Bristol paper declares against cheap power, expensive power

Online today from the Bristol paper, one story denouncing the cost to consumers of electricity, another story bashing the coal business and looking forward to the "post-carbon era."

Meanwhile, the NYT reports here that burning coal at home is making a comeback, while declaring in favor of a gas tax.

On Straight Creek in Lee County

This month's Virginia Lawyer magazine has an article titled: "Testing the Boundaries of the Clean Water Act on the Virginia-Kentucky Border: The Coal Industry’s Proposed Use Attainability Analysis for Straight Creek in Lee County, Virginia."

The magazine says this article was written by someone who has worked for the Southern Environmental Law Center and the Appalachian Citizens' Law Center over in Whitesburg.

On government officials

The NYT opines here that prosecutors should say less about the Illinois governor.

Reports here and here say the Page County sheriff gets to keep his title for now.

In Norfolk, a lawsuit has been filed to bar the vice mayor from serving as chief deputy treasurer, claiming there is some conflict of interest.

On coal

Coal is my worst nightmare, says the next Energy Secretary.

In Kansas, they are litigating over a coal power plant.

In Surry, there is opposition to a proposed coal power plant.

In Abingdon, they are getting a Clean Coal and Natural Gas Energy Center.

In West Virginia, there is skepticism about a $3 billion coal to gas plant.

Some lending institutions are talking about divesting from coal, as if it were the new apartheid.

Thomas Jones recollects his parents' working in the mines.

In Harrisonburg, it's hard to get a lump of coal.

More on dissemination of judicial evaluation data

"With respect to dissemination of information on performance evaluation, two lessons can be drawn. First, transparency about the evaluation process and specific evaluation results benefits both the public and the judiciary. The public benefits because it is able to develop an appreciation for the role of the courts beyond the outcome-based information it is likely to receive from the mainstream media or special interest groups, and can make more informed votes in judicial elections. The courts benefit because increased public awareness of the proper modes of judicial measurement fosters an appreciation for the challenges judges face, as well as the high caliber of judges in the community. It also makes judicial elections less likely to be decided by specific issues or case outcomes, and ultimately creates a public atmosphere more accepting of judicial independence.

The second lesson is that broad dissemination is almost always preferable to limited dissemination. Making information about individual judges available to the public allows ordinary citizens to become more familiar with the judges who serve them, and to appreciate the individual strengths and weaknesses of each judge. Good judges rightly will be praised, and weaker judges will feel appropriate pressure to improve their performance. More importantly, broad dissemination allows the public to evaluate judges on neutral, relevant criteria, rather than having to rely on reports about specific case outcomes. Even summary information about the state of the judiciary as a whole assists the public in understanding the relevant metrics for measuring judicial performance. By contrast, maintaining the confidentiality of performance evaluations fails to educate the public about appropriate measurements, allows less reliable or less comprehensive surveys to fill the void (with potentially unwelcome results), and arouses public suspicion about the real quality of the judiciary.

There is some question as to whether transparency can hinder the self-improvement function of JPE. Some judges, particularly those new to the bench, may benefit from a confidential evaluation early in their service, to allow them privately to improve upon areas of weakness. There may be other occasions in which a judge’s improvement on the bench may be promoted by keeping his individual evaluation confidential. Too much confidentiality, however, may provide less incentive for judges to improve; release of information to the public is a great motivator. Therefore, even if evaluations are occasionally kept confidential, more often than not they should be made publicly available. All states should develop a dissemination strategy that maximizes transparency without sabotaging self-improvement."

Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, "Shared Expectations: Judicial Accountability in Context," accessed via the National Center for State Courts Judicial Performance Evaluation Resource Guide.

What I get out of this and like articles is that judicial evaluation when based on the proper criteria should get the widest-possible distribution to promote a more rational and principled discussion of retention issues, as opposed to some of the nonsense we have observed from time to time. The article suggests that judicial independence is most threatened when decisions about judges are made in the absence of informed debate.

In other words, the only people who have to worry about sunlight on these judicial evaluations are the judges whose evaluations are bad and legislators who ignore what the evaluations say. And so, the question arises, why wouldn't the Virginia Supreme Court want the General Assembly to be both empowered - and constrained - in its evaluation of judges by objective information of the best and most relevant kind - in a way that the public also can decide whether the legislators are doing the right thing? One would expect that failure to disseminate information about bad judges mostly has the effect of protecting the employment of bad judges, to the detriment of everyone else. Dissemination of positive information about good judges would make it harder for legislators to fail to keep them.

