And Who Did Justice Lanzinger Say Gave Her the Idea to Run for the Supreme Court? 'Master Noe'

Justice Judith Ann Lanzinger Inauguration SpeechJan. 7, 2005

Good morning everyone! How wonderful to be here, celebrating this grand occasion in this magnificent room. Dear Chief Justice Moyer, you are very kind to have administered the oath and I appreciate the presence of the Justices, my new colleagues. Governor Taft, what an honor to have you here, especially when you made such generous remarks. To reassure all of you, since the election, my judicial philosophy remains unchanged. Although representatives from the Executive branch, and members of the General Assembly are here, I will NOT be joining either group. As a member of the third branch, I look forward to working along side of them, in the judiciary, to interpret, rather than make or enforce the law.

As you can see, looking around, this is a very personal event for me. I've been amazed by the outpouring of good wishes from all of you. In the audience today there are some very dear old friends --as well as many new friends, including those watching on the webcast. I wish I could name you all individually and certainly want to talk to each of you before the day is over. But I must take time to tell you just a bit about the participants in today's event.

Tom Noe, our Master of Ceremonies today and campaign chair this last year is a wonderful friend. He and Bernadette were the first to suggest that I run for Justice Sweeney's position. I was stunned at the time, but yet now here we are! Thanks for all you have done for me. Thanks also to the FOP which provided our color guard this morning. I'm happy so many of you could be here. Next, Sister Diana Lynn Eckel –She has known me since I was 14 years old and represents a most significant portion of my life. For we were in the convent together and she was my “guardian angel”—the person who showed me the ropes and who was a good friend to me for the 6 years I was there. We've stayed close, even now as she is the Mother Superior of the order. To all the sisters in the audience—welcome. The golden-throated Christine Dever is married to my very first law clerk, Tim. Their son Jack was born on the day I was sworn into Toledo Municipal Court, and their son Tom is my godson—so a special thanks to the Dever family for being here. I'm proud to have someone from northwest Ohio representing the attorneys of the state and no one could do that better than Reg Jackson, a former president of both the Ohio and Toledo Bar Associations. Finally, Father Billian the pastor St. Patrick's Historic, our parish in Toledo as well as a family friend, will provide a concluding blessing. Thanks to all of you, and the many other people who traveled some distance to be here in questionable weather. I'm so glad you did.
Let me note that the young lady who led us in the Pledge of Allegiance is my step-granddaughter, Jordan Spidel. Good job, honey. My family is here, as you saw from the swearing-in itself: this day would be incomplete without them all. Robert, my husband of 37 years is the bearded one with the big smile (that's from knowing no more campaigning for at least 6 years). Of our two children, I have to mention our son Joshua first, because he wasn't able to be at the formal oath taking for the appellate court 2 years ago because he was in Iraq . Fortunately, his tour of duty is complete and he is back to practicing law in Toledo. Our daughter, Mara and her husband Doug Spidel are also Toledo attorneys and brought our grandchildren Jordan, John Robert and Jade Elise with them. Bob's sister Lynn Harman and her son, Luke also are here, but unfortunately we are missing my mother, Dorothy Hodorowski, and my sister, Janice Kruest, who are back in Toledo, due to my mother's health. We do miss them but because of the miracle of modern technology, I'm able to say—Hi mom! Hi Sis! We're fortunate to be able to create a video for them to see later.
Many people said that although I had run for judicial offices for the last 20 years, that they did not know so much about my background until this last year. Well, when you're trying to introduce yourself to the entire state of Ohio and make folks comfortable with you as a candidate for the Supreme Court, you must be willing to share personal information. So “Judge Judy”, the carpenter's daughter and coal-miner's granddaughter, took to the airwaves. Apparently it worked, because as it turns out, two and a half million of my closest friends actually did vote for me.
I'm now joining a line of 143 men and 6 women to become the 150th justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio. What a privilege and what an honor! Especially so, since this is the first judicial inauguration in the renovated Ohio Judicial Center. Little did I know in 1977 after graduating from the University of Toledo College of Law that someday I would have the opportunity to serve Toledo on the municipal court, to serve Lucas County on the court of common pleas and to serve Northwest Ohio on the 6th district court of appeals. Becoming a justice of the Ohio Supreme Court was beyond my wildest imagination or my biggest dream.
Justices, of course can make no promises about how they intend to handle cases. But I can assure you that I'll work hard during this term of office. Because each case is important to the parties, each case will receive my attention and best efforts. I'll try to write logically sound and legally defensible opinions. Joining a collegial bench for this collaborative appellate work will be a delight.
No one ever gets elected alone. To all—campaign coordinators, friends, volunteers, contributors-- who saw me through the last challenging year, many, many thanks. Each person who Tom has introduced has helped me along the way. I must acknowledge my Treasurer, Mark La Place, who kept the campaign on the straight and narrow financially, Brian Hicks and his associates and my two right hand women, Amy Jenkins and Sara Salupo. I've always had fine people to work with me during my years as an attorney and judge. Many of those judges, attorneys and staff are here today—how grand is that! I'm looking forward to the future with Sandy Ringer, Lora Peters and David Harold at my side as well as with all the dedicated employees of the Supreme Court who work in this fabulous building. I know it will be a very good six years.
My prayer for my very first oath taking in 1985 was from the 3 Book of Kings. It was the petition of Solomon, that wise old man: “Lord, give to thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people and discern between good and evil.” These words still have much meaning and I would ask for and would appreciate your continuing prayers so I can be a good justice for all Ohioans. Today is a time for celebration and for gratitude. I'm so glad you all are here. You shared in the effort—now please share in the glory! THANK YOU from my whole heart.
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Corrupt Money Laundering and the Ohio Supreme Court

