What They Don’t Teach Law Students: Lawyering

The NY Times reports:

What they did not get, for all that time and money, was much practical training. Law schools have long emphasized the theoretical over the useful, with classes that are often overstuffed with antiquated distinctions, like the variety of property law in post-feudal England. ... “They are lawyers in the sense that they have law degrees, but they aren’t ready to be a provider of services.” ...

Consider, for instance, Contracts, a first-year staple. It is one of many that originated in the Langdell era and endures today. In it, students will typically encounter such classics as Hadley v. Baxendale, an 1854 dispute about financial damages caused by the late delivery of a crankshaft to a British miller.

Here is what students will rarely encounter in Contracts: actual contracts, the sort that lawyers need to draft and file. Likewise, Criminal Procedure class is normally filled with case studies about common law crimes — like murder and theft — but hardly mentions plea bargaining, even though a vast majority of criminal cases are resolved by that method.

If you hire a lawyer for a family court case, do not expect him to apply anything he learned at law school. If he paid attention during his evidence or constitutional law classes, he would have learned a bunch of rules that the family court judges ignore anyway.

That is not to say that a lawyer is totally useless. He ought to have the experience to know how to file court papers. He might know which court evaluators have prejudices in your favor. He might tell you that the system has a vice-grip on your balls and there is nothing you can do about it. Or he might take all your money and let you figure it out for yourself.

Family court secrecy

A front page NY Times story exposes a big family court flaw:

Today, the culture of secrecy has hardly budged. Leah A. Hill, a Fordham Law School professor who has written about and practiced in New York Family Courts, said the courts were largely as unaccountable today as they had ever been, even though they can hold a central place in the lives of poor New Yorkers.

“There hasn’t really been a public discourse about what goes on in Family Court, and part of the reason is that it is a closed institution,” Professor Hill said.

Here is the story:

New York State’s Family Courts were ordered to be opened to the public with much fanfare in 1997, supposedly allowing anyone to witness the cases of domestic violence, foster care and child neglect that inch through by the hundreds of thousands every year. But now, 14 years later, the Family Courts remain essentially, almost defiantly, closed to the general public.

Recent visits to the courts across New York City revealed officials and security officers routinely disregarding the open-courts rule in ways both large and small, direct and implied, insistent and even hostile.

Some courtrooms were locked, and many were marked with “stop” and “do not enter” signs. Court officers stationed at courtroom doors repeatedly barred a visitor, sometimes with sarcasm or ridicule, frequently demanding to know who he was and what he was doing. Armed court officers at times appeared so rattled by a visitor’s efforts to enter courtrooms that, in several instances, a group of them nervously confronted the visitor, their holsters in easy reach. ...

In Brooklyn, a judge, Michael Katz, was quickly alerted to a visitor who had managed to slip briefly into a seat. “These proceedings are generally confidential,” the judge said.

But they are not, according to the law. ...

American legal principles have long favored open courts as a check on government, and New York law has specifically said for more than a century that “the sittings of every court within the state shall be public.”

But by 1997, the Family Courts had been closed for decades, with rare exceptions. Critics said the chaos of the courts was amplified by their secrecy — a veil that had grown over the years with the support of many of the courts’ judges, lawyers and social-agency representatives. Closed courtrooms, critics argued, kept hidden the courts’ struggles, as well as the sometimes controversial ways they dealt with those who ended up in the resource-starved system plagued by delays.

In Santa Cruz, the family court is open to the public, altho I was once asked to leave someone else's trial. But it is still very secretive about evaluations and other back-room deals that are so important to the process.

I would like to put a webcam in the family court, and broadcast proceeding on the internet. If people saw how really bad the system is, it would have to change. It is worse that what you expect. Just sit in a court sometime, and find out.

The article has some excellent comments, such as this:

These courts are closed so that no one sees the justice taking place. There are child abuse proceedings dragging on where the only injury to a child is a mark or only on the basis of a child's words. There are child support proceedings taking place where men are presumed to always lie about their income. There are custody cases where children are flipped from one parent to another without a hearing. There are domestic violence cases taking place where men are always deemed inherently violent and the woman's words are used as evidence.

The apparent goal of this courtroom secrecy is the imposition of government will upon the public at its roots: the family. There is a preference for the creation of single parent homes where natural vulnerabilities of single parents are further exploited. There is a zealous desire to stamp out violence against women to such an extent that even illegal alien women who claim domestic violence are able to circumvent deportation proceedings and level horrendous charges against their American men. Children are used to build a case through their voluntary hospital admissions into psychiatric wards for the creation of reports of abuse.

There is also a hiding of biased methodologies. Judges determine who the winner of a case is sometimes by mere intuition. Then they start to sanitize the record by precluding the loser's documents and experts. They bolster the winner's case by allowing the winner's documents and experts into evidence. For example, in IDV cases, crisis center advocates will take the stand and offer expert testimony on issues they have no background on.

The most important aspect of this system of courts is that by the removal of a child from a parent, families are made to spend all their money on lawyers and white collar professionals for their kid's return to the home. Hence secrecy leads to enhanced income production for industry members and the statutes that guide all this were created at the very top of political echelons.

That is what is wrong with the family court, in 4 paragraphs.

The broccoli test

Harvard law professor Einer Elhauge writes a NY Times op-ed in support of Obamacare:

Opponents of the new mandate complain that if Congress can force us to buy health insurance, it can force us to buy anything. They frequently raise the specter that Congress might require us to buy broccoli in order to make us healthier. However, that fear would remain even if you accepted their constitutional argument, because their argument would allow Congress to force us to buy broccoli as long as it was careful to phrase the law to say that “anyone who has ever engaged in any activity affecting commerce must buy broccoli.”

That certainly sounds like a stupid law. But our Constitution has no provision banning stupid laws. The protection against stupid laws that our Constitution provides is the political process, which allows us to toss out of office elected officials who enact them. This is better than having unelected judges decide such policy questions, because we cannot toss the judges out if we disagree with them.

He uses broccoli as an example because of the obvious absurdity of any lawmaker or judge trying to dictate a broccoli policy. But I really did have a court psychologist take me to task for feeding my kids broccoli. He recommended that I be ordered to consult a dietician to determine whether my vegetable rotation would be acceptable to the family court.

I don't know about Elhauge's Obamacare analysis, but he is right about the absurdity of broccoli law. If it were really desirable to have govt oversight of a parent's vegetable rotation, then our elected officials should pass some such stupid law, assuming that they have the constitutional authority. The last thing we want is some unelected judge deciding broccoli policy on his own.

