Month: November 2017

Opportunity for you to share your judicial complaint with an influential chief judge, New York State C.J. Janet DiFiore, and turn her into your and the nation’s Champion of Justice

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, CorderoRic@yahoo.com

Submit your complaint against a judge or judiciary of any state to New York State Chief Judge Janet DiFiore in support of her Excellence Initiative to correct the deficiencies in “justice services” and ask that she become the national Champion of Justice of all Advocates of Honest Judiciaries and victims of unaccountable perfunctory and wrongdoing judges.

To that end, contact her (see below) and share and post this open letter as widely as possible in its entirety, without any addition, deletion, or modification, with credit to its author, Dr. Richard Cordero, Esq., and the link to his website: http://www.Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org.

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NYS Chief Judge Janet DiFiore
NYS Court of Appeals
20 Eagle Street
Albany, NY 12207-1009

Dear Chief Judge DiFiore,

I learned about your Excellence Initiative[1] on the website[2] of the NYS Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department (AD1). It is a source of hope that a person in your position implicitly recognizes the deficiencies in “the level of justice services the people of NY have a right to expect and deserve”[1].

[1] http://www.courts.state.ny.us/excellence-initiative/

[2] http://www.courts.state.ny.us/courts/AD1/index.shtml

Historically, nobody has been held accountable for such deficiencies, for judges themselves are unaccountable. Consequently, they engage risklessly in perfunctoriness and wrongdoing. Your Initiative and request for comments imply your awareness thereof.

This is a proposal to develop your Initiative through your public denunciation of those deficiencies and thereby rally behind you all those who have been harmed by them.

Those harmed are parties to the more than 50 million new cases filed in federal and state courts annually(*>jur:85); to the scores of millions of pending cases and those deemed to have been wrongly or wrongfully decided; and the other people affected by those cases, such as the parties’ friends and family, workmates, employees, suppliers, shareholders, etc.

They are more powerful and important to you than an appointing governor, your fellow justices, and former peers: They are your potential constituency, the ones who can catapult you from being another judge into being a unique, historic figure. That is the objective of this proposal: to turn you in your own interest and for the benefit of everybody else into We the People’s national Champion of Justice.

The People will support you because of their current attitude: For thousands of years, women were good only for the kitchen, the kids, and for men to manhandle them. Not anymore. Today the attitude of women as well as men is “I will speak up against my abusers and will not be complicit with my silence”.

Likewise, throughout history, judges have been unaccountable and have abused their power over men’s and women’s property, liberty, and rights. They have generated a significantly greater pool of people with up to now pent-up resentment. Pent-up no more!

The People’s newly found confidence for denunciation and self-assertion will drive women and men to explode and shout ‘I’m fed up and won’t take judges’ abuse anymore…Metoo!’ If you muster the courage to lead them in a movement of transitional history, they will rally behind you. You will become their Champion of Justice.

* The materials corresponding to the (parenthetical blue text) references are found in my main study of judges and their judiciaries, which constitutes the basis of this proposal. The study is 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

The study contains a wide variety of topics on that subject in its more than 1,150 pages of chapter-like articles and letters of advocacy. They are the product of my professional legal research and writing.

To give my study a chance to be effective, it is available to you and the rest of the public for free because KNOWLEDG IS POWER and only a powerful public can hold judges accountable and force the reform of their judiciaries.

However, the effort and time that it takes me to research and write each letter and chapter-like article are not free to me….far from it. Such effort and time I cannot use for a gainful activity. On the contrary, trying to expose judges’ interception of emails among Advocates of Honest Judiciaries, including me, is very costly.

Hence, I encourage you to donate to the pursuit of the common interest in holding judges accountable and liable to compensate the victims of their wrongdoing. Any donation of $3 or more through the button below or my website is a positive contribution and for it I thank you in advance.


Since you too, Chief Judge DiFiore, are unaccountable, most likely you have engaged in the same conduct or condoned it. That you can turn into a point of strength: You know about it firsthand; and can redeem yourself as Saul of Tarsus did after his epiphany by becoming Paul(The Bible, Acts 9:2).