Article published Saturday, February 25, 2006Ex-Taft aides fined for ethics breaches2 didn't disclose cash from Noe
H. Douglas Talbott ( THE BLADE/DAVE ZAPOTOSKY )
Zoom Photo ReprintsBy JOSHUA BOAK BLADE STAFF WRITER
COLUMBUS — A pair of former high-ranking aides to Gov. Bob Taft and former Gov. George Voinovich were convicted yesterday for not publicly disclosing thousands of dollars they received from Republican fund-raiser Tom Noe, who was indicted last week for stealing from a $50 million state rare-coin investment.As members of state boards, Columbus lobbyists Doug Moormann, 38, and H. Douglas Talbott, 41, were obligated to inform the Ohio Ethics Commission about the cash they received from Mr. Noe. Additionally, Mr. Talbott illegally laundered money from Mr. Noe to the campaigns of three Ohio Supreme Court justices.An investigator yesterday said the task force is examining whether the $39,000 that Mr. Noe gave Mr. Talbott in a 2002 loan to buy a vacation home in Lakeside came from the state’s rare-coin investment.
Doug Moormann
Zoom Photo Reprints
On Aug. 29, 2002, Mr. Noe wrote a check for $100,000 from Capital Coin II to his Vintage Coins accounts for “coin purchases.”On that same day, Mr. Noe wrote a $35,000 check on the Vintage Coins account to Larry Schottenstein, a Columbus real-estate executive who sold the Lakeside home that Mr. Talbott bought.Mr. Talbott also received a $4,000 check from Mr. Noe’s Vintage Coin, and he told investigators that he wrote a check two days later to Mr. Schottenstein in the same amount. He said the $39,000 from Mr. Noe was for a down payment on the Lakeside home, and Mr. Schottenstein last year told The Blade that he did not remember details about the checks. In an agreement with prosecutors, Mr. Moormann and Mr. Talbott pleaded “no contest,” just as the governor and two of his other former aides, Brian Hicks and Cherie Carroll, pleaded last summer after being charged with ethics violations for accepting gifts from Mr. Noe.Judge Scott VanDerKarr of the Franklin County Municipal Court found Mr. Moormann guilty and fined the governor’s former assistant for criminal justice $1,000 and ordered him to deposit $5,000 he took from Mr. Noe into an escrow account.Mr. Talbott, who managed the governor’s appointments to state commissions until 2000, was found guilty and fined $3,960 for three misdemeanors and directed to put place the $39,000 he received from the coin dealer into an escrow account.“I apologize for any harm this may have caused, and I assure you that I won’t be in this courtroom or any other courtroom,” he said, forgetting to add the word “again” to his statement.With a $1,960 payment from Mr. Noe in 2004, Mr. Talbott laundered campaign donations to three Ohio Supreme Court justices: Chief Justice Thomas Moyer, Terrence O’Donnell, and Judith Lanzinger. Judge VanDerKarr fined him $1,960 for that offense.The $39,000 payment that Mr. Noe made to Mr. Talbott to buy a Lakeside vacation home was supposed to be a loan, but Mr. Noe never collected any payments from Mr. Talbott, only asking for repayment last May after The Blade reported about the loan and the state began to examine Mr. Noe’s management of the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation’s rare-coin funds, according to investigative documents. He was fined $1,000. Required to disclose gifts worth more than $75, Mr. Talbott also failed to list the $160 in dinners he ate at Morton’s Steakhouse in Columbus as a member of the “Noe Supper Club.” A $1,000 fine resulted.“At the time, Noe was not trying to lobby him at all,” said Roger Synenberg, Mr. Talbott’s lawyer, outside the courtroom. “He wasn’t asking for any favors. They were just friends.”Minutes before Mr. Talbott’s conviction, Mr. Moormann answered questions from the judge.“You understand I can give you up to 180 days in jail?” Judge VanDerKarr asked.“Yes, sir,” Mr. Moormann responded, nodding his head.Almost two weeks after Mr. Moormann joined the state’s Transportation Review Advisory Committee on Aug. 17, 2004, Mr. Noe gave him a $5,000 loan to help him pay dual mortgage payments.He had recently moved to the Cincinnati area, but had not yet sold his home in the Columbus area.Mr. Moormann, now an executive with the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce, failed to report the loan, resulting in the misdemeanor ethics charge. The loan was never repaid to Mr. Noe.After being sentenced, Mr. Moormann and his lawyer declined to comment. “These folks are folks who have been around political processes,” said David Freel, the ethics commission’s executive director. “They know what they have to disclose. And disclosure is important because that is how you, and the public, knows who is trying to influence policy.”Mark Rickel, a spokesman for Mr. Taft, said the governor continues to be “disappointed” by the actions of his former staff members.“It is what it is,” Mr. Rickel said. “He expected everyone and expects everyone to work with the highest level of integrity.”Blade staff writer Steve Eder contributed to this report.

New York Times Article On Ohio Supreme Court Ties to Corporate Money Trails

Campaign Cash Mirrors a High Court's Rulings
Corporate-friendly Ohio Supreme Court raises questions of integrity

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By Adam Liptak and Janet Roberts First Published by the New York Times, October 1, 2006
COLUMBUS, Ohio — In the fall of 2004, Terrence O'Donnell, an affable judge with the placid good looks of a small-market news anchor, was running hard to keep his seat on the Ohio Supreme Court. He was also considering two important class-action lawsuits that had been argued many months before.

In the weeks before the election, Justice O'Donnell's campaign accepted thousands of dollars from the political action committees of three companies that were defendants in the suits. Two of the cases dealt with defective cars, and one involved a toxic substance. Weeks after winning his race, Justice O'Donnell joined majorities that handed the three companies significant victories.

Justice O'Donnell's conduct was unexceptional. In one of the cases, every justice in the 4-to-3 majority had taken money from affiliates of the companies. None of the dissenters had done so, but they had accepted contributions from lawyers for the plaintiffs.

Thirty-nine states elect judges, and 30 states are holding elections for seats on their highest courts this year. Spending in these races is skyrocketing, with some judges raising $2 million or more for a single campaign. As the amounts rise, questions about whether money is polluting the independence of the judiciary are being fiercely debated across the nation. And nowhere is the battle for judicial seats more ferocious than in Ohio .

An examination of the Ohio Supreme Court by The New York Times found that its justices routinely sat on cases after receiving campaign contributions from the parties involved or from groups that filed supporting briefs. On average, they voted in favor of contributors 70 percent of the time. Justice O'Donnell voted for his contributors 91 percent of the time, the highest rate of any justice on the court.

In the 12 years that were studied, the justices almost never disqualified themselves from hearing their contributors' cases. In the 215 cases with the most direct potential conflicts of interest, justices recused themselves just 9 times.

Even sitting justices have started to question the current system. “I never felt so much like a hooker down by the bus station in any race I've ever been in as I did in a judicial race,” said Justice Paul E. Pfeifer, a Republican member of the Ohio Supreme Court. “Everyone interested in contributing has very specific interests.”

“They mean to be buying a vote,” Justice Pfeifer added. “Whether they succeed or not, it's hard to say.”