It seems as if I am belaboring the obvious, but I have gotten into many discussions about the authority of the family court, and heard someone say something like, "What's wrong with a disinterested expert applying common sense to force a parent to improve?" These so-called experts nearly always make things worse.

To placate my more liberal readers, I am not going to mention the psychologist's religion or sexual orientiation, but he was the one who was fussy about how I brushed my daughter's hair. Elhauge is a first-generation Argentine-American, and I don't know his religion or sexual orientation.

Wrong lesson from Penn State

The LA Times reports:

Outrage over the Penn State child sex-abuse scandal has led to calls for federal legislation that would require anyone witnessing child abuse to report it to law enforcement or a child protection agency.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) announced plans Wednesday to introduce the Child Protection Act, which would compel states to enact child-abuse reporting laws or risk losing some federal aid. States would set the penalties for people who fail to report abuse.

A similar bill, the Speak Up to Protect Every Abused Kid Act, was introduced Wednesday by Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.). ...

Thirty-two states do not require all adults to report suspected child abuse or neglect, according to Casey's office. Instead, many states have in place a requirement that people with regular contact with children, such as healthcare providers and teachers, must report child abuse.

Sigh. That is the lesson they draw from Penn State?

The Democrats will use any excuse to subvert the family, and put people under the control of social service agencies. Boxer is a San Francisco Jew, Casey is a Pennsylvania Catholic, facing reelection. Is that relevant? Maybe or maybe not. Boxer has all the same anti-family political views that other Jewish Democrats have. Casey is probably trying to avoid insinuations that he is soft on child molesters like Joe Paterno, the bishop, and other Pennsylvania Catholics. I expect a reader to point out that there are lots of other bad politicians, besides Jews, Californians, Catholics, and Democrats.

The article goes on:

A Penn State assistant football coach who, according to a grand jury report, saw Sandusky raping a boy in the football team’s showers has been widely criticized for not reporting the incident directly to police. He did report it to the university. In an email obtained by the Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call, the assistant coach, Mike McQueary, said that he did discuss the incident with police and stopped the assault.

If that is correct, then there was no failure to report. There was a failure to act by the police. Even the current Sandusky indictment required a 3.5 year investigation. So the DA failed to act for 3.4 years. This proposed law would not have helped the Penn State situation at all.

What this law will do is to encourage busybodies to meddle in the lives of others, and for CPS social workers and other troublemakers to expand their authority.

Five Jewish stereotypes

This is a touchy subject, but here are five Jewish stereotypes:

1. Matriarchy. Under Jewish law, Jewish identity is defined by maternal ancestry. The Jewish mother stereotype generally involves a nagging, overprotective, manipulative, controlling, smothering, and overbearing mother or wife, who persists in interfering in her children's lives long after they have become adults.
   
2. Emotional dependence on outside psychotherapists and belief in therapism. From ancient rabbis to Sigmund Freud to Woody Allen, Jews are famous for believing people are dysfunctional emotional wrecks who need outside guidance to manage their lives.
   
3. Opposition to Christian family values. Whenever an American politician extols the merits of family values, about 90% of the Jews vote against him. This happens even when the politician is firmly pro-Israel.
   
4. Greed. From Shakespeare's Shylock to Bernie Madoff, Jews are famous for preying on human trust and vulnerability, and extracting every dollar they can.
   
5. Emasculated boys. The nice Jewish boy stereotype is that of an emasculated neurotic wimp who is especially vulnerable to domination and manipulation by women, including his possessive and infantilizing Jewish mother as well as the Jewish-American princess whose consumption he slaves to bankroll.

In contrast, John Wayne symbolized American ideals such as rugged individualism, emotional restraint, and physical aggression, and Leave It to Beaver exalted traditional American familialism and the nuclear family.

Jews themselves acknowledge most of these stereotypes. Glenn Sacks writes:

Why didn't I marry a Jewish woman? The reason I lost interest in many Jewish women was the generally contemptuous, belittling, and bigoted attitude that so many of them have towards men.

Lots of Jews don't match these stereotypes at all, of course. About 25% of them even vote Republican.

Commissioner Irwin H. Joseph ordered a child custody evaluation by Kenneth B. Perlmutter, a Palo Alto psychologist whose personality, attitude, and opinions matched all of those stereotypes. Perlmutter wrote the court order that took away my joint legal custody of my kids, and charged me $28,000. Joseph rubber-stamped it. Joseph and Perlmutter are common Jewish surnames.

When I asked Perlmutter, under oath, for the basis of his conclusions, he admitted that they were not based on any legal or psychological principles, and that he had no evidence of any validity to his method. So why did he do it? If he gave some reason other than his personal prejudices, then maybe I would take that at face value, but he did not.

As noted below, the psychology profession is dominated by Jews, and an unethical quack like Perlmutter would have been run out of town if it were not for other Jewish psychologists and court officials who approve of what he does.

If I had a Mormon evaluator who applied Mormon law against me, then I would complain about Mormon influence on the court.

If I had a math-phobic social worker complain that teaching math to a girl was child abuse, then I would complain about that. (That is more or less what happened, and I have complained about it on this blog.)

I know that this is politically incorrect subject matter, but I disagree with my kids being taken away from me, and I would like to address the reasons for that happening. It seems to me that a big factor is the prejudice of Jewish psychologists. Am I wrong?

I am trying to get at the root of the problem. Several of my readers argue that the shrinks are just incompetent and greedy, and not subject to any other biases. I used to think that, but I don't anymore. They are ideologically driven to destroy American values.

New court motion

I just filed a court motion for better child custody and/or visitation, even tho Judge Heather D. Morse said not to for two years. She said that the kids need a break from the litigation.

Her argument does not make any sense. My kids are not getting a break. They have been put court supervision for the last 4 years, while the court has only issued temporary orders.

Here the case background I filed, with some names changed.

Case history
This case began in 2003 with a signed marital settlement agreement for 50-50 shared joint child custody of our two daughters. Jill made a motion for sole legal custody in 2004, but a full custody trial in 2005 resulted in a permanent order for 50-50 joint legal and physical custody.

Jill got temporary sole physical custody in Nov. 2007 as the result of an ex parte motion alleging emotional abuse, and Cmr. Joseph ordered a psychological evaluation to investigate the allegations and make recommendations. When he refused to appoint a psychologist, I appealed, and the 6th District ruled that there was indeed a final permanent child custody determination in 2005, but that the allegations constituted a sufficient change in circumstances for a temporary order pending the evaluation.

