Sometimes A Picture Really Is Worth A Thousand Words:
My co-blogger Jonathan Adler earlier noted the quite puzzling decision by Ohio state court judge James Burge blocking the state's death penalty. After seeing the picture accompanying the USA Today's coverage of the decision, however, I think I understand. (Hat tip: Bench Memos)
And one of Che Che Guevara!
If so, what guidance does this observation provide to litigants who may appear before Judge Kozinski?
When I was a law clerk in 2004, I couldn't even put a Bush-Cheney bumpersticker on my car.
I've had a cup of tea and six cups of coffee today, and I'm not done yet. You'll need at least three or four grams of crystal meth to beat me to the punch.
No, I am not implying that. I'm not sure why you would think to the contrary, but it was the fact that the judge hung up a hugh Che poster in his chambers at work -- thus indicating that he saw Che as a model for his own professional work -- that was notable.
Are you trying to make a link that "Ernesto 'Che' Guevara was a noted and principled opponent of state-backed killing, so this may have swayed the judge's decision?"
Only for the *oppressors*, dude.
I suppose the shot's frame cut off the Abbie Hoffman poster.
I guess I got that impression from this:
You see, I thought that you were puzzled by the decision and that after you saw the picture, you understood why the judge ruled as he did.
My bad.
It seems that you have taken to writing sarcastic and dismissive asides in your comments directed to me: This afternoon I have counted 4 or 5 from you.
Could you please stop? I would really appreciate it.
Thanks,
Orin Kerr
P.S. Please re-read our comment policy if you're unsure of what I mean; I think this is your first day commenting here, and we have a policy that commenters who are uncivil may be banned from commenting.
I think the point is more that the picture of Che is a partisan symbol that is associated with a group of ideas.
A symbol may become associated with a different group of ideas than one might expect from literally interpreting the symbol. The Che symbol is associated with ideological opposition to the death penalty, regardless of what Che as a person thought about the death penalty. (Besides, the death penalty for political opponents isn't the same as the death penalty for common criminals.)
It seems that you have taken to sarcastically linking the quality of a judge's legal reasoning with the political iconography in his office and then complaining about the sarcasm you earn in response.
Could you please stop? I would really appreciate it.
xoxo,
kpj
Or, more likely, he just thinks the wrong people are being executed. Corporate executives, it shouod be.
Regards,
Ric
My link was not sarcastic, as I really do think the Che poster helped explain the decision.
Do you have a list of the verboten posters? Is there a web site that lists them?
His name was Ernesto.
A teenager or college student might hang his image as a matter of rebellion; I used to wear pseudomilitary gray smocks with high collars for the same reason. For a supposed adult, such a poster says louder than words that ideology trumps everything else. In a judge, it means spiteful denial of any oath to uphold the Law when it conflicts in any way with THE TRVTH as revealed by ideology. Attempts to deflect that criticism simply underline it.
Regards,
Ric
Placing a poster of a murderous thug on your office wall (assuming it was the Judge's office) is a heckuva lot more than just "looking at pictures."
And I simply cannot believe I had to make that point.
You misunderstand, Ex-Fed. We have freedom of speech here; Judge Burge is free to display any posters he cares to hang.
I am equally free to draw conclusions from his decisions about which posters to display, and I have done so.
Regards,
Ric
The other perplexing thing is almost all revolutionaries are Communists or Marxists. But whatever they are, Karl Marx seems to be their idol.
Very odd.
And you mistake me, quite. I absolutely support the right of Hizzoner (or anyone else) to display whatever posters he likes; in fact, I prefer that they do so honestly and forthrightly. I simply reserve the right to draw conclusions from them, just as I reserve the right to draw conclusions from other forms of speech. In this case, the specific declaration of that particular speech constitutes a denial of the oath of office for a judge, and therefore might be considered cause for "kicking him off the bench."
Regards,
Ric
You could start with a cartoon from Jyllands-Posten, or maybe a photo of a historic Southern flag, and end with anything remotely Christian.
Oh! That's DIFFERENT!
Lorain County is spittin' distance from Kucinich territory.
I've said it twice today, I'll say it again:
That's an armchair Marxist sitting in front of a real Marxist, and another armchair Marxist.
It appears that you are confusing pointing out inconsistencies in your posts with sarcasm.
