Time Frame: Next 24 months, hopefully 2025
START Objectives: Accountability, Treatment of Inmates
I haven’t posted a blog in this series for 45 +/- days intentionally. With all the BOP changes underway, plus DOGE impacts on BOP staffing, my intent was to allow things to settle a bit. And that’s still the plan, even though my list of topics continues to grow again:) This will be my first post since summarizing the first ten posts, and these next ones will go into much more detail on solutions for the issues raised in the first ten blogs.
Ironically my post with Part “X” on 2/10/2025 on accountability for Federal employees- DOJ, prosecutors and judges is a hot topic right now with all the district court judges national injunctions under Trump, so I thought I’d expand on this prior post, with emphasis on judges!
There’s no need to recite the issues in the media here, its everywhere. Judges rulings, by judges approved by the other party, don’t agree with each President’s views/policies trying to be implemented, and even Congress’s so they should be ignored, or to an extreme, even impeached. We all know impeachment means 67 US Senators, an almost impossible standard to attain. I recently saw there have been like 14 or so judge impeachments in almost 250 years, so clearly requires something way beyond a “bad ruling”. We can debate which president’s are a greater risk to democracy by ignoring/disobeying court rulings, as they all do as long as I can remember:)
So what’s the surprise here? When Democrats control the US Senate, they “appoint” their judges, Republican’s do the same. Apparently last year, under Democratic control in the US Senate, approximately 265 judges were appointed out of a total 660+/- in the entire country. That’s over 1/3rd!! Think of the turnover of these judges, its almost crazy given they have lifetime appointments.
Setting aside political views, there’s no doubt there is bias, and even incompetence by a few of these judges. They are human after all. Other than the appeal process to overturn a wrong ruling, the only other mechanism is impeachment. My observation is TV commentators/experts or even other judges all the way up to the US Supreme Court Chief Justice, have a view that basically says ” Its ok to allow an appeal to work its slow journey through the appellate process to resolve a judge’s ruling (even from bias , incompetence, or otherwise). Even at the personal cost of damages or incarceration of the person wrongfully damaged or convicted, civil or criminal. Well sitting here writing this from prison, all I can say is” Easy for you to say that sitting where you are”. Its bad enough when its a competent judge who gets overruled, but putting up with everything for an incompetent one?
Personally I agree that appeals have a proper role to play in our system. Any 2 competent legal minds can properly disagree on how a statute applies, or how relevant case law should be interpreted. Even when Assistant US Attorneys stretch their argument to lock down a win for their personal purposes, judges can be misled and make the wrong ruling for an appropriate reason. But appeals shouldn’t be the only remedy, short of impeachment. How about getting fired for incompetence like the rest of the world does?
We can debate the numbers, but its a mathematical fact( normal distribution curve for those wondering) that 5%, if not 10% of the judges are the weakest and most biased and have the highest percentage of overturned rulings. And we ask everyone to to suffer through their ineptness and often years of appeal as a result. Why not address the performance issue, and have the Supreme Court or Congress define a performance review process designed to eliminate just these non performers?
Just yesterday I heard a Congressman introduce a bill to stop district court justices from imposing national injunctions as opposed to limiting them to their district. If they can do that, then they can legislate a performance review process, and have a real solution as opposed to a “whack a mole” version to the issue of the day. My solution is a simple one, takes political bias out of defining performance and the process to determine the poor performing judges based on their behavior:
– Over a 5 year period, measure each District Court judge on how many overturned rulings they have, total amount and % of total
– The judges in the Top 5% of volume of overturned rulings(about 30+/- judges) would immediately be replaced by the US Senate in their normal approval process, eliminating lifetime appointment as a result for those 30 +/-
i)also for judges with more than 15% of their rulings being overturned who would also be replaced
ii) restart the 5 year process every 5 years
I believe something this simple would build accountability into the system for most judges, and be a step toward a performance review as overturned rulings reflect a judges understanding of the law, their ability to analyze and make judgements, their bias, overreach of power and so forth. All topics a performance review would address, and reflected through 5 years of rulings.
I find it fascinating how our politicians can’t come up with something like this that doesn’t pick on a specific person, liberal or conservative judge, just being bi partisan and in a form that would actually pass and become law. If all the energy they spend on TV espousing their views would just get channeled into common sense action like this, we would all be better served, and start making progress toward the BOP SMART Transformation Plan!