Ken Perlmutter eventually did the evaluation in early 2010. He did not find any abuse, or any other problem with our four years of joint custody. He said that we had no psychological disorders and no need for counseling. He said that Jill is not any better parent than I am, and he disagreed with how the court has handled the case. He recommended a six-month visitation plan, and suggested going back to him for an update. That plan ended in Fall 2010.

We had a trial on several days from Nov. 2010 to Jan. 2011 where Jill and her witnesses were invited to present whatever evidence they had against returning to joint custody, and to say what changes would be required of me, if any.

An April 2011 order upheld Perlmutter’s recommendation, but did not disturb the permanent 50-50 custody determination of 2005. Jill’s subsequent motion for permanent sole custody was denied.

We are currently operating under temporary orders, as we have since Nov. 2007. Jill has permitted some visits with [local court babysitter] supervising. She does not know why the visits are supervised, and has not reported any problems. Visitation is at Jill’s discretion.

Testimony and findings
All witnesses testified that our kids love me and want a relationship with me. Perlmutter's report said:

A key and incontrovertible finding in this evaluation is that these children love and want a relationship with their father. [p.38, start of last paragraph]

All witnesses agreed that there has been no abuse, and there is no threat of abuse.

All witnesses agreed that there are no psychological disorders, and there is no recommendation for counseling. There is no testimony that anything would be gained by counseling.

No witness testified that Jill is any better parent than I am. Perlmutter testified that the chief difference between Jill and me was the court has wrongly given her temporary sole custody:

11 Q. And did you find evidence favoring one parent
12 over the other?
13 A. I found existence of what the current
14 situation is. She's not a better parent than you.
15 She's not -- they are not more in love with her than
16 you. They've developed a different relationship with
17 her based on the fact that you've spent minimum time
18 with them over the last two and a half years. [June depo., p.94]

The findings from the April 2011 order after hearing were:
1. George is to follow Perlmutter's plan and to read a book. (Completed in 2010.)
2. George is to request an update from Perlmutter. (Done, but he refused to do it.)
3. “George's daughters have a resilient love for their father and still wish to have a relationship with him, but on their terms and not his. They hope he can change.”
4. George is “physically incapable of perceiving why he was being prevented from having unsupervised time with his children.”
5. “the court finds that the parties' time and money could be better spent to improve the parental relationships while there is still time to do so.”

I don't see how anyone can read this and think that the court has been reasonable, or that the kids need a break from litigation.

Penn State scandal

The hot news story is the Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse scandal at Penn State. Coach Joe Paterno's reputation has been destroyed faster than anyone I've seen, without ever being committed of a crime.

Sandusky is the child molester and Penn State fired him back in 1999. So what does this scandal have to do with Penn State? The complaint against Penn State officials is that they should have called CPS based on hearsay and suspicions about Sandusky.

I think that CPS is evil. Child molesters are also evil. University officials are usually spinelss jerks. But I don't see where the officials did wrong in this case.

After some 1998 allegations, they confronted Sandusky and got him to admit to inappropriate behavior. They turned the case over to the police, but there was insufficient evidence to prosecute. They fired him. Most of the blame on the Penn State officials is based on their handling of a 2002 allegation.

My theory is that McQueary is lying about that 2002 incident. He says that he witnesses a brutal rape of a 10-year-old boy in the shower, and he walked away without doing anything. I say Sandusky was showering inappropriately, but not committing sodomy. Years later, the DA puts the heat on McQueary and tells him that they need his testimony to put away a child molester. He cooperates. Then the DA says that they’ve widened the investigation to nail officials in a cover-up. McQueary starts to get cold feet. The DA threatens to charge McQueary with failure to report, unless he testifies against Paterno and Curley. McQueary agrees, in exchange for immunity from prosecution and anonymity in the grand jury report. McQueary complies with DA pressure to exaggerate the allegations.

I think that it is pretty crazy to blame someone for not calling CPS in 2002, when no one knows what happened, or who the boy was, or what was said about it. It is also pretty crazy for prosecutors to base their whole case on a witness who, by his own admission, walked away from a child rape without intervening or reporting it.

The state mandated reporter laws usually people in the child care business to report suspected child abuse in kids under their care. I am not sure how this applies to an ex-employee who brings a non-student child onto campus. Some people are probably going to say that this case shows that officials should not just report suspected child abuse to CPS, but also any inappropriate behavior with a child. I do not agree, but I am afraid that public opinion seems to tilting toward reporting everything as a result of hysteria about cases like this.

Everyone blames Penn State for delays in taking action. But the current evidence against Sandusky was presented to the DA in Spring 2008, and they investigated for 3.5 years before arresting Sandusky. I really don't see how the DA can blame Penn State for not seeing that he was a child molester when the DA took 3.5 years to figure it out.

Grandparent visitation rights

The US Supreme Court is considering whether to hear this case:

Issue: Whether under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, grandparents who seek court-ordered visitation with their grandchildren must prove that a compelling circumstance necessitates visitation, or whether constitutional requirements are instead satisfied where the court considering the visitation request applies a presumption in favor of the parents' wishes and places on the petitioning grandparent the burden of proving that visitation is in the children's best interest.

I agree with the Alabama SC, and disagree with everything in the cert petition, except that these cases will keep coming back and Troxel was ambiguous.

(The link to the "opinion below" is wrong; the Alabama decision is here.)

The cert petition agrees with giving the grandparents visitation because:

The trial court’s detailed opinion in this case perfectly reflects that delicate balancing; the judge carefully considered all of the affected parties’ in-terests, while paying an extra measure of deference to the parents’ wishes.

Parents have no rights if minor parental decisions can be overridden by a judge who merely says that he is "paying an extra measure of deference to the parents’ wishes."

I guess that some people might read the factual history as favoring the grandparents, but I do not. Consider:

[The mother] testified that when the children were very young, the two families had basically blended together and had acted as a single unit, with the paternal grand-mother asserting a great deal of control over the care of the children, sometimes even in violation of the mother’s desires.

I suppose that some would read this as suggesting that the judge should try to reconstruct that happier period when the grandma often got her way with the kids. I don't see it that way at all. If that were the rule, then parents would be prudent to always overrule whatever the grandparents say, for fear that they might set a precedent that would be used against the parents later in court.

This grandparent visitation issue is just an amusing sideshow. There are about 20 more important issues where the family court is denying parental rights in what ought to be violations of constitutional rights. But the federal courts won't hear any of it.

