JUSTICE, NOT PATRONAGE JUDGES by Peter D. Moss Lawyers have been increasingly hated and for good reason. A few years ago, the American Bar Association announced a $700,000 public relations campaign to improve the image of lawyers. It did not do any good because the lawyers' problem is not image but substance. Lawyers can be failures or crooks and most choose the latter which can be financially rewarding. It is easier for an old sexual whore to be a virgin than for a successful lawyer to be loyal or honest or truthful. Although they claim to represent the client's interest, they represent the lawyer's interest. The client wants justice, while the lawyer wants to earn a fast, easy fee without alienating other lawyers or judges. This built-in conflict can be resolved but only by extinguishing law as a career profession. Self-serving pretense to the contrary notwithstanding, justice is not rocket science or the lay jury system could not exist. I have written an essay and I am writing a book on how to replace professional career lawyering and patronage justice with justice. But what to do with the 700,000 or so U.S. lawyers? Use them as teachers in high schools, so kids can learn pro se procedure and fearless self-confidence to help themselves when they become victimized employees, consumers, taxpayers, homeowners or tenants and other situations requiring legal skills. Other law teachers will find employment in national chains of three-night pro se lawschools for adults. Such legal education will also solve another never-discussed problem: most Americans are so scared of "going to court" that they tolerate abuse and loss rather than having their "day in court." Presently, most Americans will rather go to the dentist than to court. Once courts are de-mystified, most Americans will rather go to court than watch phoney made-for-TV court dramas to legitimize a court system undeserving of continued existence. Bobby Kennedy said it best decades ago: "The only question about American justice is, how much justice can you afford?" Obviously the rich can afford a lot more than underdog victims, and not just in lawyer's fees. Whenever multimillion dollar fees appear in the mass media, I wonder whether all that money really was pocketed by lawyers or was shared with judges because when so, it's one of the system's deepest and darkest secrets. Lawyers who would rat about bribes to judges would commit professional suicide for no good purpose. Appellate judges, the only ones with power to review judicial bribery complaints, are not about to help discredit their own kind. According to a published New York case, a lawyer who stated in open court and on the record that judges are whores and appellate judges are madams was not disbarred nor sanctioned. Deterrence is the undisputed primary goal of justice. A system where every single violation is tried, both criminal and civil, is unimaginable. Inadequate deterrence is also the undisputed primary failure of American justice. If all judgments presented an effective deterrent, violations would almost cease. Then what would lawyers and judges do for a living? Thus a professional career bench and bar contains this incurable contradiction and we need a new system. To shift blame, lawyers have spread the myth that Americans are litigious. We are but only in comparing the number of court filings in Japan and in the U.S. If we compare filings in the U.S. to valid causes of action in the U.S., we are probably the least litigious people that ever lived. Excessive corporate power over employees, customers, stockholders and other victims is based precisely on the reality that most Americans loathe to go to court not just as plaintiffs but even as witnesses. Although I have never seen a law school on the inside, I have prosecuted my cases from small claims to the U.S. Supreme Court, so I have the experience without a vested interest, to propose a new justice system, below. Lawyers in black robes, called judges, cooperate with lawyers in 3-piece suits to defeat underdog litigants by favoring corporations and the rich. Instead of professional career judges and lawyers, who are loyal primarily to their profession and career and protect the privileges of the ruling class, justice and appeals should be administered by lay juries who are not captives of the ruling class. After serving on one panel, each juror should be issued a certificate as judge for life, and use of the title should be encouraged. Federal judges are now paid $150,000 a year, which is $75 per hour or $3000 per week and future jurors should be paid the same. Soon we would have tens of millions of experienced and just judges. Confidential settlements and compulsory arbitration and other forms of kangaroo court would no longer be needed or permitted with tens of millions of experienced and just judges always on call. Both the Vermont judiciary and the federal bench have policies strongly favoring settlements, which are mostly coerced but designated "amicable" on the record, and favor the rich and corporations, not underdog victims. By settling, corporate violators escape publicity, a finding of guilt, and end up paying a small fraction of what a just jury would award. Not only are settlements unjust but they encourage instead of deterring corporate misconduct, and create work for lawyers and judges by re-litigating the same recurrent violations and crimes. Most people are not aware of the fact that judges can dismiss valid complaints by granting defense motions to dismiss underdog victims "for failure to state a claim on which relief may be granted." Judges have absolute discretion to grant such motions and they often do even where claims are not only valid on their face but are fully supported with uncontroverted evidence. Appellate judges do not, of course, reverse such dismissals. This is one of the most frequent judicial abuses, but there are enough types to fill a future book. Mass media give very little space to civil litigation and once a valid complaint is dismissed, underdog litigants have no choice but to live with the injury and injustice. It is not widely known that of the 5000 or so appeals sent to the U.S. Supreme Court each year, only about 100 or 2% are even considered and 98% go into the wastepaper basket without explanation or justification. One of the Republic's deepest and darkest secrets is the identity and criteria of the initial screeners who pick the 2% of cases to be heard. Instead of litigating for years, almost all cases could be concluded in 24 hours or less. Now judges and lawyers drag out cases for years to bill litigants for lawyers' time and to discourage and fatigue underdog victims. Judges know that if most cases were resolved in 24 hours or less, there would