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Justice is the endα of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been, and ever will be, pursued, until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. …β If men were angels, no government would be necessary.γ

— Federalist №51 ⌥ (1788)δ

α･ ⁠Raison d’être; ultimate justification for existence; teleological purpose/goal.

β･ ⁠We have transposed the order of the two clauses in this excerpt (and added emphasis), for euphony/​limpidity, committing no disturbance/​disservice to the meaning/​intent.

γ･ This is the most famous pithy passage of the Federalist Papers, encapsulating the very raison d’être of Constitutional government itself — delineating/enumerating the powers/authority the government is authorized/endowed with, but also limiting what it is permitted to do.

δ･ ⁠№51 is the fourth-most-cited Federalist paper ⌥; the contemporary consensus is that it was authored by James Madison alone (not by, nor in collaboration with, Alexander Hamilton). https://​en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Federalist_No._51.

The Government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men.ε It will certainly cease to deserve this high appellation if the laws furnish no remedy for the violation of a vested legal right.

— Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 163 (Marshall, C.J., 1803) ⌥ ⌥ ⌥

ε･ John Adams, Massachusetts Constitution (the world’s oldest functioning written Constitution), Part the First, Article XXX (1780), model for the United States Constitution (written in 1787, became effective in 1789) ⌥.

Welcome

This nonpolitical/nonpartisan/nonideological website, Judicial Misconduct USA (http://JudicialMisconduct.US), is concerned with judicial misbehavior in America — but, importantly, only in the strict sense of real/objective/demonstrable misconduct, or colloquially, “fraud upon the courts (FUTC) by judges” (involving persuasive/convincing Case Studies, whether or not “‘officially’ approved/ratified [perhaps falsely] by court or judicial branch”).

Many other websites are devoted to court proceedings which are “vaguely perceived” by their participants to involve “judicial misbehavior” in some weak degree. But those are typically emotionally-based, and ill-informed with respect to sophisticated legalistic technicalities.ζ While we have great sympathy for those victims at the level of human suffering, we ourselves are ill-equipped to deal with that aspect of their plight. Instead, we limit ourselves here to logico/legally-based air-tight arguments and well-established events, implicating true/provable “Judicial Misconduct” properly so-called (according to accepted legal and moral/ethical definitions; see Introduction).

ζ･ ⁠The Internet regrettably abounds with such websites, which we abjure/reject/distance ourselves from. As one sad example of this kind of crazed law-troll nonsense, consider the case of Peter and Doreen Hendrickson,† who falsely pretend to twist their self-styled “tax protest” extremism (see Wikipedia) into a First Amendment issue, on the basis of which they absurdly/fantastically/delusionally/hyberbolically claim (on their website, Lost Horizons): “Doreen’s case is the most overt and unmistakable case of raw judicial corruption and systemic assault on the Constitution and the rule of law that has ever been seen.” As another sad example, check out the completely wacko web/blog-sites owned/maintained/supported by Janice Wolk Grenadier (who, in some of her court filings, has teamed up with the just-as-sad George McDermott, http://www.georgemcdermott.com, http://secretjustice.com), at such “fine” web/blogsites as http://proseamerica.blogspot.com, http://valaw2010.blogspot.com, http://amlegalnews.com, http://amlegalnews.blogspot.com; a small sample of her “work” can be seen here, which really must be viewed dynamically/live/online to fully appreciate it, as the usual static website capture tools are inadequate/incapable of faithfully representing in their multi-faceted full-blown lunacy. A valuable resource for crazy legal nonsense in general is the compilation of Idiot Legal Arguments, by Bernard J. Sussman (fomerly available at http://www.adl.org/mwd/suss1.asp). {†・The present writer had the misfortune to engage in a debate about (the Judicial Misconduct aspects of) the Hendrickson case, directly with the principals (in the context of a temporary, ill-advised participation in an “alt” email group), the raw/unprocessed documentation of which is archived here (not recommended; for the morbidly curious only). It well-illustrates the necessity of providing all/complete relevant documentation (esp. officially filed court documents) of cases/controversies (not just one-sided/self-serving “arguments” by the principals), in light of the principle of “trust but verify:” it may be well-and-good to subjectively “trust” a supplicant’s story at first blush, but ultimately their story must be objectively “verified,” because avid/rabid principals/proponents may be too unqualified/biased/self-deceived to render a valid analysis.}

Our methodology (infra) will be to act as a repository of reliable information and well-documented cases/controversies regarding judicial misconduct, especially in Federal matters (because they’re usually generalizable to other jurisdictions), though non-Federal matters are by no means excluded.