Followup on husband killer

I posted last month about this acquittal for murder, and now the NY Times reports on the sentencing:

A Queens woman who killed her husband after suffering years of abuse at his hands was sentenced Thursday to five years in prison on a weapons charge, less than the maximum sentence of 15 years but short of her request for further leniency.

The woman, Barbara Sheehan, shot her husband, Raymond Sheehan, 11 times in their home in Howard Beach in February 2008; although she used two guns, she claimed that she fired in self-defense after he had first threatened her life with one of the guns. Ms. Sheehan was acquitted of murder, but convicted of gun possession — the second gun that she used that day. ...

Judge Kron had the discretion to send Ms. Sheehan to prison for as little as 27 months. The sentence included two and a half years of supervised release.

Ms. Sheehan was allowed to remain free on $1 million bail while her appeal of her verdict is pending. After the sentencing, she walked out of the courthouse and headed for the subway to go to her job as a school secretary.

She expressed deep disappointment in an interview that the judge had imposed such a harsh sentence and had failed to account for the fact that she had been the victim of vicious domestic violence.

As she walked, a passer-by hugged her.

“Keep praying for me,” Ms. Sheehan said.

I guess that the lesson is that if a woman wants to murder her husband, she should just use one gun and be prepared to whine everything he might have done years earlier.

Unmarried try to hire divorce lawyer

Louisiana TV reports:

Unmarried Couples Find Divorce Difficult
Couples Who 'Live Together' Are Hoping To Divorce Legally

NEW ORLEANS -- Divorce isn't easy; but it's even harder for couples who didn't get married in the first place.

One New Orleans attorney says he has seen an increase in the number of unmarried couples who want to file for a legal divorce.

"If you do not have a plan or you don't know your situation and you're not really understanding of the law it could be really bad for you, you could have a rude awakening at the end," says Hamilton Law Associates lawyer Peter Hamilton.

Louisiana is a community property state, a measure that applies only for married couples.

The Pew Research Center looked at the marriage trend and found that 39 percent of people feel marriage is becoming obsolete.

They want divorce lawyers in family court when they never got married? Really?

Maybe they have kids. Family court judges want to take control of parents whether there was any marriage or not. Yes, marriage is becoming obsolete, and part of that is because family courts require parenting plans, support payments, character assassinations, etc, whether the couple was ever married or not.

Need for psychoeducation during infancy

I have posted many times on the evils of the psychology profession, and here is some new bogus research that demonstrates more ideology than science:

A new research study suggests prejudice based on generalized beliefs about certain social groups could be a personality trait.

Researchers from the University of the Basque Country confirmed the link between two types of discriminatory behavior: sexism and racism. They also urge education in encouraging equality. ...

As a result of the findings, the authors strongly believe in the importance and need for psychoeducation during infancy and adolescence as a way of encouraging equality among both sexes and respect for others. ...

“Men with higher levels of hostile sexism describe themselves using adjectives associated with masculinity, i.e. physically strong, brave, sure of themselves, determined, admirable, etc” said Garaigordobil.

“Women who display hostile sexism described themselves using characteristics that go against femininity such as not very cooperative, not very tolerant, not very compassionate and not very sensitive or sentimental.”

Just what "psychoeducation during infancy" are they advocating? I hate to think what sort of brainwashing they have in mind. This is an example of misrepresenting science in order to promote an ideology.

Yes, a lot of people believe that men and women are different, and that it is only natural and appropriate that they serve different roles in our society. I think that it is fair to say that the vast majority of all people in the history of human civilization have believed that.

For a contrary view, Yahoo sports reports on female atheletes who want to be just like the men:

Women will get a chance to box in the Olympics for the first time in 2012. If the Amateur International Boxing Association has anything to say about it, they will be wearing skirts. ... Unsurprisingly, many top female boxers are against this plan. Three-time world champion Katie Taylor from Ireland does not want to wear something that she would find uncomfortable while fighting:
"It's a disgrace that they're forcing some of the women to wear those mini-skirts. We should be able to wear shorts, just like the men.
"I won't be wearing a mini-skirt. I don't even wear mini-skirts on a night out, so I definitely won't be wearing mini-skirts in the ring."

No, I do not agree with Olympic medal for female boxing, but I guess I am a sexist.

I would not be surprised if some new edition of the psychiatric diagnostic manual, the DSM-IV, says that you have a psychological personality disorder if you think that the women boxers should wear skirts. Next there will be govt day care centers with psychoeducation for infants in order to eradicate such views.

Opinion of a court psychologist

A reader asks how I know the views of the court psychologists. Let me quote from Coming Out Every Day: A Gay, Bisexual, and Questioning Man's Guide (alse here), a 1997 self-help book written by a child custody evaluator for the family court:

Getting Beyond Homophobia
In Greek mythology, Hercules slew Hydra, the many headed serpent. Unfortunately, you have your own modem day Hydra. As the hero of your journey, you will face the multifarious evil of homophobia many times before it's conquered. You've already read about internalized homophobia in chapter 7. You studied ways of managing internal fears about your sexual orientation. When you can win your internal battles, you'll be in a good position to deal objectively and authoritatively with the external battles.

Consider the following quote - an unfortunate but classic example of homophobia: "The poor homosexuals - they have declared war upon nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution." This statement was uttered by Patrick Buchanan, American conservative and 1996 presidential candidate.

How do you feel when you read what Buchanan said? What do you think about such attitudes?

Do you have trouble believing that these attitudes (or people) exist? If so, that probably means you're one of the lucky GBQ men whose exposure to intolerance and prejudice has been minimal, or at least manageable. But believe it: These people long on judgment and short on truth are out there. As long as there are oppressive religions and cultures; as long as there are unenlightened teachers and preachers command that homosexuality is wrong; as long as there are racists and bigots, fear and ignorance, jealousy and hate, and insecurity, there be homophobia.

Homophobia is something you'll need to face, I urge you to gather your supports around you; try to find constructive ways to educate those who are misinformed and challenge those who aim to hurt or punish. Of course if you're constantly worrying about all the differences of opinion and meanness in the world, you'll never get your work done, animals won't get fed, your fun time will be spoiled, and your laundry and dishes will pile up into a big, moldy mess. But because homophobia exists and must be acknowledged, your goal will be to get beyond it and not let it have power in your life.