Three recent cases, two in Illinois and one in West Virginia, have put the complaints in sharp focus. Elected justices there recently refused to disqualify themselves from hearing suits in which tens or hundreds of millions of dollars were at stake. The defendants were insurance, tobacco and coal companies whose supporters had spent millions of dollars to help elect the justices.

After a series of big-money judicial contests around the nation, the balance of power in several state high courts has tipped in recent years in favor of corporations and insurance companies.
In the 2002 Ohio judicial election, for example, two candidates won seats that year on the seven-member court after each raised more money than one of the candidates for governor that year.

Corporate Giving Increases Judges are required by codes of judicial ethics to disqualify themselves whenever their impartiality might reasonably be questioned over financial or other conflicts. Even owning a few shares of stock in a defendant's company or seeing a relative's name on a brief generally requires automatic disqualification.

But there is an exception to this strict rule: campaign contributions. Very few judges in the states that elect the members of their highest court view contributions as a reason for disqualification when those contributors appear before them.

Many judges said contributions were so common that recusal would wreak havoc on the system. The standard in the Ohio Supreme Court, its chief justice, Thomas J. Moyer, said, is to recuse only if “sitting on the case is going to be perceived as just totally unfair.”

Duane J. Adams, a plaintiff in one of the class-action suits heard by Justice O'Donnell, concerning defective cars, said he questioned the impartiality of the justices who ruled against him. Mr. Adams had sued DaimlerChrysler under the state's lemon law, and he grew angry when told that the company's political action committee had given money to justices in the majority.

“At the very least, it's a conflict of interest,” Mr. Adams said. “These gentlemen, they should be prosecuted for what I consider is taking a bribe.” He and the other plaintiffs did not contribute, but their lawyers gave to the campaigns of five of the justices.

Precisely what contributors want or get for their money is unclear. Some contributors say they have no agenda beyond ensuring that able and independent judges are elected. Others surely hope to influence the justices' votes in particular cases.

The middle ground, advanced by groups representing business, labor and plaintiffs' lawyers, is to support justices who hold views similar to their own. “Various interests see voting patterns,” Chief Justice Moyer said. The alignment between contributions and votes, he said, is a matter of shared judicial philosophy.

If that is right, contributors are not trying to buy votes in particular cases. But they are trying to buy seats on the court.

And they are succeeding. Not long ago, the Ohio Supreme Court was controlled by liberal justices whose campaigns had been financed in large part by plaintiffs' lawyers and unions. Now that business groups are outspending their adversaries, the court has become dominated by more conservative justices. And the court's decisions are no longer markedly sympathetic to people claiming injuries.

Justice O'Donnell, a Republican, won his seat with the help of big contributions from the insurance, finance and medical industries. He is running for re-election this year, and his opponent, Judge William O'Neill, is making contributions an issue.

“We have to stop selling seats on the Ohio Supreme Court like we sell seats on the New York Stock Exchange,” said Judge O'Neill, a Democrat on the 11th District Court of Appeals in Warren, in northeast Ohio. He says he will not accept contributions.

Justice O'Donnell, who has raised more than $3 million since 2000, refused to be interviewed for this article despite more than a half-dozen requests to his campaign, his chambers and the court. In a statement, he said, “Any effort to link judicial campaign contributions received by a judicial campaign committee for major media advertising to case outcomes is misleading and erodes public confidence in the judiciary.”

“A judge,” the statement said, “may fairly and impartially consider matters despite receipt of the campaign contribution by the campaign committee.”

Interest groups play a powerful and generally accepted role in races for legislative and executive positions. But their increasing role in identifying and supporting judicial candidates is at odds with the traditional concept of what judges do.

“The role of the judge and the role of the legislator are completely different,” said William K. Weisenberg, an Ohio State Bar Association official. “You want a legislator to vote the way you would vote. When you go into court, you want someone to listen to the facts and decide the case on the facts and the law. We don't want the umpire calling balls and strikes before the game has begun.”

Influencing the Bench Many judges concede that sitting on their contributors' cases creates the perception that their votes can be bought. But in public, at least, most insist the perception is wrong.

“All the surveys I've seen indicate that generally 75 percent of the people believe that contributions influence decisions,” said Chief Justice Moyer, a Republican. But when asked if contributions played a role in courts' decisions, he said: “I don't believe they do. I know they don't for me.”

That view is not universally held.

“It's pretty hard in big-money races not to take care of your friends,” said Richard Neely, a retired chief justice of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. “It's very hard not to dance with the one who brung you.”

Indeed, according to a survey of 2,428 state court judges conducted in 2002 by Justice at Stake, a judicial reform organization, almost half said campaign contributions influenced decisions. And more than half agreed that “judges should be prohibited from presiding over and ruling in cases where one of the sides has given money to their campaign.”

The Times study explored the influence of money on judicial decision-making by asking two basic questions about the Ohio Supreme Court. How often did it hear cases involving major contributors? And how did justices vote in those cases?

The study considered only cases that were both significant and difficult. It excluded procedural decisions, including whether to hear or reconsider a case. And only divided cases — those in which there was at least one dissent — were considered, because those presented the most contentious legal issues. In the 12 years ended this spring, there were about 1,500 such decisions.

The study looked at contributors who gave $1,000 or more in the six years preceding the decision, the term length for justices.

It also considered, for the most part, only the contributors most directly affected by a ruling: the parties themselves and groups that filed supporting briefs urging the court to rule a certain way.
Contributions from lawyers were excluded from the study's main findings. Lawyers are far more likely than other contributors to give to judges across the ideological spectrum, and — because their firms often handle a wide variety of cases — they generally do not have the intensely focused interest in the outcome of a particular case that their clients do. More than 200 times, moreover, justices sat on cases after receiving contributions from lawyers on both sides.
The court's decisions, the study found, were rife with potential conflicts. In more than 200 of the 1,500 cases, at least one justice cast a vote after receiving a significant campaign contribution. On scores of occasions, the justices' campaigns took contributions after a case involving the contributor was argued and before it was decided — just when conflicts are most visible and pointed.

Contributors did well with those whose campaigns they had financed. Of the 10 justices in the Times study, 6 sided with contributors more than 70 percent of the time. Justice O'Donnell, who has been on the court for only three years and has participated in fewer decisions than most of the justices studied, had the highest rate — 91 percent.