Our goal is to help advance the struggle for reform in the area of corruption by the judges, and restoring public integrity/trust to the judicial system/courts.

Method

In more detail, our procedure will be to treat the “anatomy” of concrete “instructively notable” cases of Judicial Misconduct in depth, by a narrative approach composed of three major elements:

  • Story (a.k.a. Narrative) — Discursive presentation, in a popular/“easy-to-follow” manner/style, of the travel of the case, emphasizing judicial misconduct aspects, but including enough case-in-chief to fulfill the requirements of context.
  • Record — Documentary evidence, referenced throughout the Story, pertaining principally to judicial misconduct, but including enough to solidify the underlying case-in-chief.
  • Discussion — Interactive “blog” (actually, “forum topic,” see How To Use Forums) concerning the case (readable by all, writable only by registered members).

This technique is illustrated by our touchstone/canonical/template case, Tuvell v. IBM. To the best of our knowledge, it is the perfect test-case for Judicial Misconduct (there are other good cases, but none exhibits Judicial Misconduct as blatantly as it does). That case possesses/exhibits all the attributes suitable (though not absolutely necessary) for detailed treatment here:

  • Clear-cut, compelling, non-frivolous civil action (e.g.: federal employment discrimination case-in-chief, between an individual plaintiff and corporate defendant).
  • Competent, professional level of representation (not the kind of thing often uncharitably characterized by such language as “typical pro se nightmare” — understandably so, because law is a very technical field, inaccessible to lay-persons not having technical training and legal experience).
  • Clean litigation (in particular, no stupid/distracting procedural errors by parties).
  • Complete, robust, well-written documentation, especially official court filings (by parties and court).
  • Opportunity/setting for judicial misconduct (e.g., defendant’s motion for summary judgment).
  • Obvious, egregious judicial misconduct (e.g., false dismissal of the case, granting motion for summary judgment) — by some combination of district judge, appellate judges, Supreme Court, Judicial Council, Judicial Conference.
    • As well as, potentially, misconduct by non-judicial actors, such as clerks (perhaps civilian), FBI, PIN, DOJ, elected Legislative and Executive officials, ….

Invitation

This site is conceived as a “platform”/framework for Judicial Misconduct complaint/activism/reform. Authors (typically, but not necessarily, direct victims themselves of judicial misconduct, i.e., litigants or wrongfully disbarred lawyers), who are willing to (re-)write their cases in a format compatible with ours (albeit with help from us), are hereby solicited to submit their cases, as Case Studies hosted/treated on this site.

Our Case Studies are open to public scrutiny/debate, helping ensure a high degree of quality/integrity. But publication here does not amount to endorsement. In the final analysis, it is the individual authors who are responsible for their own work.

Going Forward

Future enhancements will be added to this website as experiences dictate. Ideas are solicited. The forum topic Website Feedback is an appropriate place to air concerns/suggestions.

However: The rather vanilla/staid/conservative overall design (yet, technologically state-of-the-art: Drupal, Bootstrap, Spacelab, DejaVu-family webfonts, responsive/adaptive, etc., designed for “desktop/laptop-first,” though small-screen/mobile friendlyη) is intentional, and won’t change any time soon. Such gravitas best suits a law/justice-oriented website such as this. No “Dancing Hippos” for us (as it was derisively called in the early days of faux fancification of the Internet/browser experience); even the current popular trend of fixed/sticky menu/navigation headers/footers/sidebars for “action-oriented” (ecommerce-like) websites is inappropriately distracting for our purposes.