You can denounce judicial unaccountability, perfunctoriness, and wrongdoing in a historic Emile Zola’s I accuse!-like letter(jur:98§2) presented at a press conference cum State of Our Judiciary speech. There you can announce:

a. the hiring of out-of-state public relations, business administration, and Information Technology firms to:

b. conduct televised public hearings on judges’ and their equally unaccountable clerks’ perfunctoriness and wrongdoing;

c. audit(cf. *>OL:274) judges’ decisions to determine whether they meet even first year law school standards of quality; and

d. investigate judges’ contents-based interception of their critics’ communications, a First Amendment violation bound to provoke public outrage graver than that caused by Edward Snowden’s revelation of NSA’s interception of only the metadata of communications, i.e., telephone numbers, time of call, duration of call, but not the contents of the conversation(†>OL2:583§3);

e. your impending request to your fellows in the leadership of the Conference of Chief Justices and its other members to endorse your I accuse! denunciation and make their own regarding their respective judiciaries; and

f. a tour of presentations in NY and across the country to inform your audience and outrage it into demanding of every candidate in the 2018 primaries and mid-term elections to take a position on judicial perfunctoriness and wrongdoing, and call for congressional and state televised public hearings.

Your I accuse! and Initiative can attract enough public support to:

a. earn you the nomination to succeed JJ. Ginsburg or Stevens, or

b. lead a party in the 2020 presidential elections; and

c. be the first person in history to form a civic movement intent on empowering We the People as the masters who hold the most powerful officers in government by the rule of law, judges(†>OL2:541), accountable and liable to compensate the victims of their perfunctoriness and wrongdoing.

You can become here and abroad the Champion of Justice.

To present to you this proposal I respectfully ask that you invite me to meet with 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
http://www.Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org

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Overview of the proposal to
NYS Court of Appeals Chief Judge Janet DiFiore
to issue an Emile Zola’s I accuse!-like denunciation
of judicial perfunctoriness and wrongdoing
aimed at her becoming
the national Champion of Justice

Based on the study

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

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

A. The math[3] of judicial perfunctoriness reveals the judiciary as a fraud scheme

[3] See in-depth analysis of judicial statistics at *>jur:9-14; 21§§1-3; 105213; †>OL2:455§§B-G; 548

  1. As a baseline for comparison, not as a standard of justice, there is the fact that the nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court and their pool of clerks and pick out of some 7,250 filings per year only some 78 cases to be heard and decided by written decisions(†>OL2:459§E). Compare against that what the homepage of the NYS Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department (AD1), states:

Over 3,000 appeals, 6,000 motions, and 1,000 interim applications are determined each year. In addition, the Appellate Division admits roughly 3,000 new attorneys to the Bar each year, disciplines practicing lawyers, and otherwise exercises its judicial authority in Manhattan and the Bronx.2

[2] http://www.courts.state.ny.us/courts/AD1/index.shtml

  1. AD1 judges also prepare and hold meetings to administrate and make policy, induct new judges, honor retiring ones, and receive visitors; they also visit other courts. Some days they may be sick, busy with attorney registration matters, have a family emergency, attend seminars, serve on panels and moot courts, lobby attorneys and their associations to raise money and services to refurbish their courthouse, etc. Work is cut back during the summer recess months.
    .
  2. So it can reasonably be assumed arguendo that out of AD1’s 19 judges, only the equivalent to three 5-judge panels can be deemed to work on over 10,000 pleadings 250 weekdays per year after excluding 10 holidays and weather days. So each panel handles more than 3,333 pleadings a year and more than 13 a day. This includes over 1,000 appeals compared to the 78 that nine Supreme Court justices dispose of annually.
    .
  3. To handle 13+ pleadings in what is left of each 8-hour workday after deduction of the time allocated for oral arguments, panel deliberation, and research and writing decisions, an AD1 judge would have to read:
    .
    a. the briefs of 13+ appellants;
    .b. 13+ respondents, each having a maximum of 14,000 words or 70 pages4;

[4] http://www.courts.state.ny.us/courts/AD1/Practice&Procedures/rules.shtml >Rule 600.10.d.1.i

c. even as few as 10 pages of each of 13+ records on appeal –each of which runs to hundreds or even thousands of pages of depositions and trial transcripts and other evidentiary documents–;

d. their motions and answers, each having some 2,000 words or 10 pages;

e. the exhibits to each; and

f. some 10 pages of each of the 13+ decisions of the judges appealed from. No judge can read over 1,500 pages a day each of 250 days. Neither can nor will unappealable clerks.