Lawyers who gave money were not nearly as successful. Five justices voted for the positions represented by these contributors half of the time, and the average rate was 55 percent. Recusals in cases involving contributors were all but unheard of.

Six of the seven sitting justices — all except Justice O'Donnell — agreed to interviews for this article, and all said contributions had not affected their decisions.

“There is a lot more to the story than the cold numbers suggest,” said Justice Maureen O'Connor, a Republican who voted for her contributors 74 percent of the time. Some cases are more significant than others, she said. Similarly, she and other justices criticized the decision to omit from the study the court's terse rulings on whether to hear a case at all. Many of these decisions are routine or trivial, however, and the rulings themselves do not contain sufficient information to be readily categorized.

In his statement, Justice O'Donnell said that “selectively screening a limited number of case decisions results in a skewed outcome.” He did not elaborate.

But Justice Pfeifer, who voted for his contributors 69 percent of the time, backed the study's methodology. “I quite frankly can't think of another way,” he said. “You're using the only yardstick that I'd know of that you can use.”

Several justices said they found Ohio's money-fueled judicial elections distasteful and troubling. They pointed out, though, that Ohio law has mechanisms to limit contributions and to insulate justices from contributors, including a ban on personal solicitations by the justices. Some said they tried to avoid learning the identities of their many contributors, though they conceded it could sometimes be unavoidable. Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton, for instance, said she had attended 50 fund-raisers during her last campaign.

None of the justices interviewed suggested that more frequent recusals from contributors' cases would be a positive step rather than a recipe for havoc. Last year, though, five justices did recuse themselves from a case involving a Republican fund-raiser, Thomas W. Noe. They had taken $23,510 from Mr. Noe and his wife. Appeals court judges filled in for the justices.

“It is not necessary for a judge to recuse himself just because an attorney or party has contributed to his campaign,” Chief Justice Moyer said in a statement at the time. “However, this is a high-profile case with political implications and with potential personal consequences for the campaign contributor in question.”

Some legal experts say that recusal should be the rule and not the exception. Indeed, in 1999, the American Bar Association revised its Model Code of Judicial Conduct to require judges to disqualify themselves if they received campaign contributions of a certain amount from a party or its lawyer. But the bar association did not name an amount, leaving it to the states should they adopt the code. No state has adopted it.

Unlike campaign contributions, direct gifts to judges, even relatively small ones, almost always require disqualification.

In 2002, for instance, the Ohio Supreme Court reprimanded a lower-court judge for accepting football tickets from Stuart Banks, a lawyer who had appeared before the judge. Yet three of the justices who issued the reprimand had accepted at least $1,000 each in contributions from Mr. Banks in the previous 10 years. Those same justices also sat on several cases in which Mr. Banks appeared before them.

Ruling on a Lemon LawFrom the day he leased it in 1996, when it leaked transmission fluid all over the garage, Duane J. Adams's Dodge Caravan was nothing but trouble.

“My wife went to start it at the grocery store, and the battery blew up,” Mr. Adams said. “We didn't feel safe in it.”

Mr. Adams invoked Ohio's tough lemon law, which calls for a refund for defective cars. DaimlerChrysler took the car back after an arbitration found the car defective but deducted a $6,000 “mileage fee.”
Mr. Adams and other Ohio car buyers filed a class-action lawsuit against three car companies that routinely imposed such mileage fees in settlements and arbitrations. Drawing on a 1996 appeals court decision that banned the fees and the fact that the Ohio Legislature had rejected such fees when it enacted the law, an appeals court allowed the case to go forward in 2003.
In the first week of November 2004, while the case was pending in the Ohio Supreme Court, the political action committee of DaimlerChrysler, a defendant, gave $1,000 each to the election campaigns of Chief Justice Moyer and Justice O'Donnell. Two months earlier, the committee of a second defendant, Ford, gave those same justices $500 apiece. From 2000, when the suit was filed, to 2004, when it was decided, the affiliates of the three companies gave $15,000 to four of the justices on the case.

Still, all four of the justices continued to sit on the case, and all of them were in the majority in the 4-to-3 decision issued on Nov. 10, 2004, just days after the last set of DaimlerChrysler contributions.

The justices ruled that the plaintiffs had voluntarily accepted settlement offers or arbitration awards with the mileage fee deducted. The ban on the fees applied only to lawsuits filed in court and not disputes resolved less formally, the majority said.

The three dissenting justices said the majority's ruling gave the plaintiffs an impossible choice: to pursue a lawsuit that could cost more than the car itself or to accept the reduced sum.
Elaine Lutz, a spokeswoman for DaimlerChrysler, defended the company's actions. “The contributions that companies' PAC's make are driven by the campaign calendar, not the judicial calendar,” Ms. Lutz said. Candidates for the court may accept contributions for about a year before an election and four months afterward.

Lawyers for Ford also said it complied with Ohio law. “By definition,” said one of the lawyers, John Beisner, “if you have an elective system, the judges are going to go to those with the greatest interest in the system to get their contributions.”

Car company lawyers said the contributions were merely an effort to level the field against big-spending plaintiffs' firms. In the lemon-law case, though, the overall contributions were tilted heavily in favor of the companies and their own lawyers.
Mr. Adams and the other named plaintiffs gave no money to the justices. While the case proceeded, their lawyers contributed about $12,000 to five of the seven justices in the case, dividing their money roughly evenly between a justice who voted for them and several who voted against them. The law firms representing the companies gave only to the justices in the majority, for a total of more than $115,000.

That was consistent with national trends. “The current wars are epic battles between businesses and trial lawyers,” said Bert Brandenburg, the executive director of Justice at Stake. “Over the past half-decade, business groups are outraising and outspending trial lawyers.”

A week after the lemon-law case was decided, the court announced another ruling in favor of a business. This one halted a class action to support the medical monitoring of workers who had been exposed to beryllium, a potentially toxic substance. The vote was 5 to 2. Employees and the political action committee of the parent company of the defendant, Brush Wellman, gave a total of $5,700 to four justices, more than $2,600 of it after the case was argued and before it was decided. All four were in the majority.

Patrick Carpenter, a spokesman for Brush Wellman, said its political action committee “contributes to deserving candidates in the interest of advancing good government” and noted that the workers' lawyers had also given to the justices. The lawyers gave about $20,000 to several justices, though most voted against the workers. Mr. Carpenter also said the company had lost a 2002 decision by a 4-to-3 vote, before the court's conservative wing took over.
Michael Fincher, a 48-year-old roofer who was a plaintiff in the beryllium suit, said the contributions meant he had not received impartial justice. “I don't think it's appropriate, period,” Mr. Fincher said.

