Month: July 2017

By

Dr. Richard Cordero, Esq.
Ph.D., University of Cambridge, England
M.B.A., University of Michigan Business School
D.E.A., La Sorbonne, Paris
Judicial Discipline Reform
New York City
http://www.Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org
Dr.Richard.Cordero_Esq@verizon.net,
DrRCordero@Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org

This article may be shared and posted as widely as possible non-commercially, in its entirety, without any addition, deletion, or modification, with credit to its author, Dr. Richard Cordero, Esq., and indication of this website: http://www.Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org.

NOTE ON THIS EMAIL’S FORMATTING: If in spite of all the effort to circumvent the glitch in software or interference with communications that creates “joinedwords” in Dr. Cordero’s emails(^†>ol2:426§C), this email has them or any other formatting oddity, kindly overlook them and send a note to Dr.Richard.Cordero_Esq@verizon.net,  DrRCordero@Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org.

A. The development of a judicial auditing software product

1. This is a proposal for developing a judicial auditing software product to estimate prospectively the likelihood of fairness and impartiality or rather the risk of bias and abuse of power of a judge so as to devise litigation strategy accordingly.
   

   1. The target: judges rather than the juries subject to their instructions

2. While there are many companies that advise their clients on the composition and behavior of juries, the proposed product will provide information on what steers juries in myriad overt and subtle ways to reach a desire outcome: the mind of a judge, as revealed by the record of his or her statements and comparable types of recorded conduct. Where the case is tried to the judge only, information on what influence his or her way of thinking and making decisions is all the more important.
   

   2. The auditable material: judicial statements
   

3. The auditing product will apply artificial intelligence and resulting algorithms to perform on judicial statements, e.g., decisions, transcripts, articles, recorded speeches, three types of analyses: statistical and linguistic analyses as well as a new and more sophisticated type, namely, literary analysis(*>jur:131§b).
4. Judges’ statements can be downloaded from the websites of individual courts and their judiciaries, e.g., the Federal Judiciary’s Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts website, as well as services such as PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) and commercial databases, such as Lexis Nexis’ Accurint.

The materials corresponding to the (blue text references) herein are found in my study of judges and their judiciaries, titled and downloadable thus:

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

* Volume 1: http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org/OL/DrRCordero-Honest_Jud_Advocates.pdf >all prefixes:page number up to ol:393

^† Volume 2: http://Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org/OL2/DrRCordero-Honest_Jud_Advocates.pdf >from ol2:394

NOTE: Each of these volumes is too big to be emailed. Accordingly, they take minutes to download, which requires patience. However, if by clicking on either of those links nothing downloads, then copy one link at a time, paste it in the search box of your browser, press “enter”, and wait for the volume to download.

3. The aim: to reveal patterns of thinking with predictive value

1. The product will reveal a judge’s patterns of thinking and decision-making that have predictive value for the case at hand.

6. Patterns are formed by the frequency of the audited judge’s:a. types of rulings and jury instructions in favor or against certain categories of parties and subject matters; and
   b. use of specific or kinds of words and phrases that reveal biases.
7. The value of the audited judge’s frequency is plotted against the bell curve of the normal distribution for all the judges of his or her court or judiciary. This makes it possible to calculate that judge’s deviation from the norm concerning that category and therefore, to determine whether the judge exhibits an objectionable bias that justifies recusal for reversal of his or her ruling or decision.a. The hump of the bell can be so distorted toward one end of the curve as to reveal the judges’ generalized bias in favor or against a category, e.g., the judges’ dismissal rate of cases where pro ses are parties(^†>OL2:455§§B,C).
   

   4. Categories where patterns of abnormal frequencies reveal biases

8. Among the most significant categories are:a. plaintiffs v. defendants;
   b. represented v. unrepresented parties;
   c. clients of big law firms v. of solo practitioners;
   d. wealthy v. poor parties;
   e. parties associated with judicial appointers;
   f. members of bar association leadership v. common lawyers;
   g. authorities, such as the IRS, the police, and the city council;
   h. families v. Child Protective Services or appointed elderly guardians;
   i.  borrowers v. financial institutions;
   j. employees v. their employing companies;
   k. class actions;
   l. privacy rights v. community or national security;
   m. private ownership rights and owners v. eminent domain laws and developers;
   n. susceptibility to scientific data v. emotional appeals; etc.
9. Every case falls within several categories. The auditing product determines the audited judge’s patterns of frequency within or outside the range of normality of each category as well as the frequency of his or her use of bias-revealing words and phrases. Based on all these frequencies, the product can quantify reliably and verifiably on the foundation of data one overall prospective value, to wit, the statistical probability of a given outcome of the whole or a part of the instant case assigned to that judge.
   

   5. Competitive advantage gained from using the product
   

10. An audited judge, like most of us, may not be aware of his or her biases. Data analysis performed by the auditing product may produce results pointing to bias that can shock that judge as much as they may shock the auditors and third parties informed about those results; e.g., the judge was unaware of how much more often than the average of her colleagues she disregarded the testimony of minors, especially boys.
11. A mere allegation of bias is likely only to offend, antagonize, and provoke retaliation. Would you rather build your litigation strategy and make a motion based on your impression of the judge in your case or the result of analysis of data gathered from the hundreds of his cases?
12. It follows that the knowledge about the audited judge’s patterns of thinking that reveal her biases is very valuable in the hands of a party who realizes that KNOWLEDGE IS POWER. It furnishes the party who acquires such pattern knowledge based on the broad and more representative foundation of data a competitive advantage over a party that lacks it.
13. That knowledge can prove valuable in deciding whether to sue or settle, move for recusal, disqualification, or new trial, oppose the introduction of evidence, etc.; and in devising litigation strategy concerning the calling of expert witnesses v. friends, relatives, and workmates, the introduction of scientific data and its amount v. anecdotal evidence, the letter of the law v. a sense of justice, priority given to precedent v. the requirements of an evolving society, etc.
14. Note how some of these categories are subjective as opposed to the objective category of a white or black plaintiff; a defendant of a given religious denomination; a case to protect the environment v. jobs. A mere counting of decisions for or against, which is at the root of statistical analysis, will not be helpful with respect to subjective categories. To detect whether they appear in a case and, if so, assign a value to their frequency, call for linguistic and literary analyses. Accordingly, they require sophisticated software to determine where the audited judge’s frequency concerning those categories.
    