Sometimes getting beyond homophobia means you have to write a few people off. Sometimes you must take a stand to let them know they’re misinformed. Sometimes you'll be able to muster up the love and passion to take time to educate them, but there will likely be few whom you care enough to do that. Sometimes getting beyond homophobia means taking on more responsibility to fight it, perhaps by being more active in community or political gay and bisexual issues.

A Personal Story
After years of living as an out gay man, I am still amazed and troubled when homophobia rears its ugly head from unlikely places and in unlikely forms. I am lucky to live in California, in a relatively open-minded (if not necessarily politically liberal) community that is accepting of diversity. Even here, however, reality sometimes brings me roughly back to earth. Not too long ago, at a board of supervisors meeting in Santa Clara County, the issue of domestic partner registration was under consideration. I was astonished to encounter an elementary school age child in the crowd of antireferendum protesters carrying a sign that read, "Please don't molest me." I cannot help but marvel at the things people choose to teach their children.

How to Respond to Homophobia
Go back now and reread what you wrote about your feelings and attitudes toward Buchanan's statement and what it represents. These feelings and thoughts are your clues to understanding your role in dealing with homophobia. Your internal reactions and logic can guide you to understand what (and whom) you are meeting when homophobia shows up at your front door or knocks you down in the street when you're walking along minding your own business.

Did you write about feeling angry at Buchanan's words? That's healthy. Are you frightened by this attitude? That's normal, as well. In fact, all your feelings are valid here; you just get to make some choices about what to do with them. ... [p.210-211]

Discrimination and Prejudice: The Real Shame
We believe that the rights of all people must be protected and guaranteed. We believe that the gay and lesbian community must be supported in their civil rights as well as their right for their sexual preference. --Coretta Scott King, The Gay Almanac

Discrimination against people because of their sexuality occurs every day Fundamental human rights taken for granted by most people in the United States are often denied to openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. Fortunately, groups such as the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Human Rights Campaign, and the Lambda Legal Defense Fund in the United States are laboring to change the legal and political playing field by actively lobbying against discriminatory legislative measures. These groups and others are working to introduce bills and constitutional amendments that will guarantee freedom from discrimination based on sexuality.

For the present, however, gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals in the United States have no such guarantee of employment, domestic partner insurance benefits, medical visitation rights, or housing rights. We do not have the right to visit as a "family member" a partner who is in the hospital. We cannot serve in the military unless we keep our sexual orientation a secret. We cannot get married, adopt a child without suffering major legal encumbrances and social disapproval, or have legal (in some states) oral or anal sex (which is illegal for some heterosexuals, too). All of the latter rights, however, are in the process of being challenged to one degree or another by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the Human Rights Campaign (amongst others).

An additional disadvantage suffered by GBQ people is the misinformation and scare tactics perpetuated by groups such as the Moral Majority and Coalition for Family Values. These organizations, along with conservative religious and political groups led by people such as Pat Buchanan, Pat Robertson, Lou Sheldon, and Senator Jesse Helms, work to create a climate of fear among the unenlightened public. By targeting and misinforming church members, conservative families, and naive individuals, they are able to propagate false and biased information that gays, lesbians, and bisexuals want special rights and threaten "family values." There have been several recent attempts to pass anti gay initiatives in various states - for example, Colorado's approved 1992 Amendment 2, later struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. [p.215-216]

He is entitled to his opinion that GLB folks are entitled to guarantees of employment, and to his hatred of conservative politicians who promote family values. But I really have trouble understanding how he can complain about gays being able to visit each other in the hospital, and then be in the business of writing court orders that prevent normal and fit parents from seeing their own kids.

He says, "These people long on judgment and short on truth are out there." That is just how I would describe his court reports. He makes no attempt to ascertain any facts, and he is much more judgmental than Pat Buchanan or that schoolchild opposing a domestic partner program.

In my case, he collected a few gripes about vegetables and hair brushing, and he wrote a court order for me to attend counseling for at least 6 months or "until released", whatever that means. He had no facts, law, or psychology to substantiate what he did. He never even asked me about the gripes, and when I offered to address them, he refused to hear it. He obviously would not like it if gays were ordered to attend counseling until released.

It seems to be that this guy is ideologically opposed to normal family relationships. He abuses his power to destroy those relationships whenever he can. He is the bigot, not me. I am not opposed to him being an out gay man. I do object to him imposing his twisted values on others.

Texas mom murders her son

Texas is the one state with jury trials for child custody. You would think that a mom who is a psychologist and a college professor would have an easy time convincing a jury that she is a fit mother. The U. of Texas has now taken down her web page, but the bing cached copy says:

Dr. Karen Hayslett-McCall is a faculty member in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences (previously, Social Sciences) at UT-Dallas. She teaches courses on geospatial information systems, research methods, communities and crime, victimology, and policing. The broadest swath of her research involves the study of crime and its relationship with neighborhood resident characteristics (i.e., social ecology) as ell as neighborhood infrastructure data (i.e., physical ecolotgy). She graduated from The Pennsylvania State University and joined the faculty at UTD in 2002.

Here is her impressive resume in pdf. (The above typos are in the original -- not sure if they are her fault.)

No, the jury saw right thru her, for the crazy and vindictive woman that she. I mean that she was, because she just killed herself and her son:

A woman shot and killed her 7-year-old son before turning the gun on herself late Friday morning in Sachse, police said.

Officers forced their way into the home after hearing gunshots and found 43-year-old Karen Hayslett-McCall and 7-year-old Eryk Hayslett-McCall in an upstairs bedroom at about 10:30 a.m.

Sachse police were at the home in the 7100 block of Longmeadow Drive as a precaution when her estranged husband, Rodney McCall, arrived to pick up his son.

McCall had received sole custody of the child in a court hearing at 10 a.m.

"The father knocked on the front door," Sachse police Chief Dennis Veach said. "We were simply standing by and at both front and rear of the house when we heard three shots from within the house."

Veach said police had been to the home on several locations but there were not allegations of serious violence.

Maybe no violence, but the backstory is that the mom was vindictively framing her husband with false accusations:

Hayslett-McCall had accused her husband of molesting their son last fall. A grand jury later found no evidence of a crime, and McCall was cleared.

But McCall had lost his job as a high school teacher.

McCall's attorney told the Wylie school board in November that the case was "an allegation brought by a woman who is about to lose custody of her children," the Wylie News reported.

He also told the board that Hayslett-McCall, a former police officer who has a doctorate in criminal justice and a master's degree in psychology, knew how to manipulate the justice system, the newspaper reported.