Screening the CandidatesBusiness groups have turned picking potential justices into an art.
“They study very carefully the field of potential candidates, really studying their backgrounds and what makes them tick, and picking a person who is liable to be leaning their way,” said Justice Pfeifer, who has shown an independent streak in his 14 years on the court. He did not name names.

Justice O'Donnell's campaign materials say he is “rooted in law enforcement” as the son a Cleveland police officer. They also note that he served as a law clerk and taught elementary school students and paralegals. In 20 years on lower courts before his appointment to the Supreme Court in May 2003, he created a long paper trail of conservative decisions. On the Supreme Court, he has helped consolidate its transformation from a court that routinely ruled against corporations and insurance companies to one quite friendly to business interests.

In 2004, running to complete the six-year term to which he had been appointed, Justice O'Donnell had a million-dollar advantage over his opponent that led to an Election Day rout.
Now that same opponent, Judge O'Neill, is back for a rematch. His campaign slogan: “No money from nobody.”

Contributing to candidates for states' highest courts can be money well spent in at least one sense: the courts are very powerful. They have the last word on most of the issues that come before them. The United States Supreme Court has no jurisdiction over cases that present pure questions of state law, and in any event it hears only about 80 cases a year.
The states use various methods to choose their judges. The approaches are often some combination of nominating commissions, governors' and legislative action, and popular voting, including partisan contests and retention elections. Political machines still play a role in some states. In the federal system, by contrast, judges are appointed by the president, confirmed by the Senate and awarded lifelong tenure.

“Although there may be no good method of selecting and retaining judges, there is a worst method, and Ohio is among the states to have found it,” Paul D. Carrington and Adam R. Long wrote in a 2002 study of the Ohio Supreme Court in the law review of Capital University here in Columbus. “That worst method is one in which judges qualify for their jobs by raising very large sums of money from lawyers, litigants and special interest groups, and retain their offices only by continuing to raise such funds.” The problem, the authors found, is not a new one, but one that grows with the sums involved.

Ohio started electing judges in 1851, and the system seems unlikely to change. Voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposed return to an appointive system in 1987. In the 1980's, a campaign for a seat on the Ohio Supreme Court cost $100,000, compared with the $2 million a candidate may raise and spend these days.

Much of the recent spending came from business groups furious with what they called a liberal “Gang of Four” on the court after a pair of 1999 decisions. One of the decisions struck down a law revising the treatment of injury cases. The other interpreted employers' insurance policies broadly to cover some off-the-job injuries.

In 2000, business groups mounted a multimillion-dollar campaign to unseat Justice Alice Robie Resnick, a Democrat who wrote the first decision and joined the second. One advertisement showed a female judge switching her vote after someone dropped a bag of money on her desk.
Her opponent was Judge O'Donnell. He refused to denounce the attack advertisements, which seemed to backfire with voters. Justice Resnick won the election with 57 percent of the vote.
From that election on, “Ohio became a poster child for everything that was wrong with judicial elections,” said Mr. Weisenberg, the Ohio State Bar Association official.
Money poured in, from political parties, from trial lawyers and especially from business interests. Contributions from people and entities affiliated with the finance and insurance industries totaled more than $800,000 in 2004. Doctors and the health care industry contributed more than $440,000.

The Balance of Power ShiftsInterest groups on the other side give, too, and the justices they support overwhelmingly vote their way. But Justice Pfeifer says the balance of financial power has shifted to business groups.

“I don't care how well a trial lawyer does or how big a pot a labor union has,” he said, “they can't begin to match the business corporations. It's not a fair fight.”

Justice Stratton, a Republican, said the recent contributions from business groups were a predictable consequence of a series of rulings “very strongly in favor of trial lawyers.”
“You only have the big money coming out,” she said, “when the court has swung too much to the left or to the right.”

In 2002, Lt. Gov. Maureen O'Connor, a Republican, won a seat on the court, replacing a more liberal Republican justice and altering the balance. Her campaign took more than $330,000 from affiliates of insurance companies and medical groups. Not long after she joined the court, Justice O'Connor wrote the opinion that overruled the 1999 insurance decision. Only four years after the court ruled that employers' insurance policies covered many off-the-job injuries, it reversed course. “It serves no valid purpose to allow incorrect opinions to remain in the body of our law,” Justice O'Connor wrote for the majority. The vote was 4 to 3.

The shift in personnel had a prompt impact on other cases, too. Since then, law firms that work mostly for plaintiffs have fared poorly in the court. A look at a sample of 14 big plaintiffs' firms showed that they won 64 percent of the cases in the study before 2003. In the next three years, after the rise of the court's conservative wing, their success rate dropped to 17 percent. Since 1995, Ohio has imposed campaign contribution limits. They are $3,000 from individuals and $5,500 from organizations for each judicial election. Primary and general elections are counted separately.

A Critic Takes On the System But, depending on how donations from individuals and political action committees are counted, the limits do not stop some businesses from making very large aggregate contributions. Affiliates, employees, officers and directors of the Cincinnati Insurance Company, for instance, gave more than $200,000 to Ohio Supreme Court candidates from 1998 through 2004.

Joan Shevchik, a spokeswoman for the parent company of Cincinnati Insurance, Cincinnati Financial Corporation, cited the effort to overturn the 1999 decision as a reason for the contributions, but emphasized that the corporation itself gave nothing. “As insurance professionals,” she said, “each of us sees up close the immediate impact that the Ohio Supreme Court has on the industry, our company and our policyholders.”

There is a small printing press in the garage of Judge O'Neill. In the evenings, he and his children produce fliers for a long-shot no-money campaign for Justice O'Donnell's seat on the Ohio Supreme Court.

“We're going to do a million pieces for $4,000 from my pocket,” Judge O'Neill said, explaining that he will not accept a penny in contributions. Even some of his supporters view his effort as quixotic, notwithstanding the higher ratings Judge O'Neill gets from many Ohio bar associations.
“They're out soliciting the next million dollars to beat me,” he said. “The insurance industry, the manufacturers and now the doctors treat the Ohio Supreme Court as a personal piece of property.”

Justice Resnick, the last Democrat on the court, is retiring this year, and her seat is also open, making an all-Republican court next year a distinct possibility.

