protective order law | TALKING BACK to restraining orders

A rhetorical catfight has been waged for years on the Internet between injured men and injured women or people who advocate on behalf of injured women. It’s a logical mare’s nest. Untold men (and women) have been wronged by casually abused and abusive procedures of law whose genesis owes to rabid feminist politicking at the end of the last century. These men (and women) have, again in untold because incalculable numbers, been unjustly deprived of children, home, property, livelihood, security, dignity, and/or liberty, and that fact has largely gone disregarded. A perusal of the quotations in the margin of this blog will satisfy any conscientious reader that this is a fact and not merely an allegation. The laws themselves are bent. Injured men (their predominant victims) have, sensibly or not, accordingly sought to draw attention to lying by women by emphasizing that women will lie even about rape (the specter in the room, incidentally, during any legal proceeding based on an allegation of abuse). There have, of course, been many documented cases of false rape allegations’ being made by women. Feminist advocates deny false accusation of rape “occurs” to any significant degree, ignoring the underlying male plaint, namely, that women lie in heinously vengeful, passive-aggressive, attention-seeking, destructive ways—and contrary to what some apologists for feminine lying would have the public believe, unscrupulous women (and men) don’t lie because they’re crazy, per se. They lie because it’s effective, just as diverting the “conversation” away from lying to lying about rape is effective at denying either one merits consideration.

These are not people.

“Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.”

—Marie Shear

Far from suggesting that women are Barbie dolls or marble angels, a proposition that may even have offended its speaker, this quotation, oft brandished by feminists today, promotes the idea that women are people. And people, unlike Barbie dolls or marble angels, lie. They lie about anything it serves them to lie about.

So much then for the myth of the faultless woman—which is one you’re unlikely to find debunked on Jezebel.com.

The question this post considers is that if women are willing to lie to cops and judges (and they are, as are men), why pussyfoot and not just accuse any target of malice of sexual violation? It’s a potent allegation.

Well, it comes with a host of complications is why. In civil court, a false (or possibly real but baseless) claim of fear is all it takes to procure a protective order and turn a person’s life on its head. It can win a perfect stranger the exclusive entitlement to a person’s home and property while possibly landing him or her in jail. Unless a lying plaintiff aims to drive her victim to suicide, falsely alleging rape is overkill and pointlessly invites exposure.

A criminal claim of rape, on the other hand, both figuratively and literally invites strangers’ noses into uncomfortable places. Government wants specifics and evidence. Girlfriends and family members may gently inquire about details.

This is the kind of claim, if false, that requires a great deal of determination to pull off and carries a heavy risk of tattering under scrutiny.

Let’s not deceive ourselves that unscrupulous women are too virtuous to lie about rape. Rather let’s be honest: Lying about rape is demanding and dicey.

That said, it’s really not that tough in civil court, which doesn’t require “proof beyond a reasonable doubt.” In civil court, it’s just he-said-she-said. A defendant doesn’t even have to be heard in court for a “default” judgment to be entered against him. And even if he does appear, there’s no guarantee the plaintiff will be required to or that the accused will have the opportunity to cross-examine her, making a mockery of the adversarial process. A judgment in civil court doesn’t represent a finding that a rape was committed, necessarily, but it’s not a denial that a rape was committed, either, and the accusation is what’s preserved.

The injustice is glaring but note that it’s legally no worse than that any other allegation that works can be made and can accomplish the same damaging consequences.

People have to live with this shit. Their families have to live with this shit. Their children have to live with this shit.

This is what men’s rights advocates would be saying if there were anyone who would listen or have the least capacity to comprehend the breadth and depth of injuries that instead tend to be casually batted aside (while accounts of groping or sexual harassment are gravely highlighted on NPR).

Most of these men have not been accused of rape, which doesn’t mean they couldn’t also have been accused of rape had their accusers been gutsy enough or that it wasn’t implied (point 1). And it doesn’t mean they have nothing to complain about (point 2).

Injustice is always something to complain about (point 3).

*I think I even read that on a liberal yard sign.

