As a federal judge for more than 40 years, I appreciated the recent year-end report by Chief Justice John Roberts condemning the “significant” increase in threats aimed at courts. Too much of this is flying around nowadays. It is not a partisan issue. Harassment comes from all quarters of the political spectrum, and it is aimed at judges of all supposed political stripes.
Judges are human beings. Let’s start there. We are, to be frank, mostly rather homely, boringly conscientious, hard-working people. We find the facts, apply the law, decide the case and move on. My motto has always been: “A dull trial is a happy trial.” We know we are fallible, but we do the best we can. We don’t deserve this abuse.
Criticism is one thing, and I’ve expressed my share of it. As the chief justice’s report says, with admirable understatement: “It is not in the nature of judicial work to make everyone happy.” But physical threats and harassment, whether spat out directly or launched sideways, with a deniable wink or curled lip, are entirely different. Since judges are not going to be deterred or influenced by these tactics, attempts at intimidation are not only cowardly, but stupid.
It’s worth adding that threats are also deeply unpatriotic. Our tripartite Republic (thank you, James Madison) is classically described as a three-legged stool, with Congress, the president and the courts as its three supports. Break or badly damage one leg — say, the judiciary — and the country is in danger of toppling over onto its butt.
Few judges these days seem to complete a career without receiving credible threats to themselves and to their families. The chief justice’s report notes more than 1,000 such serious threats against federal judges investigated by the U.S. Marshals Service in the past five years alone.
As the chief justice also noted, “Public officials, too, regrettably have engaged in recent attempts to intimidate judges — for example, suggesting political bias in the judge’s adverse ruling without a credible basis.” He warned that “intemperance” in statements by our political leaders about judges “may prompt dangerous reactions by others.” No judge I know would remotely disagree with this. I certainly wouldn’t.
So far, I am probably one of the least threatened judges on the federal bench. Nevertheless, I’ve found that a little bit goes a long way. About 10 years ago, a febrile letter from someone whose lawsuit I had dismissed showed up threatening my family and mentioning that the writer knew the school where my wife taught English. As a result, the school was locked down until the writer was located and proved to be, like many of these types, a crackpot. After a package bomb killed a colleague in Alabama in 1989, I told my children, 6 and 4 at the time, not to touch any packages coming in over the holidays. I vividly recall them barreling in from the backyard, shouting out warnings whenever a delivery truck pulled up. Children should not have to manage this garbage because of their dad’s job.
My brothers and sisters on the federal bench have faced much worse. Since I put on the robe in 1984, two of my colleagues have been assassinated: Robert Smith Vance of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1989, and Richard J. Daronco of the Southern District of New York in 1988. Another judge, John Roll of the District of Arizona, was killed in a mass shooting in 2011. Judge Joan Lefkow of the Northern District of Illinois lost her mother and husband in 2005 to a killer looking for her. More recently, in 2020, a crazed litigant, angry at Judge Esther Salas of the District of New Jersey, murdered her 20-year-old son Daniel in the doorway to her home.
I’ve confined myself to the federal judiciary, but it is important to remember that state and local judges have suffered as much, or more, from violence and intimidation and received less protection.
Even in my relatively placid community, a certain wariness gnaws at the corners of my life. I take different routes to work to avoid a predictable pattern, and on the way, I keep an eye on the mirror to be sure I’m not being followed. In restaurants, I always take a seat with my back to a wall, facing the room. Once, as I was leaving the courthouse and the security gate was lowering behind me, a truck pulled up and illegally blocked my exit, making me feel like the ill-fated Sonny in “The Godfather.” My language as I confronted the driver was not perhaps a model of judicial temperance.
As I say, I’ve gotten off easy. Colleagues find themselves showered with rancidly obscene, sexist, racist or otherwise stomach-turning bombast. Cloaked by the cowardice of online anonymity, these messages may contain lurid threats. Squads of people sometimes show up at the homes of judges and other public servants with the explicit intention of making everyone in the house frightened and miserable.
Targets now find themselves “doxed” — meaning that their confidential information, including home and workplace addresses, personal phone numbers, financial and other confidential information and photographs of their children get spread over the internet. Judges may also be “swatted” when a fake phone call to law enforcement brings police rushing to the door, tumbling the occupants of the house out of bed in the dead of night.
Facing this kind of thing, my friends and colleagues may put on a brave face, respond with attempts at humor, or more often remain silent and try to ignore it. But, I can tell you, it is painful to endure, especially when directed at loved ones. The pressure should not, and hopefully never will, affect what a judge does, but it means that daily life goes forward with a kind of grim determination. This work of the courts is central to our nation. It will not stop.
My concern is not so much where things are as it is where things sometimes seem to be heading. The existence of an independent judiciary is the difference between a free people and a tyranny. The judicial branch of our Republic must possess, and be perceived as possessing, a fearless, bedrock integrity. In certain countries dominated by brutal drug cartels, the rumor was that judges were given the choice between “silver or lead” — that is, between accepting a bribe or taking a bullet. Are we risking a time when no judge can function without a distorting level of concern for self and family?
Where are we going? Who’s that knocking at the door?
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