I can understand why you might be peeved at me since - in another thread - you made two incorrect summaries of the relevant law on child pornography and were corrected by Mr. Nieropont. But I would kindly request that you not drag those hurt feelings into other threads. After all, you are the one who rushed to throw up a couple of statutes/cases that were not on point. That is, of course, a hazard of blogging, but I don't see why you are getting angry at me about it. I hope that you are not so think-skinned that you get angry at people who happen to be in the room when you make misstatements.
Here is our most recent exchange (your comments in italics) with your most recent post (to another poster) appended:
So you believe that the posters helped explain the decision but that they do not provide an indicator of how the judge will rule on various issues?
This is, to say the least, a bit confusing.
See, right there, a hazard of quick posting.
Well, it certainly gives one a clue to his thinking. A guy who hangs posters of Lenin and Trotsky on his wall probably thinks differently than one who hangs posters of Burke and Hamilton. And when a man hangs a picture of a murderous thug in a place of prominence in his private office, well, it says something about him. Or do you think his interior decorator picked it out as a fashion statement?
That said, however, I tend to doubt that this judge's taste in posters is ironic, at least, not deliberately on his part.
but, like rick above, i DO think that the poster is telling. and i won't deny it. Che is the icon of a liberal left that has a range of disparate issues:
racism
capitalism
good grief, i think of covered them already. maybe disparate wasn't quite necessary. at any rate, a ruling against the death penalty fits into this on both levels, as the punishment is meted out primarily to the minorities and the poor.
so, if all you care about is activism in the vein of racial and class conflict, of course the death penalty is a affront on both scores.
if you're like me, though, your primary interest is in whether the bastard did it. if he did, fry the bitch.
of course, people often tell me i lack nuance...
Ohio judges are elected. This is what you get. And I do think it is clear that a judge's politics will affect his rulings and those pictures are evidence of his politics (unless he simply considers them unusually artistic).
I can't tell if you're playing with me or actually being serious, but I'll go another around in case you are being serious. To break it down for you, there are two distinct issues here :
(1) Are "the pictures a judge looks at" somehow an indicator of how the judge will rule on various issues?"
(2) Are large political posters that a judge puts up in his chambers behind his desk a sign of how a judge will rule on various issues?
In my view, the answer to (1) is no, and the answer to (2) is yes. So a judge might in his own time at home look at sports pictures, or comic books, or Ansel Adams, and these will have no indication of how the judge will vote. Thus the answer to (1) is no. But political posters behind a judge's desk in the office are quite different; they suggest the judge's wish to link the political cause with the judge's work, apart from whether the judge looks at the poster on a regular basis or not.
I'm not sure why you think this is confusing; I don't think it is. In any event, I hope that clarifies it for you.
As for Dave N's points, I was delighted to be corrected; I learned something, which is always great.
That said, it would be inconceivable to me that any decent person would use Hitler in such a parody. Since I'm not sure why Mao is objectively much (or any) less offensive, I no longer present such displays. I would not generally judge a person -- at least, a younger adult -- harshly for doing what I did, but it does indeed seem more than inappropriate for a judge, at least in his government office, even if he is opposed to socialism.
It would be problematic to try to ban such activity. A display of wanted posters which included Charles Manson and a Black Panther or two would be eccentric, but not the sort of problem presented by iconographic posters with similar subjects.
Quite so. I mean, if the judge had a big pic of one A. Hitler hanging on his wall, with "He Died For Your Sins" underneath it, it would certainly be First Amendment protected, but we might wonder about his ... hmm, judicial temperment (but he might be perfectly civil) ... impartiality (but he might in fact not let his inclinations influence his judgment)... sanity?
I wonder how he'd react if he had heard the recent suggestion that at the end Che was in a plot to snuff Castro and ally with the US, and that Castro sent him on a suicide mission in order to get rid of him without having to explain why a hero of his revolution had had to be stood up against a wall.
Frank, I only read some of them, and I only have so much time to moderate (see our comment policy below). I agree that I do have a low tolerance for anonymous commenters who are sarcastic/obnoxious to me personally, especially in a string of multiple comments, as I think this commenter was in the earlier Kozinski thread that spilled into this one. To be clear, I love it when a commenter explains why I am wrong or politely disagrees. That's great. But when a commenter is sarcastic, obnoxious, etc. towards me on my own blog, after being warned about it, I think that's different.
Brilliant.
Thank you for the compliment, but it belongs to David M. Nieporent (though I like to think I also added to that discussion). He and I usually (though not always) agree, but we are, indeed, two separate people.
Nope. I've been noticing all day that you're one of the rudest, most sarcastic and least substantive commenters I've seen here (ever).