    6. Knowledge worth paying for
    

15. If you are a party or a lawyer, would you raise a motion based on your personal or anecdotal allegation that the judge is biased or rather on the quantifiable and verifiable basis of IT analysis of his or her publicly available statements?
16. Which basis is more likely to convince a judge asked to recuse himself or an appeals panel composed of three of his or her friends and colleagues asked to disqualify him for bias and abuse of discretion?
17. Knowledge that affords a competitive advantage and a more convincing basis for requesting others to take a particular action is worth money. The product that gains that knowledge for its user will attract people to either buy it or pay to use it on a one-off basis or on subscription or for the service of a specialist who runs it on their behalf on the judge to be audited.
    

    7. Product development financing
    

18. In turn, that pool of potential purchasers creates a market opportunity. The latter can attract investors who will finance the development of the product, which can be expected to be very expensive. The development of software, not to mention such requiring the current frontiers of artificial intelligence to be pushed forward, relies on talented coders and programmers, who command high salaries.
19. Without the prospect of profit, there will be no financing and no product. Without a clear plan for product development financing, wishing for that product is only that: wishful thinking.
20. Pro ses, who cannot afford a lawyer, and who mostly have a low level of education and even less understanding of Information Technology research and development, are not the ones who will provide the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars needed to develop this product. Nor will pro ses wait perhaps years to derive a benefit from their investment, long after their cases will have been decided…did this realistic long-term prospect dampen your own enthusiasm for the development of this product?
21. This means that the request for financing must be addressed to venture capitalists who invest in high technology and have the patience necessary for it to become marketable and produce any profit.
    

    B. References for further reading because KNOWLEDGE IS POWER
    

22. See a more detailed proposal for this advanced and innovative legal IT product and its commercial application and potential at *>jur:131§b; OL:42, 60.
23. On how to audit judges without using auditing software, see *>OL:274, 284, 304.
    

    C. The more pressing objective of turning judicial wrongdoing into a key issue of the mid-term elections and national public hearings
    

24. The problem of unaccountable wrongdoing judges cannot be solved by merely replacing an allegedly lone rogue judge on a folly of his or her own with another judicial candidate of the same ilk, whom the same politicians recommend, endorse, nominate, confirm or appoint to a judgeship and thereafter hold unaccountable as another one of ‘our men and women on the bench’.
25. By analyzing the statements of the judges of a court and a judiciary, the product will provide results evidencing the nature, routineness, and gravity(*>jur:21§§1-3) of judges’ unaccountability and consequent riskless wrongdoing(*>OL:154¶3). This will show that the judiciaries themselves have become wrongdoing institutions.
26. However, effectively preventing, detecting, and punishing institutionalized judicial wrongdoing requires far-reaching judicial reform(*>jur:158§§6-8). Such reform is today unrealistic because it would require upsetting fundamentally the established power game between judges and politicians.
27. The needed judicial reform can only become indispensable and inevitable by first exposing judiciaries as safe havens for wrongdoers(*>jur:149§4) so that a national public informed thereof becomes so outraged as to turn that issue into a key one of the 2018 primaries and mid-term election campaigns and compel politicians, lest they be voted out of, or not into, office, to hold nationally televised public hearings on the issue.
28. The judicial auditing software product is not a strategy for bringing about such judicial reform. Rather, it is a valuable tool for gaining a competitive advantage in one’s own case(^†>OL2:578).
29. By contrast, the implementation of the inform and outrage strategy and attainment of its concrete, realistic, and feasible intermediate objectives are reasonably calculated means for judicial reform. Hence, it is they who should constitute the focus of attention and effort of Advocates of Honest Judiciaries.
30. Through that strategy and objectives, the Advocates can create the circumstances necessary for an informed and outraged We the People to render far-reaching, transformative judicial reform unavoidable by politicians. Only the People, as the sovereign source of political power and master of all public servants, have enough power to achieve judicial reform of that kind and degree(^†>OL2:581).
31. By joining forces to implement that strategy and attain its objectives, Advocates can become nationally recognized as a grateful People’s Champions of Justice.
    

    D. An offer to present the proposals for a judicial auditing software product and judicial reform
    

32. I offer to present for free this auditing product and judicial reform proposals either at a video conference or here in New York City.
33. If the presentation venue is outside NYC, the organizer must cover the cost of finding and using an adequate venue, promoting the event to attract an audience, and providing presentation equipment as well as paying in advance my transportation, room and board, and presentation materials, and making a commitment to covering my incidental expenses.
34. It is the organizer’s investment in the presentation that will ensure its interest in its success; otherwise, the aphorism applies: What is received for free and can be dropped at no cost is not appreciated. I do not want to travel to make a presentation only to find out that nothing has been prepared at all or appropriately and that I am left out in the open holding the bag of expenses.
35. Let the organizer rely on the quality of this article and my study of judges and their judiciaries*^† to gauge the expected quality of my presentation and my interest in ensuring that it surpasses expectations.

So I look forward to hearing from you.

Visit the website at, and subscribe to its series of articles thus: http://www.Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org > + New or Users >Add New

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