Posted by
NOTLEGALROADKILLYET on Monday, March 05, 2007 4:52:41 PM
The Rocky Mountain News
is reporting on a lawsuit filed by three Republicans and a Democrat which reached and was rebuffed by the US Supreme Court.
At issue was the clever stunt pulled by the Democrats when they won the Colorado State Senate after the 2000 election. Rather than negotiate with the Republican House, they went to a friendly Democratic judge. The judge told the two houses that if they couldn't negotiate to come up with a plan within a short time, he would impose a plan of his own.
Having set this ploy up, the Democrats proceeded to execute it. The Senate came up with one plan, favorable to the Democrats, of course, and refused to budge. The Republicans did try to negotiate with the Senate and proposed several plans. Time ran out, and the judge imposed a plan very favorable to the Democrats.
The 2006 Republican debacle in Colorado had many fathers, but one was this stunt where the judiciary was used to leverage power toward the Democrats in 2002.
As you might guess, a lawsuit was filed and proceeded through the courts. Since the appeals courts were dominated by Democrats who have little interest in ethical behavior, they saw nothing wrong with what had happened.
The Supreme Court dislikes getting involved in political disputes involving Gerrymandering. Sometimes they are forced to get involved by Civil Rights acts, but otherwise, they duck the issue. When the Colorado appeal made it to the Court, they ducked it. Nothing new.
This blog has made the point over and over again that there is one mechanism and one mechanism only that will make lawyers, including lawyer-legislators like Ken Gordon behave ethically. That mechanism is a working legal ethics system that the legal profession and the judiciary does not control.
If Colorado had had a legal ethics system that worked in 2002, the ploy would not have occurred because the lawyers in the Senate would have feared losing their license over it. The judge would have feared losing both his license and his position. The State Supreme Court would not have dared to claim that the courts were part of the legislative process.
Ask any Republican lawyer if he favors either term limits for judges or a reform of the legal ethics system. He will tell you in a heartbeat that he favors neither. That is the lawyer speaking, not the Republican. As a lawyer stated in a recent Colorado House Judiciary Committee Meeting "Lawyers work for judges. They are our bosses."
It's time for reform!