• @conditional_soup@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    3218 months ago

    Day 30 of being fucking bewildered that I, a non-voting member of my city’s bicycle commission, have stricter ethical laws binding me than those for judges and politicians.

    • @halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      1078 months ago

      It’s because the politicians make the laws. And they want their judges on the bench to rule in their favor. Laws forcing judges to recuse don’t help the politicians ignore the laws they find inconvenient.

    • @rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      398 months ago

      If you can get the street sweeper to get the bike lane near my house I’ll give you a half a can of chamois butt’r

      • @conditional_soup@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        228 months ago

        I’m trying to secure wholly separate bike lanes, or at least flexi-posts, anything but a sharrow or a line of paint. Tbh, I dunno how that’ll work with a street sweeper.

    • @Asafum@feddit.nl
      link
      fedilink
      English
      18 months ago

      Because the rules governing you were made recently. The rules our government works off of were made by the most naive idiots 200 years ago… I can’t believe they were so stupid to think that the honor system was a good idea…

  • @PrincessLeiasCat@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    2158 months ago

    This is fucking bullshit.

    I review science proposals for the government that come from private companies responding to an announcement about grants for specific kinds of technology.

    I have to submit a financial form every year disclosing stock that I own to make sure there are no conflicts of interest.

    The fact that is guy is allowed to shrug and say “nah” and just keep going blows my mind.

  • @Telorand@reddthat.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    1418 months ago

    Gotta love that Conservative mantra:

    • I get to do what I want.
    • You have to do what I say.

    The judge doesn’t have to recuse himself, because <insert specious reasoning> and fuck you. Also, he’s the big, bad judge, and he’s going to chide the plaintiff’s attorneys in a show of dominance.

    Texas is basically a Conservative rubber stamp, at this point. I hope we get Kamala/Walz, because we desperately need judicial reform.

    • @OlinOfTheHillPeople@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      778 months ago

      Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

    • @Kalysta@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      38 months ago

      If this is the court i’m thinking of, this circuit is already trying to mandate a better lottery system because of shopping for this particular judge.

    • @Asafum@feddit.nl
      link
      fedilink
      English
      488 months ago

      Our founding morons were the most naive idiots in existence… Sure they lived in a different time, but how could you possibly look back at any time in history and say “it’s ok only moral people get positions of power so we’ll play by the honor system.”

      • @olympicyes@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        168 months ago

        The Founding Fathers could not have anticipated that honor and shame would be totally foreign concepts to a sitting president and congress. In the 1790s for example, pistol duels were the leading cause of death for US navy midshipmen.

      • Uriel238 [all pronouns]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        128 months ago

        This is curiously noteworthy in The Federalist Papers. Hamilton puts a lot of faith in the human conscience all the while pointing out that if men were angels we would need no government noting that we do need checks and balances.

        The Electoral College is a dead giveaway that they didn’t trust the public to self-govern, and hence there needed to be back doors where gentlemen (men of means) could override the system should someone like Jimmy Carter get elected.

      • @technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        88 months ago

        The founding slavers were literally slavers. Their goal was simply to maintain their violent control. It’s worked great for 200+ years.

      • @Kalysta@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        58 months ago

        Because they were the progressive ideologues of their day.

        And were also often stymied from giving the constitution real teeth by the big slave holding states as well, don’t forget. The right wing was doing shenanigans at the very founding of the country.

        • @Asafum@feddit.nl
          link
          fedilink
          English
          28 months ago

          The right wing was doing shenanigans at the very founding of the country.

          It’s almost like we’re literally never going to not be dealing with their bullshit…

      • @Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        38 months ago

        They had faith that people who got to power would use it in good faith (and get there in good faith) while or after having fought a war with a power that they believed wasn’t being used in good faith.

        I just wonder how much longer this system can hold up for. It’s got different parts that conflict with itself but different people value different parts of it to the point that getting rid of any of it is going to be, ah, a bit rough.

  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    848 months ago

    The reason to have courts at all is to have an alternative to violence to resolve conflicts of interest.

    This is why black market negotiations are done featuring a lot of well-armed guys.

    This is also why the public needs to be able to trust the courts are impartial.

    This is why even the appearance of misconduct cannot be tolerated.

    So at the time your goons kill their goons to resolve the dispute, kill the corrupt judge as well, because its his fault you had to resort to violence in the first place.

      • Uriel238 [all pronouns]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        48 months ago

        When McConnell blocked the confirmation of Garland to SCOTUS, he also blocked over a hundred federal bench appointments, so many, that the Federalist Society was struggling to find enough to fill the seats, so yes they were scraping the dregs at the bottom of the conservative barrel. So in only follows that a lot of conservative appointments were given a position above their level of competence.

        Curiously, in movements like the white Christian nationalist movement that had been commandeering the GOP since the 1970s (which is not to say they were much better before that), the shift from principle to personal loyalty results in brain drain, since competent officers with dissenting opinions are swapped out for incompetent ideologists. The German Reich also had to deal with this kind of problem.

  • @skozzii@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    818 months ago

    Right wingers in the US have decided to collectively do whatever the hell they want.

  • @jayandp@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    398 months ago

    There needs to be a ban on any judge presiding over something within at least one or two degrees of separation of relationships with said judge. Any direct relationships, either direct relatives or friends or direct investment, and possibly second degree relationships like a relative or friend being invested, or a relative/friend of a relative/friend.

  • NotNotMike
    link
    fedilink
    English
    298 months ago

    For anyone confused by this headline, there are two trials this judge is considering for X

    [O’Conner] was overseeing two lawsuits filed by X and recused himself from only one of the cases.

    This isn’t the new case about the “illegal boycott” O’Conner has recused himself from that trial (likely) because he also owns stock in Unilever, one of the defending companies

    • @towerful@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      English
      98 months ago

      Oh, so if a judge has a vested interest in more than 1 party, then they should recuse themselves from the case.
      Good to know where the line is

      • stankmut
        link
        fedilink
        English
        4
        edit-2
        8 months ago

        The judge’s argument is that Tesla, which he owns stock in, isn’t a party in the suit against Media Matters, just X. It’s a pretty stupid argument, but he wouldn’t be able to hurt Media Matters if he recused himself.

      • NotNotMike
        link
        fedilink
        English
        28 months ago

        Yeah the news of this non-recusal came too soon after the other recusal. Very confusing timeline if you didn’t know there were two cases

    • @Kalysta@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      38 months ago

      Judges really shouldn’t be allowed to own stock. And if they do it should be blind trusts.

  • @Treczoks@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    218 months ago

    Does the American law still not have an auto-recuse system that does not even put you on a case of a company you own stock of?

    • @Kalysta@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      28 months ago

      It does not. You need to ask a judge to recuse themselves and if that doesn’t work ask the court above them to reassign. If they even take it up. Usually the biased judge hears the case then it gets appealed. Which wastes a lot of time and a lot of money.

        • @chaogomu@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          28 months ago

          The Texas way. This lawsuit is pure SLAPP. Texas does not have an anti-SLAPP law, and Musk went judge shopping for this specific asshole.

  • @Sam_Bass@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    148 months ago

    There needs to be a system in place that removes any judge from presiding over a conflicting case

  • @Kalysta@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    98 months ago

    Of course it’s fucking Reed O’connor

    This will get overturned on appeal. He’s frequently overturned for shit like this.

    • @mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      4
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      how many times do they need to be overturned before it becomes a judicial competency / ethics case?

      because fuck. this guy.

      also see: eileen cannon

  • @exanime@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    78 months ago

    accuses Media Matters of seeking “backdoor recusal.”

    As opposed to the “front door judge shopping” which he clearly does agree with?