The couple had been battling over custody of Eryk for more than a year.

They filed for divorce in Collin County in March 2010, and temporary custody orders were in place in April 2010. By November, an attorney was appointed for the child.

The judge ordered psychological evaluations in January 2011. Jurors were sworn in on Monday for opening statements, and McCall won custody of his son Friday.

A feminist blogger supports the mom:

Let’s just say, Karen Hayslett-McCall was no dummy when it came to detecting sexual deviants. She allegedly believed her husband was acting on some sort of perverse sexual deviency with their own child. It is possible that she killed herself and her son because she lost parental rights and not because her child was being totally given over to a man she believed was a child molester. It is more likely she did it because of both.

I don’t know what I would do if faced with the same circumstances.

Really? She doesn't know whether she would murder her son as some sort of sick revenge on her husband?

A professor of criminology should know that it is extraordinarily rare for a natural father to molest a 7-year-old. I have never even heard of it happening. She should also know that accusations require evidence in order for action by the authorities. They are supposed to, anyway. Apparently she did succeed in getting him fired from teaching based on her unfounded accusations.

Wait a minute -- she doesn't teach criminology, she teached "victimology". I never heard of that, but I am pretty sure that the U. of Texas does not need more feminists teaching victimology.

A comment disagrees with the blogger:

You have no idea of the facts in this case. I am one of the jurors who terminated her parental rights this morning. She was a truly vile person who destroyed her child and her husband. She knew how to manipulate the system. Why do you immediately think she was the victim in this? You really should have been at the trial. Amazingly, everyone that knew her more than a couple of years, including former friends and colleagues testified in the husband’s behalf.

It would be interesting to see those psychological evaluations of her that the judge ordered. My hunch is that the jurors had her figured out much better than the psychologists and other authorities.

A female reader adds:

As a matter of fact, Mr. McCall had reached out to CPS two weeks prior to the trial to have his son put in protective custody during the trial pending whatever the outcome was to be. He was worried about Eryk’s well being and would have preferred that he be protected by strangers than with either side’s families and friends to avoid bias.

It also should be known that Karen is the one that kicked Mr McCall out of the house in March of 2010 and filed for divorce because of her new boyfriend. She was not abused, but in reality was the abuser by verbally abusing her husband. Back in December of 2010, they had their first trial and the judge awarded joint custody. Mr McCall was happy with that decision, but it was Karen that filed the motion to have the decision overturned and requested a new trial. Karen was the one that did not want to share her son with his father and was the first to seek termination of parental rights. Mr McCall’s reasoning to seek termination was because she was coaching their son to make these false allegations and possibly even abusing him herself or one of her new found friends that had moved into that house.

The reality is Mr McCall never abused his son in any manner, but loved him very much. Yes, he was arrested, but the grand jury did not indict since there was no case there.

There are so many things wrong here, I cannot list them.

Christian-hater wants censorship

A Christian-hating reader left this comment yesterday:

The United States needs to look towards Europe and adopt their policy of prosecuting those that publicly spread hate speech. ... Christian values and white males have caused nearly all of the heart ache, misery and injustice in this world.

Wow. I expected criticism, but I did not expect someone to (1) express anti-Christian hatred, (2) fail to dispute anything I said, and (3) favor laws censoring me from telling the truth.

Christian values and white males made America great. That should be so transparently obvious that I do not see how anyone can dispute.

But there are anti-Christian bigots who are working to destroy America, and they want laws to censor anyone who exposes them for what they are.

I mentioned the California psychologists Bret K. Johnson and Kenneth B. Perlmutter, who do child custody evaluations for the family court. They testified in my case, and demonstrated their hatred of Christian values. I asked them under oath if their opinion was based on any facts, law, research, or expertise, and they were both unable to give any explanation for their opinions other than their own anti-Christian hatred.

Perlmutter's Yelp page now has 23 reviews. 21 of them give him one star, the lowest possible rating. Unfortunately, some of them are hidden from view.

Perlmutter told me that whenever possible, he avoids letting the parents see his report on them that he sends to the court.

These two evaluators are not just isolated examples of incompetence. The entire profession is corrupt, and hardly anyone in it speaks out against the horrible work being done.

I favor exposing these creeps for what they do. If they were doing honest legitimate work, they should not mind having their court testimony publicized.

In Europe it is getting harder and harder to praise Christian values without being accused of hate speech. I must have hit a nerve is someone wants a law against me telling the truth about what the court accepts as expert testimony.

Jewish psychologists

A reader warns me that I risk criticism by referring yesterday to a big-shot Jewish Harvard psychology professor, Steven Pinker.

Tiger Woods' ex-caddie just apologized for a negative comment that had the word "black" in it. Maybe he did not mean it to be racist, but it sounded that way. I certainly do not want to sound anti-Jewish, as that would distract from my message here.

But I do criticize psychologists a lot, and psychology is a very Jewish profession, so I still run the risk of offending people even if I never explicitly mention Jewish issues.

A Jewish site says:

Jewish psychologists and the influence of Jewish tradition have been instrumental in creating the field of modern psychology. The fundamentals of several psychological movements can be traced directly to Jewish values, ideas, and practices, and Jews in the 20th century were at the forefront of research about the psyche and the varieties of human behavior.

Jewish psychologists founded several branches of psychological inquiry. All of the major theorists of the Gestalt school, except Wolfgang Kohler, were Jews. Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, Kurt Lewin, and Kurt Goldstein posited theories of perception and understanding based on holistic understanding, rather than a previous model based on the computation of parts.

Psychoanalysis was founded by Sigmund Freud and, with the notable exception of Carl Jung, most of its early proponents were also Jews.

Freud and Jung were also quacks. Freud faked his work, and nothing that he did
had any scientific merit. His reputation was created largely by other Jews who idolized him.

Why the Jews?

Some intellectual historians speculate that it was particular Jewish personality and cultural traits that led Jews to lead the field of psychology in its early days. ...

According to studies conducted by Mark Zborowski, an anthropologist who investigated cultural aspects of pain, Jews respond more quickly to physical discomfort than non-Jews. Jewish families often discuss issues and problems in great detail, and suffering individuals are encouraged to "let out" their feelings and achieve catharsis through communication.

According to Peter Langman, "Jews differ from many cultural groups in that they place less value on self-reliance and are less suspicious of taking their problems to professionals." Thus, the traditional role of rabbi/rebbe involves extensive counseling or psychotherapy.