Marc Dann, a Democratic state senator running for attorney general, said Judge O'Neill's strategy might have been driven by necessity as well as principle.

“Best case,” Mr. Dann said, “maybe he goes to the plaintiff's bar and labor unions, and maybe he raises $300,000. To do a good week of TV in Ohio is $750,000.”

Judge O'Neill's assertion that seats on the Supreme Court are for sale infuriates many in the legal establishment in Ohio, and in July 2004 the Disciplinary Counsel of the Ohio Supreme Court began an investigation into whether Judge O'Neill had violated judicial ethics by making similar statements in the last campaign.

Judge O'Neill laughed when asked if the investigation worried him.
“I am a Vietnam veteran, and I lost my wife 10 years ago,” he said. “I raised four kids by myself. When you talk about fear, I fear big things in life. Being hauled before a disciplinary counsel does not qualify.”

For the time being, a federal judge has suspended the investigation on First Amendment grounds. If the Ohio Legislature is troubled by Judge O'Neill's conduct, the federal judge, Ann Aldrich wrote, “the proper solution is to stop electing judges and make state judgeships appointed offices.”

Judge O'Neill disagreed. He likes elections, he said.
“We have more authority over people's lives than anyone else in elected office,” he said. “We decide who goes to jail and who gets out of jail. We decide what happens to your life savings after you die. We decide whether or not you will be permitted to finish raising your child. I can't think of any other industry that has a more profound impact on people's lives. And it is arrogant at best that some committee should make this appointment.”

But Chief Justice Moyer said the flaws in Ohio 's approach were the product of elections.
“In a perfect world,” he said, “you would have justices being selected not based on the amount of money their campaign committees can raise from various interests, but on their character and record — and somewhat on judicial philosophy, certainly, but in a more abstract way.”

Adam Liptak reported from Columbus, Ohio, and New York, and Janet Roberts reported from New York. Mona Houck contributed reporting from New York.
© 2006 New York Times

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White Supremecy Council of Ohio

Today, in Ohio, we are experiencing what the African Americans in the south
experienced in the 1900's, after slavery was supposedly demolished.

We have a court which has yet in our time to have a single black member ever
serving on it

The politics of this situation is merely reflective of how power, real political power in the
North and particulary in a major bellweather state like Ohio, is truly retrogade.

This has only become increasingly and painfully obvious that Ohio's politics
are today, more reflective of a culture that is deeply mired in the retarded historical
past than it is real, genuine and modern. We have a court which is clearly dominated
by white males and females who are extremely conservative who have ties to shadow
corporate and special interest fund raisers and even some members who have
ties to latent white supremecy groups who operate in the dark in powerful circles
in Ohio.

We have a supreme court which also maintains its political dominance and consistency
thru major corporate interests and large corporate law firms who operate with powerful
agendas for the citizens and policies of the State of Ohio.

There is no relief in sight either, politically, despite the Democratic victory in last
years's Governor's race.

The Ohio democractic party is so weak statewide, that even when they caputured the governors and two other significant elected statewide offices, they could not even get a highly
respected, well known and very exprienced and former Columbus city councilman elected
over that of a very out of the way, unknown minor republican former legislator
from severely depressed Lima Ohio area of the state, who has questionable ties to
white supremecy groups in northwest Ohio.

Beyond race and the politics of an era which belongs to a historical past of America,
the Supreme Court of Ohio now operates with a full panel [all seven] of its justices who are rock ribed republican and white.

They do not reflect the state nor its true genuine demographics much less its progressive
portion of the electorate.

The Supreme Court of Ohio operates on a very narrow political agenda: to protect and serve like any good cop, the best interests of those who hold concentrated wealth and power and to further the interests of those who control the money game and the legal and political system for their narrowly drawn political and social and economic interests.

This is not exactly earth shaking news for the State of Ohio. But what is odd, is just like the
Bush administration has been called out not for being a conservative or republican administration only, but rather for its extreme excesses in many areas of its policy and real 'applied politics' of a particular and expressly extreme right wing agenda which seems to generate more within the Board rooms of a few idealogical driven right wing think tanks and
from within corporate Board rooms, than that within the office of the people that they were elected to hold and serve.

The same is true of the present all white, conservative and extremely elitist present
Ohio Supreme Court.

The have demonstrated, that not only do they often make decisions based on the amount of funds donated to their campaigns by the larger corporate interests when they have actual cases pending before them, they also have clearly demonstrate that they are quite capable of eliminating their potential legal and political opponents in the most severe and rude fashion, ignoring the rule of law, by direct engagement of those who have dared to differ with their donor's interests and their own conservative, corporate right wing agenda and juridprudence.

Oftentimes, the story can get lost in the details but the truth doesn't die away or necessarily fade away even when buried in the vault of lies and deception, that only such a high court can itself create and then place within.

They do this, oftentimes, to the individual judicial or long and distinguish and hard earned solo legal career in as if he or she were being placed inside a gulag or dissenter's prison cell inside the old soviet system.

This present Court lead by Chief Justice from small very white and otherwise distant area of the state originally, has engaged at times, in extrememely personal politics, sometimes, in ways that are simply mind boggling and they do it in a manner which evinces the hypocrisy of their professed goals and their so called "high moral aims" for the profession of law. They make a mockery of something called the Due process of law and what many today are calling the
'rule of law'.

This same 'chief' was put into office by powerful insurance and corporate law firms and interests over twenty years ago. He has now acheived similar "parity" for the rest of the seats on the same court he has administratively led for the better part of two decades. this has had enormous impact on the political make up of the courts's of Ohio and for the entire legal profession in Ohio.

When bad courts, like bad people, use terminology which denotes one thing but actually serves their selfish and highly concentrated and narrow powerful friends interests alone, they lie. When a court professes in public to singularly concerned for a 'rule of law' and for the
"good of the public" but yet employ methods and systems which deny the most basic tenet of any system founded upon the 'rule of law' to its own members when challenged, something more than a serious disconnect is at work.

This blog, is dedicated to exposing the soft underbelly of this present Ohio white supremecy council and its politics and donor interests, through the posting of very highly detailed articles of major news papers like the New York Times and other very objective and highly researched
publications and reports which are tracking the major donor interests of this present trend among state courts in such critical states like Ohio.

We also will use personal, well documented narratives which have been researched as well as express informed opinion to demonstrate the validity of what is presented herein.