  1. Reading is only the beginning. Determining a motion or appeal also calls on judges to:

a. identify the relevant facts and controlling issues;

b. research case precedent or statutory law;

c. consider attenuating and aggravating circumstances;

d. discuss them in light of legal principles and requirements;

e. consider what only matters to a party, that is, each element of its “Relief requested”;

f. state what most affects the court below on remand: the reversible error, why it was such, and how to remedy and avoid it;

g. what concerns the court above on appeal: the implications of the reversal for future cases; and

h. write a reasoned decision…13+ times a day!

“Too much work. Forget’a ‘bout it! Dump it by form!”

  1. That is how judges ‘determine’ motions and appeals: They have clerks gavel the clerk of court’s signature rubberstamp on dumping forms, i.e., forms with same wording whose blank is filled out by a clerk with only one operative word, mostly Denied, for a motion, or Affirmed, for an appeal5.

[5] http://www.courts.state.ny.us/courts/AD1/calendar/appsmots/AppMotIndex.shtml

  1. Thereby neither the clerks nor the judges assume responsibility for changing the status quo while avoiding the need to read the pleadings and write an opinion and decision similar in quality to the answer that law students are expected to turn in to a question on a test at the end of the first semester of law school. But judges expect their decisions not to be ‘corrected’ by anybody. As AD1 puts it:

Since, with few exceptions, appeals to the Court of Appeals, the State’s highest court, are by permission only, the Appellate Division is the court of last resort in the majority of cases.2

[2] AD1 website: http://www.courts.state.ny.us/courts/AD1/index.shtml

  1. So are terminated most motions and appeals: with one-disposition-fits-all, mass produced, reasonless fiat on a dumping form.(OL2:546¶¶4-7) All elements of the “Relief requested” are indiscriminately denied by implication. Such dumping is inherently arbitrary because it disregards the merits of the case at hand. Any individualizing element on the form is limited to the names of the parties and details that a clerk took from the “Description of Appeal and Issues” section of the Request for Appellate Division Intervention form, thus avoiding having to read the much longer Statement of Facts of each party.
    .
  2. A complaint to the judges about pro forma disposition of cases gets the complainant nowhere since the clerks did simply what they were asked to do: dump most cases and allow the judges to work on the few that they like. Perfunctoriness is part of the courts’ modus operandi. So it is in the federal appeal courts, where 93% of appeals are dumped(OL2:457§D).

    3. .

 

  1. No wonder that judges come to ‘their’ courtrooms without having read motion pleadings despite their due process duty to afford the parties an ‘opportunity to be heard’ through their written statements. They do not ask of themselves the question “Are the parties ready?” Though ignorant of the facts and issues, they make on-the-spot, off-the-cuff decisions, indifferent to how they will affect the property, liberty, and rights and duties that frame the parties’ lives. After all, a reversal has no impact on their tenure, career, or salary. Judges’ conduct is riskless, for they are unaccountable.