be few lawyers and no need for patronage judges. The wheels of justice grind slowly intentionally to provide judges and lawyers cushy livelihoods and to hell with justice. Also, resolving cases by judgments in effective deterrent amount would eliminate corporate recidivism and the need to re-litigate the same issues. Also, class actions with judgments in effective deterrent amount would eliminate the need for most litigation, and would encourage corporations to deal justly with employees, customers and stockholders in the first place. Prohibiting secret settlements would also prevent deaths (over 200 in Ford Explorers on Firestone tires) and innumerable injuries; youth victimized by the clerical pederasthood over decades and probably centuries; and injuries and deaths from asbestos insulation, silicone breast implants, Dalkon Shield intrauterine devices, DES synthetic estrogen, General Motors trucks with side saddle gas tanks and Ford Pintos and Chevrolet Corvairs, Halcion anti-anxiety drug, Miracle Recreation Merry-go-Round, Pfizer heart valve, Prozac antidepressant, Zomax painkiller, and many more, enough to fill a library. The good news is that the National Press Club and three other groups have begun a campaign to terminate all sealed or secret settlements so the end is now in sight. When an overdog litigant tries to settle, he has admitted guilt and that should be publicized and punished in effective deterrent amount and to hell with patronage judges and corporate lawyers. I plan to publish my 38 years of pro se experience in a book. Also, I am collecting case histories from law victims, to be published in books to enlist national support for replacing patronage judges with justice. People I talk to understand that justice is not rocket science and every voter is endowed by his Creator with the ability to administer justice when on jury duty. If only patronage judges and lawyers for the rich could not thwart justice. As member and now chair of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Leahy has made a career of protecting and confirming unjust professional career judges who protect the power and privileges of the rich and corporations. Although we are regularly described as a litigious nation, most people I know would rather go to a dentist than appear in court, even as a witness. I have the exact opposite attitude: I pay enough taxes to maintain the court system, so if someone tries to take advantage of me, I do not hesitate to invoke my legal rights, often in court. This would be a better country and this would be a happier nation if law schools went out of business for lack of applicants. Law professors and all lawyers could find new, modest employment in the nation's highschools to teach kids sufficient self-confidence and court procedure to represent themselves as employees, homeowners, tenants, voters, consumers, and spouses. Another good use for law school faculty would be a chain of three-evenings pro se law schools nationally franchised like Arthur Murray or Fred Astaire dance studios. Justice is, after all, no rocket science or the jury system could not exist, let alone function so well that the U.S. Supreme Court limits death penalty judgments to juries. So much for law school trained professional career judges. Big, bad corporations unable to find lawyers will adjust their policies to avoid legal claims and when that fails, the management will settle fast on the victim's just terms. If elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004, I will propose laws for the Senate to examine judges not for qualifications which are not required by the Constitution because every juror has those qualifications. Judicial nominees are to be examined for good behavior as required by the Constitution, to be based on televised questioning of victimized underdog litigants selected from lists of the patronage judges' dockets and calendars. Since the worst conduct judges are capable of is injustice or unfairness to underdog litigants, judges found to be unfair or unjust will be judged by one of 13 circuit lay juries in televised proceedings. The jury foreperson to preside at all trials and each juror will have the opportunity to question all witnesses. Both trial and appellate lay juries will have the power to promulgate and publish case law, as well as the power of jury nullification of both statute law and prior case law when justice so requires. All criminal plea bargains to be publicized and approved by the circuit electorate. A televised National Court of Last Resort (NCLR), including all U.S. voters, will serve to review Supreme Court decisions and the 98% certiorari (appeal) petitions now denied by the Supreme Court. In due course, the Supreme Court will be replaced by a supreme lay jury appealable to the NCLR. If elected, I will propose an act to make pro se practice a mandatory high-school subject with attendance at three small claims sessions by every student. The jurisdiction of small claims courts is to be raised to $1-million and then gradually raised further as professional career lawyers and judges disappear through retirement or career change, and law schools close for lack of applicants. Until then, if you have a legal problem but want to avoid lawyers, look up the Internet self-help site at http://www.nolo.com. If you have no computer, most librarians can help you. If you can speak and write English and have the self-confidence, you should be able to win in Small Claims even now if you have a valid claim and credible evidence. As if to support my proposals, in June 2002 the U.S. Supreme Court published a ruling that the death sentence may only be imposed by lay juries, not patronage judges. So who needs patronage judges? The top 2% rich who have warped all our institutions, political, social, economic, and judicial, to serve them at the expense of the bottom 98%. They are now working on repealing inheritance taxes (Bush calls them death taxes) that only the estates of the top 2% rich pay. It is still a matter of civic pride that the Vermont constitution was written over two centuries ago by a group of citizens, not one of whom was a lawyer. Today, citizens are entrusted to sit on boards of selectmen, school boards, zoning boards, planning review boards, civil authority boards, and of course civil and criminal juries, all without a law school diploma. It goes without saying that we also do not need professional career lawyers, in and out of black robes, who are interested only in their careers and in protecting the privileges of the ruling class, and instead of administering justice, aim only to create an appearance or illusion of justice. I say a better world is possible and it can be legislated in the 21st century if the voters will it.