What it intends, is for the public to become aware of, even if its only a minority of people or voters, who dare to challenge this kind of authority and this kind of concentrated wealth and societial control, is for educational and public awareness and to "inform" on the informant driven state.

The public is being treated cynically by such a court given the modern society's demands on its time and ability to focus and concentrate on any one others issues and serious concerns.

when a court speaks thru its journal entries, it is supposedly to have some semblance to a well documented and well balanced, if not researched conclusion and opinion.

The presumption of a such a high court opinion is that it has been, at a minimum, vetted and found to be able to withstand serious scrutiny. Is this in fact, true about many of the opinions of this present court especially as it relates to individual lawyers and some judges whom they have targeted for elimination and retaliation? We are living not in a free and open society as one might thing and its not unlike living in a mexican junta state of being or within a eastern bloc soviet system right here in the north, in the midwest, today, if one cares to seriously and with a dedicated committement to human rights to seriously challenge one's own government and its status quo system of socetial control and its means of "apllied law and order"

The state's dominance in such areas is practically all but absolute as it applies to the individual and to the individual's lawyer and others ....not in some third world but right here in the heart of it all, Ohio. We are in effect, maintaining a very high pretense if we as citizens actually believe the state, any state, but particularly the courts of ohio as a 'state' wishes for the individual to have the ability to hire effective counsel and in turn be able to vindicate his or her most fundamental human rights today, right inside of this all important bell weather state, called Ohio.

Individual human rights to this present court mean very little, no matter what kind of pretense they project inside some of their more moral statements on the subject inside of their public disclosures on the subject and lectures to various legal foundations and groups.

They lie and lie seriously as a government and an important branch of this democratic experiment, particular inside a large northern highly politically relevant State such as Ohio.

These very special interests who have backed such a court and have helped to mold such a court as we now presently enjoy in Ohio are those who are able to not only benefit from its
all white superior position but they also clearly and completely control the conversation in Ohio among all lawyers and judges as to what is reality and what isn't.

Its this last trend within the court system of Ohio [and its not limited to Ohio only but that is another topic] is clearly the most dangerous, if not the most damaging and threatening to
the concept of what it means to be a lawyer operating within a free and open society.

When a young [or middle age or older] american goes to law school, he dreams of the day
he can use his hard earned education and study and all that training, to advocate for the rights of his clients in a way that is not asymetrical with the best ideals of this country.

Its not unlike basic training for the soldier in the military in some ways. The weapons he or she learns to use inside the legal profession are not weapons of a phyisical nature; they are weapons of concepts and words and ideas, often words which have to placed concisely down on paper.

What the solo lawyer represents in effect, is when he or she gets out of school and after the first few years of unsteadiness, when he or she is still learning most of his trade's basics, is a beacon and he or she becomes in legal status in effect, 'a watcher' or "keeper of the gate"

We are become in many ways, like the sentries of old, who watched the city's towers and walls, only within the field of ideas and real genuine applied political doctrine inside these United States.

Its not unlike a dedicated soldier who is watching for anything suspicious that could threaten the well being of the body politic of the people and the masses common good.

We are in fact, not unlike such "forward obervers" and/or 'first responders' in this sense.

At least that was the role conceived of by the founders and the framers and the role of the profession as a whole in the earliest days.

What many today, perceive of lawyers is that which special interests want you to believe about lawyers; they only care about money and they only care about taking from the system, and often, sadly, thru immense pressure, this has become a self fullfilling prophesy of those who have remained within the system, unfortunately today.

But the higher ideals of what every good criminal defense lawyer understands and what many others in the profession know even if they chose not to agree or promote the same, within their own practice or particular befief system, is that the lawyer who defends his client within the bounds of the law in a manner which serves to promote the nations' deep committment to the concept of Due Process and the constitutional safeguards contained in the Bill of Rights and the related reconstruction era amendments to the same; they are engaging in a process which not unlike the military who have served long to protect the interests of the country, they are in fact, engaging in a long and dedicated tradition in this nation and others, which only serves to promote both human dignity and human rights in the best sense of the word.

When such a lawyer becomes a 'break out' lawyer in some regional sense of the term and when he or she begins to distinquish his or herself, inside this profession thru hard work and thru much hard fought victorys, even extreme personal and professional risks, which only those who have fought such battles can truly appreciate...just like any good soldier understands, just how significant such efforts are and what sacrifices are required to win such a battle...

...there comes a time when in our system of present political persuasion that the system either accepts or rejects this kind of lawyer as a model for the profession and the community or 'world' or public to then accept or reject as its ideal also.

Today, we have a system, an all white supreme court which is making a clear decision on what side of that decision they are choosing to hold up to the world and the region and to the legal profession of Ohio as to what they believe they want lawyers to represent and model.

They do this, not from within the time honored sensibilities of the profession itself as if the standards of the profession are the thing that is their standard of justice or measure for making their own determination or judgment of such a lawyer or judge who they find weighed in their balance; they are instead, acting as corporate fascist exhibiting not the will of the people, or the will of those who have long ago established the liberal ideal within the legal profession to stand for the unpopular, the disenfranchised, the accused, the 'apparently' wronged or guilty, and to do the christlike thing and give one's efforts and high training to ensure that such vulnerable ones among us do not become subject to a medevil system of laws and false accusations and star chamber like justice.

What we see, instead, is these very powerful special and narrow interests now have completely dominance over and thru the third branch of government in Ohio; the court is a mere mouthpiece; not for the law itself, but for those powerful economic and worse, narrow political retarding interests, which have completely dominated the last three statewide elections in Ohio, despite the executive branch victories as referenced bove, inside this court system.

In turn, they have completely bought the highest court of this state in order to control and decry and re-mould the "lawyer advocate" in their own eyes, for their own special interests and purposes.

In a word, the "white knight" model of what it means to be an human being and a lawyer who happens to believe not first in the state, nor in social adhesion philosophies, like some eastern religious does, but believes in the very western concept of the individual human being, first, is no longer to be tolerated within this profession in accordance with the express pronouncements and orders and standards evinced by this present modern era Ohio all republican white supreme court.

We have a problem wherein a state supreme court in the north is acting like the worst of the courts ever acted in the by gone, "southern strategy" days; i.e social and political and even at times, economic philosophy within and under their sphere of influence is viewed by these powerful justices and this high court collectively, as something to be utilized AGAINST individuality and individual person hood and the ideal of the progressive or literary if not romantic concept of the progressive dedicated lawyer working on behalf of his individual client who is fighting the system and all the odds that are attendant in engaging in such a fight.