1. Judges’ mutually assured survival results in extortionate complicity

  1. Most appellate judges come from the ranks of trial judges. They are not going to turn against their former peers to criticize them for the same perfunctory work that they rendered while sitting with them in the courts below. Worse yet, they may be judges because of their affiliation to the same political party that put them on the same electoral slate or that supported their appointment to the bench.
    .
  2. In the same vein, they are not going to discipline, certainly not in public, a judge that belongs to the same party. Nor will they discipline a judge that belongs to another party, for an explicit or implicit reciprocal conniving agreement governs their relation: ‘If you don’t discipline the judges of my party, I won’t discipline yours’.
    .
  3. Similarly, the judges of last resort will not hold the judges below accountable for their perfunctoriness, much less their wrongdoing. They are liable as principals or as accessories that have covered up for them(jur:88§§a-c), thus compounding their own wrongdoing.
    .
  4. In their ears rings the threatening shout: ‘If you bring me down, I’ll take you with me!’ Their conduct is not guided by ethical principles or commitment to the integrity of judicial process(jur:68 123a). It is determined by the self-interest underlying mutually assured survival: ‘Today I protect you so that tomorrow you and your friends protect me. Why should we reduce our benefits by mending our ways or denouncing our perfunctoriness and wrongdoing?’ We risk no adverse consequence of our conduct. The consequences are born only by litigants and the rest of the public. That’s their problem.’
    .
  5. This explains why in the last 228 years since the creation of the Federal Judiciary in 1789, the number of federal judges impeached and removed is 8!(jur:21§1) Yet, on September 30, 2015, the number of judicial officers on the federal bench was 2,293(jur:2213). Federal judges are not only unaccountable and their appointment is not only for life “during good Behaviour”; in practice they are also irremovable despite ‘bad Behaviour’(id.).
    .
  6. Although state judges only serve for a term of years, during their terms they similarly can do whatever they want, to whatever standard of quality they want, and can fail to do whatever they do not want to do. What adverse consequence imposed by whom could deter them from being perfunctory or doing wrong?
    .
  7. Federal and state judgeships amount to having a license to be where no person ought to be: They are Judges Above the Law. Their judiciaries have become the safe havens for perfunctory performers and wrongdoers. Mere litigants, all at their mercy, cannot bring them down to where they can be held accountable and liable to their victims.

2. A fraud scheme run by judges in their own interest

  1. So, judges have no scruples about going through the motions of judicial process without revealing to filers that their $45 motion filing fee and their $315 appeal filing fee will get the substantial majority of them nothing but a perfunctory dumping form.
    .
  2. For the payment of consideration in the form of such fees, filers enter with judges into a contract for “justice services” that the judges know will in most cases not be delivered. They not only fail to administer justice according to the rule of law, but also engage in false advertisement and the concealment of a pre-programmed breach of contract. They run in self-benefit a judicial system that is in effect only a fraud scheme.
    .
  3. Judges deserve this criticism because they have failed their duty, imposed by themselves in their own Code of Conduct for Judges, to ‘avoid even the appearance of impropriety’(jur:68123b, 4471).
    .
  4. Even if judges are overworked, they have dealt with that problem wrongfully, as the math of their operation reveals: Judicial process is mostly only for show because judges have neither the time, nor the need, nor the will to do the work required to assure due process and the equal protection of the law to the majority whose cases are dumped by form and the few who get fair and impartial process leading to a decision that judges expect to be scrutinized by the media and law journals, and that they strive to make meritorious of inclusion in a law school casebook and of their being considered for a higher court.
    .
  5. It has been judges’ duty of integrity(*>jur:68123a) to inform the public thereof so that people could decide whether they wanted to gamble their effort, money, time, and hopes on the off chance that they might receive the offered dispute resolution services if they went to court to sue or defend.
    .
  6. Since judicial process is pro forma, judges should have:
    .
    a. suspended the fraudulent collection of fees;
    .
    b. encouraged the parties to choose an alternative dispute resolution means;
    .c. demand from politicians more funds to run a judiciary capable of delivering the offered “justice services”; and

    d. accept an external control system that holds them accountable for their delivery, thus recognizing that self-discipline is anathema to human nature: Nobody can be an unbiased judge in his own cause(OL2:548).

3. Judges’ and politicians’ mutually beneficial conniving relation

  1. Instead, judges have in self-interest run their fraud scheme on the public knowingly and thus intentionally: They have abstained from demanding, not higher salaries(jur:2730), but rather more funds to fix the system. They have thus spared the politicians who recommended, endorsed, nominated, confirmed or appointed them.
    .
  2. In turn, politicians have abstained from withdrawing judges’ self-discipline authority and subjecting them to an outside system of accountability empowered to hold them accountable and liable to compensate the victims of their perfunctory and wrongful conduct.(jur:158§§6-8)
    .
  3. However, politicians know from their status as legislators that unaccountability breeds wrongdoing. In fact, the rationale for exercising legislative power is that everything is permitted in a world without laws. That is the world of the jungle, ruled by the strongest and most violent and his gang. A legislature exists to curb lawless freedom, establish standards of acceptable restricted conduct, and hold people accountable for abiding by them. A toothless law is one that lacks any enforcement mechanism, means of breach detection, and punishment for breaching it.
    .
  4. When politicians hold judges unaccountable, they accept that the known consequences will follow: riskless perfunctoriness and wrongdoing, including judges’ risklessly padding their salaries by abusing their power and access to valuable information filed confidentially under seal or given them ex parte as a bribe. Unaccountability is the hallmark of ‘absolute power, which corrupts absolutely’(jur:2728, 32, 4260).
    .
  5. Politicians have condoned judges’ conduct to avoid their retaliation. It includes holding their legislative agenda and signature pieces of legislation unconstitutional, thus preventing politicians from delivering on their campaign promises and running on their achievements: P. Trump dare criticize federal judges and they suspended nationwide his Muslim travel ban(OL2:568§C).
    .
  6. So has arisen between judges and politicians mutually beneficial connivance. When they misleadingly assert that if put in office they will work in the public interest although they intend to work for their benefit, the detriment to the public notwithstanding, they operate a joint fraud scheme on the public.

