Family Court Judge suspended
Family Court Judge suspended for 45 days without pay
Sounds too incredible, I know. But in Kentucky a family court judge has been censured and suspended for two decisions against fathers that displayed a remarkable bias. Refeshing news out of a country too often criticised for its failings. In one of the charges successfully brought against Judge Tamra Gormley, the State Judicial Conduct Commission found that in removing a child from the custody of the father, the judge had acted as an advocate for the mother.
For the full story see -
http://www.kentucky.com/latest_news/v-print/story/1002833.html
Posts RSS 2.0
Ti hei
‘The Judicial Conduct Commission, the state’s judicial oversight body, ruled that …’
I don’t think we have such a thing in New Zealand. If we did they would be flooded with complaints.
kiwisfirst.com
You are right flooded is the word. Not one returned as a reasonable complaint. I have one live one agaisnt three Supreme Court justices identifying previous actions by 5 Court of Appeal justices covering over the most extraordinary information: Still to be disclosed.
http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/PB/Presented/Papers/8/5/1/49DBHOH_PAP18831_1-Judicial-Conduct-Commissioner-Office-of-the-Annual.htm
Unfortunately, NZ has a placeholder Judicial Complaints Commissioner, who is paid a salary for a purely ceremonial role (like the Queen of England).
Essentially, if the public are happy with amateur dramatics, at a professional price, then I guess it might be OK?
I am not at all happy and believe that it is quite socially damaging, to open up a PO Box, with a title and then treat it like a rubbish tin. It discourages people from challenging the behaviour, the ethics, the integrity, the wisdom or relevance of “judges” to NZ soiety.
If our “judges” had a commitment to their customers and to improving their service to the public, then they would not hide away from professional accountability and squash all attempts to ensure public scrutiny of their work.
Hove you noticed how murder trials, where the “judge” can look like a good guy, they allow in TV cameras and they talk down to the “murderer”. If the accused accuses the “judges” of hidden conflicts-of-interest, do they ever allow TV cameras into the caught-room?
A real Judicial Complaints Commissioner would receive complaints, acknowledge them to the complainant and the judge being complained about and then pro-actively investigate the complaint.
The value of complaints investigation to society lies in the degree of pro-activity.
By comparison, the Health and Disability Commissioner is proactive and constructive in his investigations. This leads to uncovering competence failures, ethical failures, communications failures by medical practitioners and ultimately leads to improved levels of professional service to the public. Medical practitioners who fail to meet professional standards are identified and given assistance or training, so that they can quickly resume their normal work, or put into roles where they can perform properly. There is a lot of value in identifying problems and acknowledging them.
This is why legal workers are not able to lift their standards, they simply don’t have any! This is why lawyers cannot sensibly be viewed as professionals, they don’t learn from their mistakes – because they can’t make any!!!! te he!!!!
They talk about lawyers being responsible as “officers of the caught”, but despite the huffing and puffing about standards, have you ever seen a single lawyer lose his practicing ticket after abusing these so-called rules, even multiple times?
I’ve seen the breaches of the rules several times, but never any disciplinary action followed through. It is all just “all care and no responsibility”, in another word, amateur dramatics, but at a professional price. Thievery, to be blunt.
Judges should compete in an open marketplace, on quality of service, timeliness of service and price. Let the market chose and devil take the hindmost, more correctly let the hindmost starve.
Let the customer choose who will serve them.
If legislation was clearly written and caughts followed the legislation, then we could dispose of about 3/4 of the “judges”.
A small country like NZ cannot really afford to put in the effort to write high quality, safe legislation. Australia barely has the resources to do a competent job at writing legislation. They do achieve a better standard of legislation than NZ, but not really a lot better than NZ. There is still a lot of room for them to get better at weeding out good ideas from ideas that look good, but in the real diverse world, just cannot work properly or safely.
California fires one or more judges, almost every year. UK fires an average of two judges per year. NZ hasn’t fired a judge in 140 years! Who is kidding who?
Scaling by population, we should be firing a “judge” every two or three years, at a minimum. Given that we are a small, sparsely populated country, without good investigation services watching judges, then we probably should be firing more than one every two or three years. It just shows we are kidding ourselves if we think our “judges” are this good.
Having to fire judges is a practical reality of judicial work. Conflicts of interest lie all around judges and will tempt and corrupt them, if there isn’t a working oversight system.
Accountants have auditors. Checkout operators have auditors. Without oversight, it is just too easy to slip into easy, dodgy and then corrupt ways. Visible auditors with teeth are a very necessary part of a working society.
I suggest that even NZ needs a working Judicial Complaints Commissioner, who earns his wage.
This would be money very well spent and would deliver many times his wage in saving of judge’s wages cost to Government and the value of improved service to the public.
Cheers, MurrayBacon.
Though I am certainly wary of the USA system of Justice, I do see some merit in electing our local chiefs of police and our judges. Boy will we get the type of justice the people want!
http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/top-stories/6518959/wife-gets-10-000-a-month-after-being-dumped/
Good candidacy in here I would have thought for a complaint to the JCC – 3 years of marriage (doesn’t say how long they had been together prior to the marriage – which for me would be interesting to consider), otherwise, the term of ‘pay for your mistakes’ takes new meaning. I suppose the JCC could look at this under grounds of: An observation of all bad behaviour all in the life of, all very rich and all, very simply ridiculous.
I am very fortunate to have found this site prior to me having been exposed to the remarkable New Zealand “legal system”. I read many complaints re judges and the entire system clearly being bias but took it all with a pinch of salt as I had little doubt that people blow things out of proportion from time to time esp in matters as emotional as this. I further also chose to accept these statements as not the pure truth given the fact that I was still a misguided idiot who believed that the truth in all matters are enough to make sure that justice will prevail as justice did really exist in this wonderful sociaty.
I now know better. The bias shown by “judges” in the NZ Family Court is blatant, shocking, criminal, certain and there is nothing you or I can do about it unless you have many thousands of dollars idly lying around and even then you have little to no hope. My very serious advise to all “fathers” of children having this circus imposed upon them is that they simply do not ever consider appearing in front of this insane institution which is presided over by judges who are not capable of rational reasoning. If you partake in a circus then you are also a clown. Might as well face the absolute truth now, as a man you are only the father of your child for as long as the mother of that child wishes you to be so. After that you become a sperm donnor at best. Your financial assistance WILL ALWAYS be good enough though. I refer specifically to judge I A McHardy who certainly gained his possition soon after his highly succesful labotomy was performed. Regardless of whether the complainent is a drunk, drug user, violent, abusive, an absent parent, fabricated aligations and admitted to having done so in court and to this very judge he will award her whatever she may desire. This man should not be left alone to deside whether to wear boxers or briefs as he will base his decision on whether he was spoon fed fried or boiled eggs for his breakfast that specific morning.
Justice is an empty and meaningless word for at least as long as we allow bias idiots in positions of such importance.
Reply to Truth
….Not much I can I disagree with you, on what you have just said Good Sir…And who suffers the most… When children cry asking …’Why can’t I see Daddy’…..Very Sad, and so gut retching to the core of your soul….
Kind regards to you Truth,welcome on board and hope you post again….take care…John Dutchie