Judicial Ethics Quotes

In particular, the State has arrogated to itself a compulsory monopoly over police and military services, the provision of law, judicial decision-making, the mint and the power to create money, unused land ("the public domain"), streets and highways, rivers and coastal waters, and the means of delivering mail...the State relies on control of the levers of propaganda to persuade its subjects to obey or even exalt their rulers.

Businesses must operate within the legal framework, respecting the rules of the game.

This is a subject I've given a lot of thought to, and I think I have the answer. I've tried to encompass in my theory all the sociological, mythological, religious, philosophical, muscular, economic, cultural, musical, physical, ethical, intellectual, metaphysical, anthropological, gynecological, historical, hormonal, environmental, judicial, legal, moral, ethnic, governmental, linguistic, psychological, schizophrenic, glottal, racial, poetic, dental [this was the logical link] artistic, military, and urinary considerations from prehistoric times to the present.I have been able to synthesize these considerations into one inescapable formulation: men can knock the shit out of women.

As Burbank points out, relations between the branches are governed as much by norms and customs as by formal structures. The Constitution permits Congress to impeach and remove federal judges, for example, but the norm is that impeachment is reserved for criminal behavior or serious ethical lapses, and not for judicial rulings with which members of Congress disagree.

At the same time, a huge gulf is opening between the tenets of liberal humanism and the latest findings of the life sciences, a gulf we cannot ignore much longer. Our liberal political and judicial systems are founded on the belief that every individual has a sacred inner nature, indivisible and immutable, which gives meaning to the world, and which is the source of all ethical and political authority. This is a reincarnation of the traditional Christian belief in a free and eternal soul that resides within each individual. Yet over the last 200 years, the life sciences have thoroughly undermined this belief. Scientists studying the inner workings of the human organism have found no soul there. They increasingly argue that human behaviour is determined by hormones, genes and synapses, rather than by free will – the same forces that determine the behaviour of chimpanzees, wolves, and ants. Our judicial and political systems largely try to sweep such inconvenient discoveries under the carpet. But in all frankness, how long can we maintain the wall separating the department of biology from the departments of law and political science?

At the same time, a huge gulf is opening between the tenets of liberal humanism and the latest findings of the life sciences, a gulf we cannot ignore much longer. Our liberal political and judicial systems are founded on the belief that every individual has a sacred inner nature, indivisible and immutable, which gives meaning to the world, and which is the source of all ethical and political authority. This is a reincarnation of the traditional Christian belief in a free and eternal soul that resides within each individual. Yet over the last 200 years, the life sciences have thoroughly undermined this belief.

Why, for almost forty years now, have Aboriginal peoples won virtually every time they go to the Supreme Court? Because our history and the law, if fairly interpreted, cannot help but re-establish our long-standing – long betrayed – agreements. If I look for the leading constitutional voice of historical accuracy and ethical understanding in Canada over the last few decades, the sound is clear. It comes from the indigenous community and the Supreme Court’s rulings on Aboriginal issues. Some people protest that this is judicial interference in the political sphere. They are missing the point. It is happening because the political class and the civil service are not only not doing their job, they are acting badly. The indigenous community, on the other hand, is paying attention to our history and to our legal history. The Supreme Court is responding intelligently to this reality.

Our liberal political and judicial systems are founded on the belief that every individual has a sacred inner nature, indivisible and immutable, which gives meaning to the world, and which is the source of all ethical and political authority. This is a reincarnation of the traditional Christian belief in a free and eternal soul that resides within each individual. Yet over the last 200 years, the life sciences have thoroughly undermined this belief. Scientists studying the inner workings of the human organism have found no soul there. They increasingly argue that human behaviour is determined by hormones, genes and synapses, rather than by free will – the same forces that determine the behaviour of chimpanzees, wolves, and ants. Our judicial and political systems largely try to sweep such inconvenient discoveries under the carpet. But in all frankness, how long can we maintain the wall separating the department of biology from the departments of law and political science?

