Opinion Censuring Judge Real Is Now Online
Howard Bashman has some real breaking news: a link to the opinion reprimanding Judge Manuel Real, as I blogged about recently here. The copy Howard has is of poor quality and is currently missing a page. Still, it’s worth a look if you’re interested in the topic.
Interestingly, Judge Real apparently moved to disqualify Judge Kozinski from hearing the matter, for (spurious) reasons that will become obvious if you read this.
The motion was denied.
alex kozinski is my favorite federal judge (just as ron paul is my favorite member of congress).
assistant devil's advocate (43f27d) — 1/2/2007 @ 6:07 pmi am so grateful to be eleven years out of this ugly game.
i am struck by the other judges’ haste to dismiss any notion of sexual impropriety. no alternative explanation was offered. was she giving him piano lessons – or blowing sonatas on his skin flute?
all the opinions were silent as to the greatest risk posed by the misconduct. we are a nation of laws; our public policy favors nonviolent resolution of disputes in the public tribunal, with due process for all. once it becomes absolutely clear that the tribunal is not according due process, that it is resolving disputes extralegally, this opens the door in the minds of a significant component of our community to devise their own alternative, extralegal ways of resolving the dispute.
finally, will patterico please acknowledge that stephen yagman was the good guy in this matter, the man without whom none of this would have come to light? a “so acknowledged” would be enough, no need for a whole blog post.
To paraphrase a meaner Chinese proverb, “When a judge gets to be as old as that without retiring, he becomes a nuisance”.
nk (bfc26a) — 1/2/2007 @ 6:13 pmyeah nk, that’s mean, but not as mean as my arson jokes:
(the classic jewish lightning): izzie goes up to sol, “sol, i’m awfully sorry to hear about your fire.”
“shhh, it’s tomorrow!”
and then…
“we’re not getting any rent and i can’t get the tenant out, so i’m gonna have to sell the building.”
assistant devil's advocate (af1b54) — 1/2/2007 @ 9:57 pm“how you gonna sell a building with a rent-free tenant in there?”
“i gonna sell it to the insurance company.”
Does Kozinski normally write as well as this? I’m not making a judgment about his legal scholarship or acumen — I don’t know much about the part of the law under discussion — but I do know good writing when I read it, and his writing is better than just good.
Joel Rosenberg (677e59) — 1/3/2007 @ 7:08 amthank you for that blast from the past, joel rosenberg. one pithy bon mot after another – why can’t all judicial opinions be like that?
i believe that law school should have a required semester of standup comedy. this would train future litigators to enter a potentially hostile space and take it over, to hold it in their hands for the benefit of their clients, all the way from the flags behind the bench to the doors in the back, to relegate the guy/gal at the next table to the role of a bit player. that’s called star power, it requires a generous combination of self-confidence and vanity, i’ve got it, patterico has it, all the good courtroom lawyers i know have it. one staple of the students’ schticks would be lawyer jokes, such as:
what’s the difference between a lawyer and a vulture?
assistant devil's advocate (fa8186) — 1/3/2007 @ 10:38 amthe vulture can’t take his wing tips off.
As any honest federal court practitioner ought to acknowledge, Real’s conduct in this Cantor matter was classic Real. So its not surprising to me what Real did. What is surprising is that the federal judiciary took note. Real’s habit of abusing litigants and legal principles is generally ignored by the higher courts, along with similar conduct by other sitting federal judges.
A footnote: Stephen Yagman was the lawyer who initiated & pursued the complaint against Real. If I recall correctly when Real testified before the congressional committee he laid the blame for this incident on Yagman, accusing Yagman of having a vendetta against Real. Of course, this was nonsense. Yagman freely acknowledged (and everyone knew) he had no personal knowledge of the underlying facts. So Yagman’s motive was irrelevant in establishing what happened here. Just another instance of Real’s abject refusal to be forthright about his misconduct.
DWC (06ea11) — 1/3/2007 @ 11:11 am