I can understand why you might be peeved at me since - in another thread - you made two incorrect summaries of the relevant law on child pornography and were corrected by Mr. Nieropont. But I would kindly request that you not drag those hurt feelings into other threads. After all, you are the one who rushed to throw up a couple of statutes/cases that were not on point. That is, of course, a hazard of blogging, but I don't see why you are getting angry at me about it. I hope that you are not so think-skinned that you get angry at people who happen to be in the room when you make misstatements.
No one minds David Nieropont's comments--he's smart, funny, and doesn't act like an ass. Your blaming OK's annoyance on a welcome correction, rather than your own irritating comments, is... bizarre. And an example of exactly what he's talking about. Instead of looking at the substance of what he's saying, you dismiss what he's saying (very improbably) as the product of "hurt feelings" from being corrected by someone who actually knew what he was talking about.
The fact that I'm really irritated at you shouldn't tell you too much--I'm a little short, myself. OK, however, is one of the most patient, longsuffering, and eager to attribute good intent of any men/bloggers I've ever read. It should tell you a lot that you're getting on his nerves.
It might say something. What you look at with a reasonable expectation of privacy means something completely different than what you choose to publicly proclaim as part of your office by hanging pictures on the walls of your office (and taking publicity shots with them)
Stop being a bunch of jerks.
Only on a legal blog would there be a discussion about how many communist mass murderers would fit on the head of a judge's pin. Meanwhile, in the real world, there is an Ohio judge standing in his office in front of a Che poster. I would almost take it to be a sort of joke on the judge's part or a nod to his more naive youth - except the Obama poster gives a definite un-ironic cast to the tableaux.
Of course, the judge is free to hang the poster; as I am to call him a jejune fool.
Lorain is also white working class, but not as ethnic as Cleveland.
At any rate, I think the Ohio Supreme Court will have some words for judge Burge including take those posters down and reversed.
I was wondering, since these pictures are on his left, if he had pictures of Hitler (or some other right wing killer) and McCain on his right. :-)
That the judge feels comfortable sitting in front of these for a press photograph does say a lot about his judgment. Just not anything positive.
Should the pictures be prohibited?
No.
And what's the deal with Obama always being paired with Che? I could see his enemies doing that, but his supporters?
That there's not an iconic Hitler in the display, and whereas the judge is not lounging with a swastika armband on, only goes to show that he has not yet read Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism". This man is a glorious walking uncouth.
Right, Barack Obama is a Marxist. There's no point denying it any more. The day after inauguration we start confiscating personal property, followed by purges and forced relocations. What I personally can't wait for is after we've incarcerated or deported all the Republicans, we bring in the UN to command the armed forces and re-distribute all the confiscated wealth to Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah.
Sheesh.
Yes, we've got our embarrassing dopes like this guy, just like you've got yours. But Che is about as about popular among liberals as Franco and Marcos are with conservatives. Which is to say "with not very many," which is too many.
I'll say the same thing I said in responding to the Kozinski article: The picture is a sign of the judge's ideas, which is what we're really worried about. Those ideas affect the judge's public activities whether the picture itself is public or not.
I guess that explains all of the Young Republican-types that you see walking around with Franco and Marcos t-shirts.
In fact irony goes hand in hand with many who simultaneously display both Obama and Che artifacts. Maria Isabel, the Che campaign worker who displayed a Che flag, and her husband have a zoning dispute where they are trying to construct a McMansion in a historic neighborhood.
Here is what Maria Isabel said on the issue.
“It’s wrong to try to implement restrictions in my private property. I own this piece of land. This is America. I should be able to do anything I want with it.”
Given Che’s hard-core Communisn,I doubt that Che would have taken such a libertarian view of ownership rights.
IOW, both Maria Isabel and the good judge come off as ignorant fools, when they display Che posters.
When J. Crew comes out with a "Generalisimo" line, they will.
You should make sure that your original point is incisive, reasonable, obvious, and correct.
You are trying to be Zorro, but you are swinging in from the chandelier holding not a rapier, but a dead fish. It doesn't matter how skillfully you wave that fish around, you're not going to carve a Z into anyone's backside.
I think the guy knows damn well that his picture was taken with those photos in back. He also knows he probably has his judgeship for life, either through a) appointment or b) having an overwhelmingly leftoid constituency, a not uncommon phenomenon in Ohio's urban cores.
Oh, but he would have! With respect to his own ownership rights, anyway. Rhetoric aside, that sort are all about being the pigs in the Animal Farm, not the goats.
