Posted by
NOTLEGALROADKILLYET on Monday, October 23, 2006 8:51:10 PM
Judges in this state are totally unaccountable, and they want to stay that way. Take Amendment 40. They are fighting it tooth and nail. Why? Because it would put an average three State Supreme Court Justices up for retention elections every two years. That makes them more accountable.
By now, every Colorado voter has received a Blue Book. Open it and count with me the number of Justices up for retention election this year. Hmmm. None. Zero. Zip. Zilch.
Maybe that explains the arrogance of the last six months. If even a single justice had been up for retention, I doubt that the Supreme Court would have held the immigration initiative for five months while it decided whether a forty word paragraph contained one or two subjects. If a single justice were up for retention, I doubt the DA Carol Chambers trial would have begun today. If nothing else, the timing has the strong odor of a
show trial by a tribunal who has absolutely no accountability to the public and is
totally beholden to the Supreme Court. What exactly would it have cost to postpone the trial for three weeks, or even three months?
My personal favorite example of the Supreme Court's arrogance is their now two month refusal to even acknowledge the
letter I wrote volunteering to assist in straightening out this legal ethics mess.
I haven't written much about it yet, but the State Constitution requires that Judicial discipline be administered solely by the State Supreme Court. Yes, there is a Commission on Judicial Discipline, but that appears more intended to capture complaints before they become public than it is to administer justice to judges. Like much of what the State Supreme Court does, I consider the Commission's web page abusively uninformative. The whole process is Secret from the public and is trust me government at its worst.
I am guessing that the sections of the Colorado Constitution that establish the Commission would not begin to pass First Amendment muster. The First Amendment guarantees the right to petition. The Colorado Constitution refuses to honor the right to petition unless the complaining citizen abandons his right to Free Speech. ACLU, where are you when we need you-oh, harrassing another school district, I see.
Unless
CRS 13-5-136 is modified as I
suggested, the only two punishment options the State Supreme Court has for judges is censure and removal. Not many judges get removed. They are free to do almost anything, including maintaining a climate of fear.
CMBD.