My ex-wife and I had two child custody evaluations by psychologists, one gay and one Jewish. Both appear to be seriously emotionally damaged shrinks who project their own personal problems on others. I originally thought that they were just incompetent, but they are much worse than that. They are vindictive and malicious charlatans.

Maybe Jews have a tradition of psychological problems, counseling, and emotional dependence, but other Americans have a tradition of self-reliance and family autonomy.

Woody Allen made movies that popularized the image of Jews as dysfunctional neurotics who need regular psychotherapy to cope with daily life. Most Jews are not like that, of course, but the court psychologists do not seem to understand that normal Americans have no use for psychotherapy.

So is the destructive value of the child custody evaluation work related to them being gay and Jewish? I think it is. I do not believe that a Christian heterosexual family man would write reports anything like what these jerks did. He would not charge $28,000 either.

I don't want to blame all gays and Jews. I have no doubt that most gays and Jews would sharply disapprove of the practices of these child custody evaluators. But the psychology profession is dominated by gays, Jews, and others who are opposed to traditional American Christian family values, and they abuse their power and influence to destroy the families of others. They are the bigots, and political correctness should not prevent me from pointing it out.

If there are any gays or Jews or psychologists who speak out against what the psychology profession is doing in the family court, please let me know so that I can credit them. There is a war going on between decent Americans, and those who are trying to destroy American values. I want to know who is on which side.

In other news, a New Jersey newspaper reports:

The price was steep. As much as $160,000 to secure a donor willing to give up a human kidney for transplant.

And Levy Itzhak Rosenbaum — who told neighbors in Brooklyn he dabbled in construction and real estate — bragged on surveillance recordings that he had participated in many such black market deals.

Today, the 60-year-old Israeli pleaded guilty in federal court to helping an FBI informant procure a kidney as part of an elaborate federal sting. At the same time, he admitted arranging transplants for three other New Jersey patients with failing kidneys — all of whom underwent surgery in out-of-state hospitals after paying Rosenbaum. None of the patients or hospitals was named, nor were they charged.

It marked the first time in this country anyone has ever been convicted for brokering illegal kidney transplants for profit. ...

Separately, five Orthodox rabbis from Brooklyn and the Jersey shore were charged with laundering millions of dollars through various religious charities.

If the feds can do a sting and prosecute the kidney sellers, they ought to do a sting against the corrupt family court psychologists.

All violence is down

The Santa Cruz Sentinel reports:

SANTA CRUZ — Monday marked the conclusion of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and the District Attorney’s Office reports that emergency calls related to domestic violence dipped slightly this October compared to last.

But the drop from 546 to 528 calls is slight, and some who work to combat the problem point to a trend of more violent abuse.

Laura Segura, director of Women’s Crisis Support-Defensa de Mujeres, said she believes domestic violence has increased in severity due to the recession, and she said shelters nationwide have reported increases.

“There may be a slight decrease from last year, but when you look at previous years, the numbers are still higher and the violence more severe,” she said. “We’re attributing that to the stresses in the family from unemployment and from families doubling up in homes, which creates more stress. Over the past year, our shelter has rarely had beds available.”

These folks are always claiming that things are getting worse. But Harvard professor Steven Pinker plugs his new book on violence and writes:

The women's rights movement has seen an 80 percent reduction in rape since the early '70s when it was put on the agenda as a feminist issue. There has also been a two-thirds decline in domestic violence, spousal abuse, or wife beating, and a 50 percent decline in husband beating. In the most extreme form of domestic violence, namely uxoricide and matricide, there's been a decline both in the number of wives that are murdered by their husband's and the number of husbands that have been murdered by their wives.

So who do you believe? A big-shot Jewish Harvard psychology professor or some feminist activists? Yeah, it is a tough call, but I think that I am going to go with the psychologist this time.

Famous psychologist exposed

The family court relies on an assortment of quacks with mail-order degrees and other phony credentials. But even some of the leaders of the field are charlatans. The NY Times reports:

A well-known psychologist in the Netherlands whose work has been published widely in professional journals falsified data and made up entire experiments, an investigating committee has found. Experts say the case exposes deep flaws in the way science is done in a field, psychology, that has only recently earned a fragile respectability.

The psychologist, Diederik Stapel, of Tilburg University, committed academic fraud in “several dozen” published papers, many accepted in respected journals and reported in the news media, according to a report released on Monday by the three Dutch institutions where he has worked: the University of Groningen, the University of Amsterdam, and Tilburg. The journal Science, which published one of Dr. Stapel’s papers in April, posted an “editorial expression of concern” about the research online on Tuesday.

The scandal, involving about a decade of work, is the latest in a string of embarrassments in a field that critics and statisticians say badly needs to overhaul how it treats research results. In recent years, psychologists have reported a raft of findings on race biases, brain imaging and even extrasensory perception that have not stood up to scrutiny. Outright fraud may be rare, these experts say, but they contend that Dr. Stapel took advantage of a system that allows researchers to operate in near secrecy and massage data to find what they want to find, without much fear of being challenged.

“The big problem is that the culture is such that researchers spin their work in a way that tells a prettier story than what they really found,” said Jonathan Schooler, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “It’s almost like everyone is on steroids, and to compete you have to take steroids as well.”

In a prolific career, Dr. Stapel published papers on the effect of power on hypocrisy, on racial stereotyping and on how advertisements affect how people view themselves. Many of his findings appeared in newspapers around the world, including The New York Times, which reported in December on his study about advertising and identity.

Real scientists disclose their raw data so that results can be checked and replicated by others. Psychology is a joke.

(Note: A post yesterday was from another angry dad, not me.)

The Joys of Child Support

Child support called to let me know that my ex filed for a mod. They want to come in with an Income and Expense declaration, pay stubs, etc, etc. OK, no problem. Set up appointment, confirm the date and time, I'm good to go. I'm not exactly thrilled (when the system rewards a parent for moving away needlessly, I take a bit of an issue with it), but the law is the law and I'm being as polite as can be. The lady informs me that if the documents I provide show a modification of more than $X, we'll hopefully work out a stipulated agreement there in the office and it'll be easy as pie. I like easy.

But that got me thinking. Well, based on what the ex filed, what's the preliminary increase? 270%. That's right. A 270% increase. Wow.

This leads to a very understandable question: Why? So I ask, "Now, since she's filed her Income and Expense declaration, I'm assuming that at some point I'll receive a copy, and likewise she'll receive one of mine?" This is the legal system. If I file any court document, she gets a copy; mind you, I am legally required to serve her a copy of any legal paperwork I file in regards to a custody case.