B. I accuse! with a ‘Metoo’ denunciation that makes you a Champion of Justice

  1. Only We the People, the source of all political power in a democracy, can assert our status as the masters of all our public servants, including judges, and hold them accountable and liable.
    .
  2. Honest judges as well as principled and ambitious journalists can set in motion the process of such assertion. That is facilitated by today’s generalized attitude that has prompted many women and even men to join the “Metoo” voices against sexual abuse: “Enough is enough and I won’t take it anymore!”
    .
  3. That attitude is buttressed by the civic courage underlying Sen. Jeff Flake’s statement, “I will not be complicit or silent” about P. Trump’s conduct.
    .
  4. Judges too must speak up about their conduct. They can follow the historic example of Emile Zola and his open letter I accuse!, published in 1898(jur:98§2), which launched profound change in public exposure and accountability.
    .
  5. You, Chief Judge DiFiore, are an insider and as such in the know. You have recognized that judicial deficiencies warrant your Excellence Initiative1. You are the top judge of one of the most influential state courts; and a member of the leadership of the Conference of Chief Justices, whom you can persuade to emulate you regarding their own state judiciaries so as to give resonance to…

[1] http://www.courts.state.ny.us/excellence-initiative/

  1. Your I accuse! can allow you to:
    .
    a. denounce the unaccountability and consequent riskless perfunctoriness and wrongdoing of the most powerful public servants in government by the rule of law, judges;
    .
    b. thus cause the undertaking of what must precede any talk of reform: the full exposure of their conduct’s nature, extent, and gravity, and their connivance with politicians;
    .c. set off a flood of motions to recuse, disqualify, vacate, etc., that will give your I accuse! and Initiative the widest practical effect and publicity;

    d. inform the national public and outrage it(OL2:604) into forcing all candidates in the 2018 primaries and mid-term elections to put that issue at the center of their platform, rallies, and townhall meetings;

    e. launch a generalized media investigation akin to those into Watergate, Russia’s tampering with U.S. elections, and Harvey Weinstein-like wrongdoers;

    f. lead the public to compel politicians to hold congressional and state televised hearings on the issue;

    g. so outrage the public at judges-politicians’ fraud scheme as to generate enough public pressure to force Congress to do what it has avoided doing because it presents an existential threat to its members’ position of power and privilege in the national Establishment: convene the constitutional convention that since April 2014, 34 states have called for, thereby meeting the requirement of Article V of the Constitution(jur:2212b); and

    h. therein lead to a new We the People-government relation.

  2. Thus you, Chief Judge DiFiore, can become the leader of the first civic movement(jur:164§9) in history that further develops democracy by enabling the People to assure the transparent and accountable exercise of power by judges and all other public servants. That can earn you recognition nationwide and abroad as the People’s Champion of Justice.
    .
  3. Hence, I respectfully request that you invite me to your office to discuss this proposal.
    .
  4. You, the Reader, can join this historic movement by sharing your complaint against any federal or state judiciary with C.J. DiFiore by email1 and/or mail to her Court address (see above), and encouraging her to issue her I accuse! denunciation and become our Champion of Justice.


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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
http://www.Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org

Dr.Richard.Cordero_Esq@verizon.net, DrRCordero@Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org, Dr.Richard.Cordero.Esq@cantab.net, RicCordero@verizon.net, Corderoric@yahoo.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-richard-cordero-esq-0508ba4b

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 addresses 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.