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Roberto Saba
sábado, 20 de agosto de 2011
Jueces elegidos popularmente y disfuncionalidades
The New York Times
August 19, 2011
A Study in Judicial Dysfunction
Harsh state judicial campaigns financed by ever larger amounts of special interest money are eating away at public faith in judicial impartiality. There are few places where the spectacle is more shameful than Wisconsin, where over-the-top campaigning, self-interested rulings, and a complete breakdown of courthouse collegiality and ethics is destroying trust in its Supreme Court.
On Monday, a special prosecutor was named to investigate an altercation between two justices on opposite sides of the court’s bitter ideological divide. Ann Walsh Bradley, a member of the court’s liberal wing, has charged that David Prosser, a conservative, put her in a chokehold during a heated exchange shortly before the court upheld the new state law eliminating most collective-bargaining rights for public employees.
Justice Prosser has disputed Justice Bradley’s version of what occurred, and the facts remain unclear. What is certain is that Justice Prosser should have recused himself from that ruling. His vote to uphold the law occurred shortly after his re-election campaign in which he benefited from heavy anti-union independent spending.
Justice Prosser won the April election by a very small margin, prompting a recount. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that he then raised more than $270,000 for the recount, much of it in $50,000 chunks. (The contribution limits that apply under Wisconsin’s public financing system for judicial races do not extend to recounts.) Some $75,000 of the haul was used to pay fees to a law firm led by an attorney representing conservative groups in a case challenging state campaign disclosure rules, which is scheduled to be heard by the court next month.
Given the lawyer’s role in Justice Prosser’s recent recount success, a reasonable person might well question the judge’s impartiality on that case, too. After first saying he had no intention of recusing himself, Justice Prosser on Thursday asked the parties in the campaign finance case to file memos stating their views about recusal. It should not take a formal request for him to step aside.
A contentious 4-to-3 decision by the court last month declared recusal decisions by the justices to be unreviewable. In another sign of the court’s dysfunction, the deciding vote came from Justice Patience Roggensack, whose involvement in an earlier case was the subject of the disqualification motion that the court was reviewing. Like the ruling itself, Justice Roggensack’s participation in judging her own conduct showed astounding disregard for legal ethics and every litigant’s right to impartial justice. The problems don’t even stop there. A year ago, by another 4-to-3 vote along ideological lines, the court weakened the recusal standard by adopting a rule saying that campaign fund-raising or expenditures can never be the sole basis for a judge’s disqualification. The rule was largely written by a business group that has spent lavishly in judicial campaigns.
Members of Wisconsin’s top court need to focus on restoring civility and public trust. For starters, they should scrap last year’s decision on campaign money in favor of strict disclosure requirements for lawyers and litigants. They should also adopt an appeals process for recusals, so the final decision is no longer left to the judge whose impartiality is being questioned. The court’s credibility, and justice in Wisconsin, are on the line.
August 19, 2011
A Study in Judicial Dysfunction
Harsh state judicial campaigns financed by ever larger amounts of special interest money are eating away at public faith in judicial impartiality. There are few places where the spectacle is more shameful than Wisconsin, where over-the-top campaigning, self-interested rulings, and a complete breakdown of courthouse collegiality and ethics is destroying trust in its Supreme Court.
On Monday, a special prosecutor was named to investigate an altercation between two justices on opposite sides of the court’s bitter ideological divide. Ann Walsh Bradley, a member of the court’s liberal wing, has charged that David Prosser, a conservative, put her in a chokehold during a heated exchange shortly before the court upheld the new state law eliminating most collective-bargaining rights for public employees.
Justice Prosser has disputed Justice Bradley’s version of what occurred, and the facts remain unclear. What is certain is that Justice Prosser should have recused himself from that ruling. His vote to uphold the law occurred shortly after his re-election campaign in which he benefited from heavy anti-union independent spending.
Justice Prosser won the April election by a very small margin, prompting a recount. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that he then raised more than $270,000 for the recount, much of it in $50,000 chunks. (The contribution limits that apply under Wisconsin’s public financing system for judicial races do not extend to recounts.) Some $75,000 of the haul was used to pay fees to a law firm led by an attorney representing conservative groups in a case challenging state campaign disclosure rules, which is scheduled to be heard by the court next month.
Given the lawyer’s role in Justice Prosser’s recent recount success, a reasonable person might well question the judge’s impartiality on that case, too. After first saying he had no intention of recusing himself, Justice Prosser on Thursday asked the parties in the campaign finance case to file memos stating their views about recusal. It should not take a formal request for him to step aside.