Yet this is not the case with Child Support, when the local Child Support Office is involved. They refuse to provide me a copy of her claimed income or expenses. I stated I don't find that to be particularly fair, only to be met with the response of: "If you refuse to meet with us and sign a stipulated agreement for child support, we will file this action in court and you can receive a copy of her declaration at that time."

Hmmm. "So, if I agree and sign a stipulation, your office will file the paperwork with the court, saving me some time, money, and hassle?"

"Yes", she responds.

"And at that point in time, I will be served with the legal child support order, an attachment to which will be her declaration?" Again, the response is affirmative.

"Or I can receive a copy when you file the legal action, assuming I don't agree to any stipulation?" Again, affirmative.

What the hell is wrong with our system? When going through the courts, I receive a copy of everything she files and claims. At that point, we can reach an agreement or leave it to a judge to decide. Yet if dealing with child support through the local office, I am not at all entitled to anything in advance, expect for the threat of filing court action?

Doesn't exactly seem fair to me. What are your thoughts or experiences?

Texas judge beats his daughter

A comment yesterday posted a link to a video, as described here:

2004 video shows Texas Judge beating disabled daughter with belt

A 2004 video that shows a father beating his disabled daughter with a belt has gone viral on the Internet and various news outlets. The recently uploaded clip contains graphic images of physical and emotional abuse and may be disturbing to some viewers.

“Judge William Adams beats daughter for using the Internet” is the latest YouTube video to make the rounds on the Internet, and not for the right reasons.

The video allegedly shows Aransas County Court-At-Law Judge William Adams beating his daughter with a belt. The daughter, Hillary Adams, who suffers from ataxic cerebral palsy, was downloading music and games from the Internet – she has a passion for technology.

When her father discovered this, he became enraged and punished the young girl by viciously hurting her back, bum and legs with a belt. He threatened several times to hit her in the face. About midway through the video, her mother assisted in the beating, but the daughter noted that she does not blame her for what happened because she was also emotionally abused.

NPR has more on this story, and says that the judge is now "the subject of a police investigation," The Associated Press reports.

A reader writes:

The judge should receive an "in kind" treatment in public, as well as a very lengthy prison sentence or possibly even capital punishment for his actions against his daughter. His hypocrisy is monumental and I think it clearly demonstrates the complete failure of the judicial system that would allow such a sadist to be in a position of power over suspected child abuse cases.

If only there could be cameras in all Family Law Courtrooms, there might be incentive for judges and lawyers to follow the rule of law. It might take a ballot proposition, but just the process of trying to get on the ballot should bring about a lot of awareness of the insanity of Family Courts.

Too bad we cannot get videos of this same judge taking someone's kid away because of trivial allegation, or lecturing on how to be a good parent. I would also like to see videos of the child custody evaluators doing their sloppy work.

My impression is that the kind of people who want to be judges and child custody evaluators are bullies who crave forcing others to do their bidding.

I was debating some commenters on another blog, and one

said:

Why is the arbitrariness of 50/50 better than having somebody not emotionally caught up in the dispute applying common sense, using guidelines worked out in advance?

This is like believing that our republican govt should be replaced by some sort of wise and enlightened dictator or monarch who somehow knew what was good for everyone.

The simple answer to the problems of dictatorship is to just visit a country that has one, and seeing how it works for yourself. Likewise, if people saw this Texas judge in action, both in court and at home, no one would want him telling you how to rear your kids.

Update: USA Today says no charges will be filed:

McALLEN, Texas (AP) – A Texas family law judge whose daughter secretly videotaped him savagely beating her seven years ago won't face criminal charges because too much time has elapsed, police said Thursday.

Aransas County Court-at-Law Judge William Adams likely would have been charged with causing injury to a child or other assault-related offenses for the 2004 beating of his then-16-year-old daughter, but the five-year statutes of limitations expired, Rockport Police Chief Tim Jayroe said.

"We believe that there was a criminal offense involved and that there was substantial evidence to indicate that and under normal circumstances … a charge could have been made," Jayroe said. He said the district attorney determined he couldn't bring charges, and that police would discuss the case with federal prosecutors even though he doesn't believe federal charges would apply.

I am surprised that they would say that this is criminal. His real crime is that he is a family court judge.

Update: (Nov. 23) The Texas judge has been suspended with pay.

Rule of law

I mentioned yesterday that a legal blog was debating how the so-called legal standard of BIOTCh could apply to fast food for kids. This discussion inevitably draws questions like this:

But what if the parents can’t reach an agreement, and equal physical custody isn’t feasible? What happens to the child?

If the guy were from some Third World country, I might patiently explain to him how we have Rule Of Law in the USA. That is defined:

The rule of law, sometimes called supremacy of law, is a legal maxim that says (at least) that governmental decisions should be made by applying known principles or laws with minimal discretion in their application. [Black's Law Dictionary]

This is, of course, a great pillar of civilized societies all over the world. It was clearly explained by Aristotle in ancient Greece. But it is routinely violated by the American family court. It does not decide child custody or visitation based on known principles or laws. It is entirely in the discretion of the judge.

I expect people to disagree with me about child-rearing, but it is especially distressing to find lawyers who do not even seem to understand the desirability of rule-of-law being applicable to the family court.

Is it so much to ask that rule of law apply to family court?

BTW, there seems to be some disagreement among lawyers today about the meaning of rule-of-law. The same blog collected these definitions:

“Everyone must follow the law”; “Leaders must obey the law”; “Government must obey the law”; “No one is above the law.”“The rule of law means that judges decide cases ‘without respect of persons,’ that is, without considering the social status, attractiveness, etc. of the parties or their lawyers.”

This is just weird. The term has been understood for 2300 years since Aristotle, so it should not be so confusing.

My biggest complaint about the family court is that it does not follow rule-of-law. My kids have been taken away for reasons that are not written down anywhere. No court should ever be doing such things in a civilized society. That was obvious to Aristotle.

As an example, consider fast food. Some people like it, some don't. Some say it is healthy, some don't. If our society were to collective decide that it is bad, then maybe laws could be passed to ban McDonalds or to require adult ID, like bars. I would not agree with that, but I could learn to live with whatever laws get passed. But our lawmakers have not done that. Therefore, fast food is not the concern of the family court. For a family court judge to consider fast food would be contrary to rule-of-law as that has been understood since Aristotle.

How can anyone not understand that rule-of-law is desirable? If anyone can explain it, please tell me in the comments.