True law necessarily is rooted in ethical assumptions or norms; and those ethical principles are derived, in the beginning at least, from religious convictions. When the religious understanding, from which a concept of law arose in a culture, has been discarded or denied, the laws may endure for some time, through what sociologists call "cultural lag"; but in the long run, the laws also will be discarded or denied. With this hard truth in mind, I venture to suggest that the corpus of English and American laws--for the two arise for the most part from a common root of belief and experience--cannot endure forever unless it is animated by the spirit that moved it in the beginning: that is, by religion, and specifically by the Christian people. Certain moral postulates of Christian teaching have been taken for granted, in the past, as the ground of justice. When courts of law ignore those postulates, we grope in judicial darkness. . . . We suffer from a strong movement to exclude such religious beliefs from the operation of courts of law, and to discriminate against those unenlightened who cling fondly to the superstitions of the childhood of the race. Many moral beliefs, however, though sustained by religious convictions, may not be readily susceptible of "scientific" demonstration. After all, our abhorrence of murder, rape, and other crimes may be traced back to the Decalogue and other religious injunctions. If it can be shown that our opposition to such offenses is rooted in religion, then are restraints upon murder and rape unconstitutional? We arrive at such absurdities if we attempt to erect a wall of separation between the operation of the laws and those Christian moral convictions that move most Americans. If we are to try to sustain some connection between Christian teaching and the laws of this land of ours, we must understand the character of that link. We must claim neither too much nor too little for the influence of Christian belief upon our structure of law. . . . I am suggesting that Christian faith and reason have been underestimated in an age bestridden, successively, by the vulgarized notions of the rationalists, the Darwinians, and the Freudians. Yet I am not contending that the laws ever have been the Christian word made flesh nor that they can ever be. . . . What Christianity (or any other religion) confers is not a code of positive laws, but instead some general understanding of justice, the human condition being what it is. . . . In short, judges cannot well be metaphysicians--not in the execution of their duties upon the bench, at any rate, even though the majority upon the Supreme Court of this land, and judges in inferior courts, seem often to have mistaken themselves for original moral philosophers during the past quarter century. The law that judges mete out is the product of statute, convention, and precedent. Yet behind statute, convention, and precedent may be discerned, if mistily, the forms of Christian doctrines, by which statute and convention and precedent are much influenced--or once were so influenced. And the more judges ignore Christian assumptions about human nature and justice, the more they are thrown back upon their private resources as abstract metaphysicians--and the more the laws of the land fall into confusion and inconsistency. Prophets and theologians and ministers and priests are not legislators, ordinarily; yet their pronouncements may be incorporated, if sometimes almost unrecognizably, in statute and convention and precedent. The Christian doctrine of natural law cannot be made to do duty for "the law of the land"; were this tried, positive justice would be delayed to the end of time. Nevertheless, if the Christian doctrine of natural law is cast aside utterly by magistrates, flouted and mocked, then positive law becomes patternless and arbitrary.

The case of City of San Francisco v. Anne Kihagi calls into question ethical judicial and prosecuting practices, the latter of which often dances the line on conflict of interest issues. Attorney Karen Uchiyama, a defense lawyer in this contentious case, references a 1985 California Supreme Court ruling that clarifies the role of a public attorney, in contrast to a non-governmental legal professional: [A] prosecutor’s duty of neutrality is born of two fundamental aspects of his employment. First, he is a representative of the sovereign; he must act with the impartiality required of those who govern. Second, he has the vast power of the government available to him; he must refrain from abusing that power by failing to act evenhandedly. These duties are not limited to criminal prosecutors: A government lawyer in a civil action or administrative proceeding has the responsibility to seek justice and to develop a full and fair record, and he should not use his position or the economic power of the government to harass parties or to bring about unjust settlements or results. (ABA Code of Prof. Responsibility, EC 7-14) That is to say, a public prosecutor’s responsibility goes beyond winning a case – in fact, victory is hardly the goal at all. A public prosecutor’s civic and ethical duty is to facilitate justice respectfully and impartially. This is, unfortunately, not the brand of behavior that is displayed by prosecuting Deputy City Attorney Michael Weiss (see more articles at annekihagisf.com).