It isn't relevant that he won't get the opportunity to implement full soviet style collectivization. It is enough that he will help a democratic congress vastly increase spending, taxes and the national debt. Remember LBJ's presidency and democratic majority? We still haven't undone the damage of that.
Oh, relax, Ethel.
...and, yes, he is- go read up on ACORN.
Damn leftist judges from leftist electoral districts. This is what happens when you let uninformed voters choose judges.
LOL
I'd like to nominate this one for the fresh breath of nuance approach:
DWPittelli (mail) (www):
I used to hang a Che Guevara poster in my office when I was a financial analyst for a very small financial publishing firm. And at home my Chinese-made AK-47 rifle was hung on wall hooks set in a Chairman Mao poster, with his little red book dangling from the sling. Everyone who knew me knew that these were parody displays, because I said such things as "Nixon was a pinko" due to his belief in state economic planning (e.g. federally enforced wage and price controls).
That said, it would be inconceivable to me that any decent person would use Hitler in such a parody. Since I'm not sure why Mao is objectively much (or any) less offensive, I no longer present such displays. I would not generally judge a person -- at least, a younger adult -- harshly for doing what I did, but it does indeed seem more than inappropriate for a judge, at least in his government office, even if he is opposed to socialism.
It would be problematic to try to ban such activity. A display of wanted posters which included Charles Manson and a Black Panther or two would be eccentric, but not the sort of problem presented by iconographic posters with similar subjects.
6.13.2008 8:51pm
Hilarious. Yet not much of a stretch at all.
Quite simply, leftists see the enemy (murdering communists) of their enemy (capitalist America) as their friend.
He is in his first term, elected in 2006 for a 6 year term. Lorain is blue coller and while generally Democratic, it is no where near "leftoid".
It's a smear to point this out...or a distraction...maybe both.
It is neither.
Yes, one can make too much of it - but it is no mere coincidence and in fact it may be a smear to suggest otherwise. It certainly serves to obfuscate and it certainly serves as a tactic reflecting misdirection. Whether the underlying motive reflects naivete or something more conscious is difficult to say.
Yes, Ohio does elect all of its judges. This guy seems to be on a one-man crusade against the death penalty. He has ruled it unconstitutional in various ways many times and is a classic judicial activist. Just Google this guy. It's a real shame. I personally doubt he will get re-elected and I'm not entirely sure how he got elected in the first place.
Got any pics of the stars &bars hanging at McCain campaign HQ?
I think the way this clown got elected is the same way our current Congressional do-nothings got elected - the right wing decided to teach the republicans a lesson. We are paying for that big time on the national level and based on this clown on the local level as well. We got a whole lot of "Blue Dog" democrats who immediately forgot the basis on which they got elected and voted exactly the opposite of the way they said they would. I hope the public remembers that this fall.
I think the pic indicates that the judge is a hard-core leftist, and ignorant.
and come on, people. read a little and you will find out Che was not someone who was fun to be around, or not nasty, or, well, just about anything good.
If he was in power, you would be in deep doo-doo, whooo wever you are.
Check the urn on the floor next to his desk. It contains the remnants of either that, or his great aunt.
Anyone care to offer an opinion as to how the National Review, and the rest of the Is_Lame_0_Fashionists ChicPolitque, would be denigrating Henry David Thoreau, were he alive to engage in Antiwar Civil Disobedience today?
There are a few other facts in the article, which could go a long way in clearing up any befuddlement about Judge Burge's decision, if anyone had actually been interested in looking before opining with knee-jerk reactionism.
I'm not an attorney, but know without a doubt, that if I were, and had lost a long, intense death penalty appeal for a client, it would have been personally difficult. It seems that the Judge is also a recently reformed long-term Republican (2004), because he became, "frustrated with the Iraq war and the Bush administration and had always been more on the liberal side anyway." Nasty business having your party yanked out from underneath you in the never-ending Tug-of-War competition played out within the distorted model of reality: The Bipolar Polity.
"The End of Politics"; now that's the Fukuyammering that should have been...
----
Professor Kerr, I just ran into this: Federalist Delaware Congressman James Madison Broom on The House of Representatives Floor, February 17, 1807. Seems that nothing changes, except the partisan swing of the pendulum.
I don't care if Judge Burge is a former Republican, a former Rotarian, or believes in the Easter Bunny. The Che poster, in particular, shows incredible bad judgment on his part--and I am sure Henry David Thoreau would be appalled at being put in the same category as Che Gueverra.
Why would a judge want to confuse people (and cast doubt on his reasoning and motivations) with his personal collection of political posters?