η･ Regrettably, the mobile platform still struggles with the full gamut of code-points in font-sets (even in webfont-sets). Not to mention that browser brands still have their own individual quirks/bugs, per release, sigh …

Notation

  • ⌘TBD⌘ (⌘ = Unicode U+2318 = “place of interest”) — Missing content which is “yet To Be Determined/Done,” or “Work-in-Progress,” or “Under Construction;” thought to be only temporarily missing.
  • ¬N/A⌐ (¬ = U+00AC = “not sign;” ⌐ = U+2310 = “reversed not sign”) — Missing content which is “Not Applicable/Available/Existent;” thought to be permanently missing.
  • ☛KEY☚ = Key/crucial/crux (particularly critical/noteworthy document, or other item).
    • We’d prefer “🔑” (U+1F511 = key symbol), or one of its several variants, but these are not present in many font-sets (and, being outside the Unicode “Basic Multilingual Plane,” they tend to cause other problems with our underlying technologies).
  • ⌥ (U+2325 = “option [key];” compare ⎇ = U+2376 = “alternative [key],” which however is not present in many font-sets) — Optional/alternate version of content; perhaps “better” in some sense; perhaps “subsidiary” in some sense. Such as, for example:
    • Cached local copy, retrieved from remote location (which could move or disappear).
    • Static version of dynamic state (e.g., PDF or PNG fixed-in-time copy of time-varying webpage).
    • Standalone instance of archived file (faster retrieval time).
    • Original version of copy/facsimile (“rule of best evidence”).
    • Reformatted version of original (for readability, e.g.).
    • Color version of black-and-white (or vice versa).
    • Annotated.
    • Minor side-info, such as email side-conversation about some topic.
    • Whatever ….
  • References/citations (these symbols are reserved, but we don’t actually use most of them):
    • ʋ (U+028B) = volume(s).
    • Ŧ (U+0166) = tome(s).
    • Ƀ (U+0243) = book(s).
    • Ᵽ (U+2C63) = part(s).
    • İ (U+0130) = issue(s).
    • Å (U+212B) = article(s).
    • Ͼ (U+03FE) = chapter(s).
    • ç (U+00E7) = clause(s).
    • § (U+00A7) = section(s).
    • (U+00B6) = paragraph(s).
    • ℘ (U+2118) = page(s).
    • № (U+2116) = number(s).
    • # (U+0023) = number(s).
    • ℓ (U+2113) = line(s).
    • ƒ (U+0192) = (page- or paragraph-scope)θ footnote(s).
    • ɘ (U+0258) = (document-scope) endnote(s).
      • Compare ℯ = U+212F, which however is not present in many font-sets.
    • ɨ (U+0268) = inline subnote(s), embedded in footnotes/endnotes.

θ･ On this website, we use “paragraph-scope” (as opposed to “page-scope”) footnotes, thereby leveraging physical/locational proximity, hence avoiding the annoyance of long-jump/page-scope hyperlinks between footnote-anchor and footnote-content.

Technical Note on PDF Readers (Software)

A number of the PDF documents published on this site contain “PDF annotations” (as opposed to “ordinary annotations,” which are encoded as simple/plain “PDF content”). Sometimes, we indicate these documents with the superscript notation “{PdfAnn}”. However, there are many types of PDF annotations (26 in ISO 32000-1/PDF1.7 ⌥, with new features added in ISO 32000-2/PDF2.0), and PDF readers don’t always display all PDF annotations properly (some don’t even display any annotations at all!). This is especially problematic for “lightweight” PDF readers, such as those built into web browsers, or those running on small devices (such as cellphones, or even notebooks). Therefore to avoid this problem (and similar ones, including “after-added OCR text layers”), you should always download/view PDFs locally, and use up-to-date full-featured PDF readers on full-sized laptop/workstation computers.

Contact

To contact the owner/administrator/proprietor of this website, use the Contact form in the footer of any webpage. “Ask Me Anything.” For general discussion about the website, see the forum topic Website Feedback.