There is no middle ground in this very real and very idealogically driven battle either. The court has made it clear in Ohio today; they want lawyers to end such "silliness" and 'get with it' and "fall in line" and to NOT present ANY problem to authority in Ohio regardless of the justness of the cause or the individual lawyers prior experience or abilities.

We are threatened continously as lawyers inside of the State of Ohio with the loss of face, with the loss of reputations and with the loss of our licenses to practice what we learned years before and thru hard personal and dedicated effort was the very ideal that drove us into this profession in the first instance; the ability to make a difference and do good for others and to uphold the deepest and highest ideals of this american experience; especially where it counts for those who have so often not had this kind of experience within their own private american experience.

We as solo and small firm lawyers know what it means to confront the power of either the state prosecutors who are breathing hot and heavy against an american citizen for whatever reason.

We are also who know first hand just how much power the special interests [i.e. the insurance companies and their friends either on various courts or in various powerful lobbyist positions or in the face of puny state legistlatures who sniff the behind constantly of such same human recreants] have within any given political cycle or given court case or judicial district.

Its the ability to control the hearts and minds of the people, which wins an insurgency or battle in today's world; Iraq is a clear example. We did not learn the lesson amazingly so, in Vietnam. Our present military leaders in Iraq and Washington forgot Vietnam and wanted to forget its lessons so badly, so deeply that they did so again, only to have it repeat their very same mistakes all over again, in this so called war on Iraq.

What is the result, much much damage the that part of the world, to much of america's best policies and interests and national honor and most importantly, the loss always comes home to the individual woman, man and child who pays the utlimate price for such policy failures and lack of wisdom and insight.

The same is true when the Ohio Supreme Court issues falsely drawn and even illigitmately derrived opinions. Becuase this court has such an impact on the tone of all things related to the people's best interests and ability to "petition their government" inside courts of law as any effective democracy requires, what it says and does concerning its own members and the tone it takes towards what it will tolerate among lawyers and what it does in reaching such opinions
is of monumental consequence.

What we are doing here, with this blog is sound a deep warning; hopefully it will be not unlike Jefferson's "fire bell in the night", when finally at age 80, he realized what they in the south had truly done in setting this nation on the course and date with destiny called the civil war, over the 'southern question' and its "particular institution".

What this country is facing is a mircosm of what is happening in real time, with my law license and within the State of Ohio's politically dominante all white republican supreme court; the loss of applied values and balanced understanding towards those who have sacrificed everything for the good of the people if not for the few individuals whom he or she has had the honor to represent, and do it as effectively and strongly as he or she can, is being so discounted by the powerful and the rich and those who ARE the face of not their own 'actualized' values, because in reality , they have none, because they are hollow individuals themselves, but are merely the human mirrors of a far more sinister cabal of powerful special interests who themselves are finite in number.

The ends of what they do, do not justify the means either. They profess they do what they do in fact, for the 'better of the public good' and to 'uphold the standards of the profession'

In fact, what they are doing is ignoring the whole picture, the whole truth and the same for their god's sake; their god is their earthly concerns and their private special interests who dominate this court today in Ohio.

they are small people who have seldomed dreamed of anything approaching what those who they steal their law licenses from; they have only dreamed of holding power but not the dream of freedom of the accused individual facing 25 years in prison, if one doesn't get his or her argument and case down right.

What these have dreamed of is denying the right to have an individual stand against his entire city's police department and all of its officials and brass and say, in a very american and solo gruff and gritty manner; 'you have wrong me and in american this will not be tolerated'

These presently serving the Ohio Supreme Court do NOT understand what its like to truly advocate in such circumstances for such americans who have dared to differe wtih not only the persuasion of the day, but their very city halls.

The lawyer who has done this and done this effectively enought to bring about such social change as humanly possible with God's grace, to his world or his local community ought not be light dismissed by these who have never done or acted or ever even approached doing something like this, in their entire legal careers and sign off on him or her as being a
'liar and a fraud'...

When they do so, they only exhibit the moral worth of themselves and their worthiness as true american elected representatives of the people whom they are supposedly in office to serve.

What a solo lawyer has to endure in order to survive may not be worth the exchange. But when such a lawyer voluntarily and repeatedly sacrifices himself or herself in such deep conversations and debates and individual civil matters as those which he has, it is a very very disappointing and strongly repugnant experience to have members of his own profession state such things that they have about him, when they have never ever taken a walk in his shoes or even ever considered doing the same.

These who make such judgments, are in fact, judging themselves into a world that they themselves do not either truly espouse nor would stand for; the clearly would not live one mintue the life that i have and i have determined to live, regardly of worldly success, in order to fulfill the prophet of Isiah's 'fast'; to lift the burdens off of the oppressed and to let the prisoner go free.

Its not a particularly religous experience either, but one of geniune truthful and faithadherence to the ideal, that people and human rights matter and justice among this
nation ought not be dispensed by and for those who are elite members of some particular political persuasion and economic class.

So, here, as in others, the word begins to get out...and it does, in a way, that are intended
targets of our spiritual weapons, are that which would dare so mis lable and so abuse us, with
the same kind of deliberate indifference that out of control and rogue police officers and cheifs have run their unlawful and repugnant local police departments against american citizens right here in Ohio and the midwest for decades.

When those of us who confront such power do so, we often get bruised, maligned and abused. We kind of expect this from our opponents in the modern world of police and governemnt officials in general; we also tolerate some of this, from those within the political warp and woof of such highly idealogical driven efforts.

But, when we find it among those in high courts, we disocver a whole new political trend and meaning of the term 'conversative', which is backed by raw economic and state political power.

We will be duly punished and duly discounted and subjected to even more powerful pronouncements of our lives and our backgrounds, even our character.

Such the same is to be expected in reality our faith, our true Judge, tells us. Knowing this,
we begin here to take a stand, once again and to fight back with words against such otherwise meaningless and empty but powerful political labeling mechanisms as some of us in Ohio, have been recently subjected to by the highest court in this state.

This is a blog devoted solely to this particular fight and to this particular issue and its again
one done for preserving the most senstive and perhaps most important aspect of an entire
individual's life; the right to self determine his own legacy, his own memory and what his life's work and dedication has been and what it truly is worth, as opposed to some modern jurist's
views of the same, depsite and in derrogation of their ignorance and their own inflated self-importance and opinions regarding the same.