Speaking of symbols, this guy needs to be dis-robed.
Diane S. Sykes (7th Cir.), OK. Burge? No way! Defrocked, though....
What's that you say, Che is not used as bogeyman? People look at him as a hero? Erg, nevermind.
Oh now I see and I guess this worldview is why we disagree.
In my opinion, the sort of things that a person puts on display in his or her office tell you almost nothing at all about the person. With the exception of, say, family photos office decorations are generally calculated to appeal in some way to people who visit the office. (I take it that you and a number of other posters do not see the appeal of posters of Guevara and Obama. Fair enough.)
In my mind what is far more revealing about a person's character and views are the materials that s/he chooses to view out of the public eye and share with friends.
You issue an inappropriate tirade, sharing headroom with political bedfellows in the echo chamber that is ideological partisanship's business-end, unwilling to pierce through the wafting miasma, and comprehend what is self-evident to those who exist without the plane of linearly gray-scaled politics: you are playing the very same game that was used quite recently against one Judge K. in a most unrighteous manner, and furthermore, the rules to this madness were originally promulgated on your side of the self-imposed dungeon that is the Model of a Bipolar Polity.
Until I learn otherwise, I am willing to accept at face value Judge Burge, identified as being a former capable and hard-hitting defense attorney, who after a 31 year long practise is still recognised by his peers as being in possession of personal honour.
However ill-advised it may be, I can find no cause for denigration, using only the factual standard of the judge's own words: <i>"I tend to admire people who in my opinion go beyond their speech—they actually do what they say"</i>. I do not suffer from disillusion here; Che was a murdering Marxist bastard. Were I to wake up one fine morning to discover myself under the totalitarian bootheel of a Marxist regime, I'd be herded onto the first train heading out to a re-education facility. However, it's only devotion to the spinning wheel hell of circular history to gloss, to deny, and to forget the right-sided authoritarian boot-stomping, which fomented a fecund environment the Marxist disease used as the vector to infect the body politic. Che danced the dirty when he talked the talk, yet unlike Castro, he also fearlessly walked the walk, and was far too god-damned quotable, even in words spoken staring straight into the barrel of his impendent death. They were better than any B-Grade Hollywood cowboy hero's dying words up on the silver screen. You continue on in arrogant naiveté not understanding what is the root-cause of Che's viral celebrity: martyrising, while held captive, in a cold-blooded execution by a Bolivian soldier. <i>(another rational for the Che poster: the death penalty's counter-productive inutility?)</i>
Without a doubt, Che practised what he preached. Using this standard alone, there is far more honour than presently exists within the myriad of pro-war College Republicans, cowardly issuing bellicose verbosity, shielded from the darkness ever falling, that is the insane reality of war, hiding behind towers and within halls that reek of elephants' death. Afflicted with weak-knees, jaundiced stomachs and alabaster-hued livers, the whole lot of 'em.
Out of personal respect for Judge K., I decline on your present offer to compete in this evil and venal partisan game, using ordnance of snide and satirical 9th Circuit jokes, or references to Falwell, Dobbs, and walking in rounds of cited religiosity from members of The House Republican Conservative Committee. It would in all likelihood be an effort in futility anyway, passing far above your head in that foggy place it now resides in. Instead, I'll wax Biblically.
Go to the mirror bro, you need to check-out that mote:
<blockquote>But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you.
<b>Proverbs 1:25-27</b>
Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye. Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.
<b>Matthew 7:1-7</b></blockquote>
Your rant borders on the incoherent. I have made exactly 3 comments on this thread. In one I made a snark concerning Judge Reinhardt, an ideologue for whom I have little respect, in one I corrected Orin who gave me a compliment that should have been directed at another person, and then your comment.
I continue to think that the Che poster, in particular, shows a terrible lack of judgment on Judge Burge's part. The Obama poster is troubling only to the extent that judges should not engage in partisan politics. If it was a photo of him shaking Senator Obama's hand, I would have no problem with it at all.
I engaged in no tirade at all--yet you clearly did. I merely made the observation that any comparison of Che and Henry David Thoreau borders on the idiotic. "Judge, lest ye be judged." Get real.
Didn't Thoreau take his laundry home to his mother while he was living off the fat of the land?
It's easy to be a free spirit/leftist/eco freak when you are living off the system you are criticizing.
What, there aren't any white working class east European catholics in the district who aren't total fruitcakes? If the district didn't like his ideology seems a non-moonbat would have unseated Kucinich relatively quickly.