The author of this post recently chipped off a bit more of his dilapidated front teeth on the brim of the coffee mug that’s virtually wedded to his hands. After years of demoralization in the courts, he depends on external energy sources to triumph over inertia and earn a living. The occasion of the damage was his running to give a stylist-in-training a $5 tip for an $8 haircut. This is where one can easily find himself after 12 years of abuse in the court and by the court, whose handsomely paid judges almost invariably excuse themselves for their arrogance, their misperceptions, their shortsightedness, and their professional failings. The exercise of dominance over the lives of others should at the very least demand scrupulous care. This post is inspired by its utter absence.

The number of thousands of dollars paid to Arizona judges and judicial administrators each year

I occasionally corresponded with UCLA Law Prof. Eugene Volokh in 2016 and 2017 when he consulted with my attorneys in advance of an appeal of numerous unlawful “prior restraints” imposed upon my freedom of speech in 2013 (by a judge who has since been shamed off the bench), and Prof. Volokh was very charitable with his time.

UCLA Law Prof. Eugene Volokh before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in 2017

I don’t know him well enough to bother him with inquiries about his classroom curricula, though. So I don’t really know the answer to the question posed in this post’s title.

I can, however, surmise.

Prof. Volokh, aided by a gifted law student, Alison Boaz, invested more than a little time in preparing an amicus brief to the Arizona Court of Appeals on my behalf. This is a very big deal. I know, too, that Prof. Volokh is a brilliant jurist, that his arguments to the court were unassailable, and that the court’s disregard for those arguments (which weren’t even mentioned) is a symptom of crap practice that I believe to be pandemic to the point of institutionalization.

(I have no doubt Prof. Volokh would express qualms he had more circumspectly—neutrality comes harder for those who’ve been in the defendant’s seat—but I don’t think he would find much fault with my characterization insofar as it concerns respect for liberties guaranteed by the First Amendment.)

Arizona Chief Justice Scott Bales, who has beautiful teeth, a state that a $160,000 salary and a $130,000/year pension should guarantee he always enjoys

Certainly one way Prof. Volokh could recover on his investment in my case would be to use the ruling returned by Arizona Court of Appeals judges Philip Espinosa, Sean Brearcliffe, and Christopher Staring to show his First Amendment students what they’re up against, namely, recalcitrantly erroneous (i.e., crap) practice by state courts.

In the last post, I shared some informed impressions of some of the judges who’ve weighed in against me over the past 13 years. It’s mostly been crap practice all the way up the ladder, and I know from years of correspondence with others all over the country (and abroad) that my experience is unexceptional.

In 2017, much more knowledgeable after a decade of legal abuse, I succeeded in having two Tucson municipal court judges verbally spanked for abuse of discretion (which roughly translates to judicial abuse of authority), and one of them, Judge Wendy Million, could be said to have literally written the book on protective order law (which will only seem ironic to those who’ve never found themselves in its crosshairs). Judges in this arena can’t even be relied upon to observe statutory requirements let alone comport themselves with anything approaching rigor, impartiality, or politeness.

People like Arizona Supreme Court Chief Justice W. Scott Bales, who has backed a proposal to raise judicial salaries by $15,000, shouldn’t be concerned, in this writer’s opinion, about whether judges are getting paid lavishly enough (already $100,000 to $160,000 per plus lifetime pensions that alone exceed the yearly incomes of most of those whose lives they impact and whose labor provides for their salaries).

What people like Scott Bales should be concerned about is whether judges are actually earning anywhere near their purported value.

*The professor referenced in this post, Eugene Volokh, is a renowned constitutional scholar, and his blog, The Volokh Conspiracy, which is listed by the ABA Journal in its “Blawg 100 Hall of Fame,” appears on the website of The Washington Post. I discerned no hint that the Arizona Court of Appeals judges also referenced in this post had ever heard his name. Prof. Volokh addressed the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee the same year he addressed them.

TALKING BACK to restraining orders

THEY’RE NOT JUST ABUSED BUT ABUSIVE

Tag protective order law

Is the Policy of Arizona’s Courts under Chief Justice Scott Bales Taught at UCLA as an Example of State Judges’ Contempt for the Constitution (and Bad Practice Generally)?