A contentious 4-to-3 decision by the court last month declared recusal decisions by the justices to be unreviewable. In another sign of the court’s dysfunction, the deciding vote came from Justice Patience Roggensack, whose involvement in an earlier case was the subject of the disqualification motion that the court was reviewing. Like the ruling itself, Justice Roggensack’s participation in judging her own conduct showed astounding disregard for legal ethics and every litigant’s right to impartial justice. The problems don’t even stop there. A year ago, by another 4-to-3 vote along ideological lines, the court weakened the recusal standard by adopting a rule saying that campaign fund-raising or expenditures can never be the sole basis for a judge’s disqualification. The rule was largely written by a business group that has spent lavishly in judicial campaigns.
Members of Wisconsin’s top court need to focus on restoring civility and public trust. For starters, they should scrap last year’s decision on campaign money in favor of strict disclosure requirements for lawyers and litigants. They should also adopt an appeals process for recusals, so the final decision is no longer left to the judge whose impartiality is being questioned. The court’s credibility, and justice in Wisconsin, are on the line.
sábado, 21 de agosto de 2010
De Santis: Libertad y Convenciones, como en el Derecho?
Extraído de la entrevista que Hugo Calegaris le hizo hoy a Pablo de Santis en ADN Cultura. Ver entrevista completa acá.
-¿Es distinto imaginar una historieta que imaginar, por ejemplo, lo que ocurre en Los anticuarios? ¿Son dos procesos diferentes?
-Sí, completamente. Lo primero en una historieta son los aspectos formales, que son fundamentales.
-O sea, cómo resolver en ocho cuadritos un determinado segmento...
-Sí, depende del formato. A veces puede ser todo un álbum continuado, o pueden ser cuatro u ocho páginas. Eso es fundamental a la hora de pensar un personaje y un tipo de historia. Los aspectos formales incitan a la imaginación. No son límites. Los acepto pensando que es bueno tener alguna exigencia particular.
-¿Eso ayuda a tu imaginación, encontrarte con pautas?
-Siempre. Con cualquier tipo de pautas. Me gustan las pautas: la fecha de entrega, la cantidad de líneas, el género, la cantidad de páginas...
-¿No es una carga?
-No, no. Me parece que para la neurosis del escritor es bueno tener una forma que lo contenga. En mi caso, los aspectos formales son la musa inspiradora.
-Pero eso no pasa con la novela, porque ahí tenés tantas páginas como quieras y tanto tiempo como quieras a tu disposición.
-Pero ahí tengo los géneros, afortunadamente, y los géneros siempre te contienen. Son también una manera de imponerse guías. Y yo siento que las novelas, además, me contienen psicológicamente. Cuando estoy escribiendo una novela, estoy concentrado en algo. Si no, me disperso. Necesito estar siempre escribiendo una novela, aunque después no la publique.
-¿Nunca sentís la tentación de salirte de las guías?
-Es que siempre hay guías. En general, la literatura con menos guías es la que se parece más a sí misma. Si uno piensa, por ejemplo, en una categoría como la del cine policial, las películas no se parecen tanto entre ellas. Ahora, las películas de vanguardia siempre tienen rasgos semejantes. Las películas artísticas se van a parecer todas siempre.
-Por ejemplo, muchos cineastas jóvenes argentinos hacen películas bastante parecidas...
-Por eso: cuando se renuncia a las convenciones y se cae en la ilusión de que las convenciones no existen, se va a una forma de relato único, ¿no?, y tremendamente repetitivo.
-Eso suena contradictorio. Lo primero que uno tiende a pensar es que la convención iguala...
-Claro, pero uno se mueve con la conciencia de la convención y puede manejarla. Siempre debe haber artificio, porque para eso es arte. Aun en una conversación común, cuando contamos algo, lo hacemos con artificio. Le cuento algo a mi mujer y busco el modo de interesarla. Si sé que algo la va a sorprender, se lo voy a decir al final. Hay una puesta en escena. Los artificios están dentro del lenguaje. No es sólo la gramática, sino otro tipo de convenciones.
-O sea: eliminar los artificios es sólo una ilusión.
-Sí, y además el gran arte tuvo siempre no sólo convenciones, sino convenciones muy marcadas. Si uno ve la tragedia griega, el teatro isabelino, observa que hay cierta cantidad de pautas. Lo mismo pasa en poesía, en el soneto.
-Muchos artistas jóvenes hablan del gran arte o del "cine de calidad" de modo casi peyorativo. ¿Es por causa de que quieren escapar de las convenciones, de los finales felices, de los finales tristes, simplemente de los finales?
-Sí, y también quieren escapar del mundo paterno. Identifican las convenciones artísticas con el mundo paterno de las imposiciones, en oposición a la vida verdadera. Pero después uno va viendo que no funcionan así las cosas. Ese mundo de las convenciones exige una gran habilidad para moverse en ellas.
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