is likely to find a parallel in the percentage of parties that appear pro se at all levels of the federal and state judiciaries because counseled representation has continuously become less affordable.

Moreover, it is highly more realistic to expect the users of your database to be pro ses rather than lawyers because the latter were trained at law school to use Westlaw and LexisNexis and realize the significant advantage of conducting research and writing with the guidance of their editorial enhancements, such as key numbers, headnotes, digests, synopses, encyclopedic overviews, analytical commentaries on points of law, etc. Lawyers can access those commercial databases, not only by a law firm or solo practitioner subscription, but also through their law schools and, on a reciprocity basis between schools, at other schools; court and public libraries; bar associations; etc.

However, at issue here is not which law database is more helpful, but rather whether the use of any database helps lawyers and pro ses in any way whatsoever to ‘force’ judges to read the briefs filed with them and make their decisions based on the statements of facts and legal arguments contained therein.