Having seen what the Earl Warren Court did with judicial power, Antonin Scalia and Robert Bork advocated an ethic of judicial restraint and deference to legislatures. Over time, however, conservative judges focused more and more on restraining legislatures through the courts by invalidating some laws as unconstitutional. Originalism was both a “shield” against judicial overreach and a “sword” to be used against acts of Congress.

One thing, Ms. Gray, is forgotten by this tragedy: the embryo is human, not a nonhuman as the Supreme Court declared. Abortion never was about the poor or about women’s rights. It’s an ideology with an agenda—and it’s a profitable business. So, Ms. Gray, I dare say few politicians will speak that truth for fear of political reprisals. I’m not afraid. Politicians and courts made legal what is a morally reprehensible act of brutality. I call it what it is: judicial tyranny.

Justice is not best served by a judicial system or a collection of agreed upon rules. Rather, it is best served when an individual refuses to allow an injustice to be the end of the story by choosing to live justly despite the injustice of the story.

Considerable educational effort has now and again been made to develop in students the ability to reason their ways through complex moral dilemmas, and to formulate morally enlightened choices as a result. But there is no evidence that, once having acquired such moral reasoning skills, these students will behave any better than their morally untutored peers when it comes to the willingness of the great human majority, when circumstance are “right,” to engage in state-authorized aggression and killing in wars, participation in judicial executions, perpetration of school and adult bullying, domestic abuse, endorsement of torture in the name of national security, depredation of the world's natural resources and biodiversity in the interests of human development and financial gain—a list that could be continued at some length. The moral bridge is a bridge that relatively few cross automatically and naturally, from morally reasoned judgement to moral conduct.

NO one from Bill Cosby’s family was by his side in court [for the sentencing]. Not his children, not Camille. But Camille was still vocal and outraged. In fact, the week before, she had hand delivered an ethics complaint about Judge O’Neill to the state’s Judicial Conduct Board. Her complaint claimed that O’Neill had a grudge with Castor dating back to 1999 when they both ran for district attorney and O’Neill dated a woman in Castor’s office. She also called O’Neill “arrogant,” “corrupt,” and “unethical” and revealed she’d hired a retired FBI agent to investigate the judge.

The bonds joining man to the universe of course extended to the family, both to ancestors and to children not yet born. The belief in an inextinguishable vital principle ensured that nothing perished in an irreversible fashion, which explains Norse ethics: death was but one stage of a cycle, the return to the immanent or transcendent world and the return to the sacred. "Retirement to the kingdom of the dead," Regis Boyer notes judiciously, "is not actually timeless as much as it is irrelevant to the present time. It is capable of opening at any moment to create a path for returns."ts In this mental universe, which could be difficult to grasp by minds permeated by Roman and Christian culture, "the dead individual is not really dead. He has returned to one of the states of the cycle, but remains active in the form of landvaettr"—that is, tutelary spirit (genius loci). Revenants were no cause for surprise to the Germanic peoples; they fit perfectly within their mind-sets, their place has not been usurped, and we cannot dismiss these stories as "old wives' tales." The roots of the belief are too deep.

Our liberal political and judicial systems are founded on the belief that every individual has a sacred inner nature, indivisible and immutable, which gives meaning to the world, and which is the source of all ethical and political authority.

we must be open to the fact that in regard to some ethical judgments, our focus will be more on the wise, judicious course of action than on the absolute right course of action.

You’re not really being surveilled, but that’s not due to teleological humility or ethical judiciousness, it’s just that invasive surveillance doesn’t address any business problem that isn’t at once more easily and more effectively solved by regression to the mean.