judicial ignorance of the law | TALKING BACK to restraining orders

“Most magistrate judges in both Beaufort County and the state are not lawyers, and the county’s chief magistrate lacks a college degree, state records show.

[…]

“In Beaufort County, four of 11 magistrates are lawyers, according to Terry Leverette of S.C. Court Administration.

“Seven of the county’s judges were required to have a four-year college degree, because they were first appointed after the state changed the education requirement in 2005. Beaufort County’s chief magistrate, Darlene Smith, appointed in 1994, finished high school but does not have a college degree.”

—Luke Thompson, The Beaufort Gazette (Sept. 20, 2010)

In his article “Most county magistrates aren’t lawyers, but education standards are changing,” Luke Thompson reports that in 2010 “only about 13 percent of [South Carolina’s] 311 magistrates” were certified to practice law.

Standards are changing, he relates. The state’s Supreme Court requires that magistrate judges who rule on “check cases” be licensed attorneys (because decisions may levy significant fines).

This degree of legal competency isn’t, however, required to rule on restraining order cases.

“Are lawyers kind of presumptively better qualified to judge cases than somebody who has never had that background? Yes, sure they are,” said John Freeman, a retired University of South Carolina law school professor who sits on a panel that screens state judges. “Would the public be better off? I think probably the public would be better off, and I say that without meaning to disparage or degrade some of our fine magistrates who don’t have full legal educations.”

[…]

It’s not clear if magistrates without legal training are more likely to make bad rulings. Leverette said the state does not keep statistics regarding how many magistrate cases are overturned on appeal. [Note: few restraining order cases are ever appealed to the state courts in the first place.]

Freeman…said magistrates account for a disproportionate number of disciplinary actions. Requiring law degrees might reduce that number, he said.

(Ya think?)

The “check cases” referenced in Mr. Thompson’s story presumably have to do with fraud or nonpayment, i.e., money. In law, a great deal of emphasis is placed on money. Disregarded, however, is that “disciplinary actions” undertaken carelessly, like the casual issuance of restraining orders, can exact a far graver toll than some kited checks.

Restraining orders, what’s more, are no less permanent public records than charges of “check fraud,” and these records may be conveniently accessed by the Internet. The “public index” for Charleston County, South Carolina, shows just how conveniently:

Appreciate that the (mere) implications of the (mere) phrase restraining order or protection order include stalking, “terroristic behavior,” battery, child abuse, and sexual assault.

Finally, consider that petitions for restraining orders—which may cost men and women their jobs, security, and access to children, pets, home, and property—may be ruled upon by people whose educational credentials are nothing more than a high school diploma or a degree in library science, and that highly prejudicial and prejudiced restraining order rulings are available for public consumption (by defendants’ friends, associates, students, patients, employers or employees, loan officer, landlord, etc., etc., etc.).

Anytime and for all time.

*The story cited above was killed after it was quoted in this post. Here is a story about magistrates in Pennsylvania. Its reportage is similar.

It’s hard not to hate judges who issue rulings that may be based on misrepresentations or outright fraud when those rulings (indefinitely) impute criminal behavior or intentions to defendants, may set defendants up for further (or serial) malicious prosecutions by the same false accuser (and possibly land them in jail), and may finally inflict severe privations, including loss of income, employment, and/or access to children, pets, home, and property.

It’s especially hard not to hate judges when you’ve told them the truth, pronounced it politely and respectfully, and nevertheless been scorned, humiliated, and demeaned…with gusto.

Judges tend to be hubristic, condescending, and willfully menacing (even when they’re smiling at you).

To compound the outrage, it’s only their station that licenses their haughtiness. More often than not, their authority doesn’t come from learnedness in the law but is simply a perk of the job.

Though there have been some motions in recent years to amend this situation, most bottom-rung judges who issue restraining orders aren’t qualified lawyers, that is, they don’t have law degrees. They were just elected or appointed to the position and sent to “judicial boot camp.” Judges are trained to execute specific duties; they’re not necessarily educated in jurisprudence.

Some have no education beyond high school.

This may either be a reason to resent them all the more for their audacity or a reason to see them as mere tools of a system that conditions their bigoted behavior. Restraining order judges are told—possibly quite explicitly—how they’re expected to rule. That’s a significant part of their “training.”

This hardly excuses conduct that obviously contravenes judicial ethics. It does, though, make that conduct understandable.

Certainly judges aren’t to blame for the state of things, including the shambles they unjustly make of people’s lives. They don’t level the allegations, nor do they formulate the rules, draft the laws, or influence the political and public opinions that do determine rules and laws.

Sure, judges of conscience could vocalize qualms or defy the system. They could martyr themselves for principle. Whether this would effectively alter the status quo, however, is debatable.

Remember, they’re not legal scholars, by and large; they’re just referees who’ve had certain priorities impressed upon them. It’s not theirs to comment on the laws—and being unqualified to do so, they may genuinely believe they’re acting righteously.

There’s no particular reason not to hate judges if one or more have wronged you. If you step back, though, you’ll see that they’re more like ants that bite because they’ve been tasked with defending the colony according to certain marching orders than they are like people we should reasonably expect to treat us with dignity and charity.

Judges are often power-corrupt—it comes of sitting above others who must kowtow to them—but they’re basically people doing a job they may be scarcely better equipped to do than you or I.

TALKING BACK to restraining orders

THEY’RE NOT JUST ABUSED BUT ABUSIVE

Tag judicial ignorance of the law

Judicial Incompetence and the Consequences of Restraining Order Rulings (Using South Carolina to Illustrate Why the Restraining Order Process is Pernicious)

In Perspective: How to Look at Restraining Order Judges Neutrally