A Plan to Police Federal Judges: They Must Obey the Same Laws We Do

Throughout my time as a trial lawyer, I had encountered judges, particularly on the federal bench, who were neither the best nor the brightest the profession had to offer, and were either not emotionally or intellectually suited for the job. This sad state of judicial affairs was primarily the result of the way federal judges are chosen, nominated, and confirmed. This is because a federal judge is almost uniformly chosen not on merit but based on his or her connections to the senators of each state who recommended him or her to the president. And how do these “connections” get greased? They get greased largely through political campaign contributions by the would-be federal judge’s law firm, corporation, labor union, or other special interest to the senator and then president who puts their name forward for confirmation by an establishment-run U.S. Senate.

Judges, and federal judges, in principle, are in my opinion our most important public servants. This is because the Framers to our Constitution, having created three branches of government as part of an enlightened system of checks and balances, intended that federal judges would protect We the People, within the bounds of the law, against the tyranny of the other two branches of government, the executive and legislative branches. They also were meant to protect us from other ills and dangers in our society — again within the bounds of the law. Of course the law of ultimate importance is our Constitution.

It was one of our greatest Founding Fathers, John Adams, and later our second American president, who stressed to the Continental Congress in advocating for the Declaration of Independence that the new Republic was to become a nation of laws and not of men — given the tyranny they had experienced under King George III. Sadly and dangerously, 142 years later, this has not come to pass and the wicked ways of the King seem to have made a fierce “comeback.”

Today, as in the days leading up to our Revolution, we have seen that our federal judicial system has degenerated into a two-tier structure, at the moment overwhelmingly administered to by leftist judges and the politicians who put them on the bench to do their bidding. There is in effect, with few exceptions, one justice system for the “kingly” establishment elites, such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, former President Barack Obama, George Soros, the prosecutorial staff of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, and others on the left, and another one for citizens of lesser influence and of a different political persuasion.

While to some extent this downward slide has been underway especially for the last few decades, following the election of Donald Trump and the return of a conservative-minded president to the White House, this overwhelming leftist and compromised federal judiciary has generally thrown all intended impartiality to the wind and embarked upon what is in effect a legal jihad to not just take down President Trump, his family, and those around him, but also to relegate conservatives and their ideals to the proverbial ash heap of American history.

How do these primarily leftist judges — and I do not mean to imply that there are not some bad conservative judges as well — accomplish their nefarious ends? By either perverting or ignoring outright the law, or employing unethical means and practices to achieve contrived rulings which seek to transform the nation into a socialist, pro-illegal immigrant, pro-radical feminist, pro-Godless, anti-life, radical transgender, and pro-anarchistic “nirvana.”

But what can one do about a federal judge who unethically and illegally cooks his or her factual and legal analysis and then issues dishonest rulings to suit their own ends? Currently, since these federal judges have lifetime tenure, an unfortunate mistake by our generally Godly inspired Framers, and are largely immune from legal liability for their edicts, the only recourse short of impeachment, which is not realistic in the overwhelming majority of cases given the political rivalry on the House Judiciary Committee among establishment Democrats and Republicans, is to file a complaint before what are commonly called “judicial councils.”

These judicial councils, which exist for each of the judicial circuits in the United States, are comprised of federal judges, generally sitting in the same courthouse as the complained about jurist. As a result, these fellow federal judges cover for their colleagues, with a “circle the wagon” mentality that there but for the Grace of God go I. The result, judicial misconduct is covered up and condoned! Simply put, the judiciary is unwilling to police itself.

That was one of the reasons why I founded Judicial Watch, to watch judges. But watching them is not enough and Judicial Watch today, which is no longer under my leadership as I founded Freedom Watch after I ran for the U.S. Senate in Florida in 2003-2004, has veered away from this mission. Freedom Watch, however, has not. See www.freedomwatchusa.org.

And to this end, Freedom Watch and I are embarking upon a crucial project to put in place a system that will hold federal judges to account to their rules of ethics known as the Code of Judicial Conduct, the rule of law, and the Constitution.

To start, I will, with your strong support, be putting together a coalition to force Congress to enact legislation to create panels of learned and sincere non-lawyers who will sit in judgment of unethical jurists and have the power to mete out appropriate discipline. The involvement of esteemed non-lawyers is important because attorneys are generally fearful and thus unwilling to take on the same judges who they appear before on behalf of clients. That would be “bad for business.”

We are also pursuing other means to get better judges appointed to the federal bench, such as requiring as a prerequisite that a candidate get training in a one year course at an accredited law school to learn how to administer justice fairly and properly, undergo psychological testing before being considered to ensure that the candidate is emotionally suited for the job, and can ultimately be legally sued if the jurist is found to have intentionally or in a grossly negligent manner strayed from ethics and the law by harming litigants in the process.

If our Republic is to survive, we need ethical and honest federal judges who respect our Constitution, and the rule of law, and mete out justice impartially without leftist or for that matter any political or personal taint.

While judges are in theory our most important public servants, endowed with great powers, they by and large have gone rogue and we now need desperately to reign them in and hold them to the same rules of ethics and the law, which apply to the rest of us!

Larry Klayman, founder of Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch, is known for his strong public interest advocacy in furtherance of ethics in government and individual freedoms and liberties. To read more of his reports, Go Here Now.