Jefferson might have agreed that what Justice Brandeis wrote in Whitney v. California - that the remedy for bad speech is more speech - applies as well to judges, but then again he might have said that Federalist idiot John Marshall sucks and we need to run him off the first chance we get.

The end of the Sierra Club case

Here is Judge Williams' opinion at the end of the Sierra Club case.

And, we won the case, so I guess there nothing more to be said.

On evaluating judges

The American Bar Association publishes something called "GUIDELINES FOR THE EVALUATION OF JUDICIAL PERFORMANCE WITH COMMENTARY."

Part of what it says is this:

"Guideline 3-4. When judicial evaluations are used to inform decision makers regarding the continuation of judges in office, results should be made readily available to those responsible for continuation decisions, including voters, governors, legislatures, and commissions.
-4.1. Those responsible for reappointing, reelecting, or retaining judges should be provided with objective summaries of evaluation results for each judge and an explanation of how to interpret the results.
-4.2. If evaluation results are provided to an individual or entity responsible for continuation decisions, and those results include assessments of a judge’s overall performance or recommendations as to whether a judge should be continued in office, judges should have an opportunity to review and respond to the evaluation report before it is disseminated.
-4.3. If evaluation results are publicly disseminated, and those results include assessments of a judge’s overall performance or recommendations as to whether a judge should continued in office, judges should have an opportunity to review, respond, and meet with members of the evaluation body before the results are made public."

Something else the paper says is this:

"Judicial evaluations based on appropriate criteria and reliable and valid methodology . . . pose no threat to the independence of the judges being evaluated."

The VLW Blog has this post which suggests the making of a constitutional crisis, as the Chief Justice and the General Assembly dicker over the limitations on the use of judicial evaluations in Virginia. Under Va. Code 17.1-100, "The Supreme Court, by rule, shall establish and maintain a judicial performance evaluation program that will provide a self-improvement mechanism for judges and a source of information for the reelection process. By September 1 of each year, the Supreme Court, or its designee, shall transmit a report of the evaluation in the final year of the term of each justice and judge whose term expires during the next session of the General Assembly to the Chairmen of the House and Senate Committees for Courts of Justice."

I have filled out a bunch of these judicial evaluation forms, including most of the circuit court judges in the 28th, 29th, and 30th circuits. If the General Assembly can't use them, then what a waste - maybe I should just start throwing them in the trash.

On federal questions

Here from the Weekly Standard is another article commenting on the comments of Judge Wilkinson of the Fourth Circuit and Judge Posner of the Seventh Circuit on the Supreme Court's D.C. gun decision in Heller.

Here is somebody's account of the Fourth Circuit's decision last year in U.S. v. Buckner, regarding search of a home computer, and affirming a decision by Judge Wilson of the W.D. Va.

Judge Richard Williams ruled against the Commonwealth in the case of the soldiers' ballots from overseas, according to articles such as this one. This story says the General Assembly is going to modify the laws prohibiting the wearing of campaign stuff in the polling place, which laws might otherwise violate the First Amendment.

Here is a goofy Washington Post story on squabbling among my good friends on the Sixth Circuit, and here are here are comments on the Post's story.

Judge Paul

Here you can see from the Time/Life archives a photo from 1958 of Judge John Paul of the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia.

This is surely one of my favorite pictures of W.D. Va. judges, along with this one of Alexander Rives and this one of Alfred Barksdale.

Who are the best D.C. lawyers?

Here's former VBA president Glenn Lewis on the cover of the 2009 edition of Washington DC's Best Lawyers.

Glenn Lewis is about as interesting a fellow as I ever expect to meet.

If a tree's rights are violated in the woods but nobody hears it, does it make a sound?

In Hedgpeth v. Pulido, the U.S. Supreme Court explained yesterday in essence that when the trial court commits certain kinds of error with regard to the jury instructions, the appeals court should consider "whether the flaw in the instructions 'had substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury's verdict.'"

On used books

Not too long ago, I finally went to Mr. K's used books in Johnson City - an amazing place, until you consider, for example, all the bookshops in Charlottesville.

We love free stuff

Years ago, I bought a copy of the Manual on Complex Litigation, because it was referenced in some order I had in case that was transferred as part of multi-district litigation.

More recently, I discovered that the later edition is downloadable for free from the Federal Judicial Center website.

There's a lot of forms and other good stuff in there, worth consulting even when you aren't in a case that is totally too big and complex.

Surviving the plunging numbers

The stock market? No, the .500 or less records at Michigan, Tennessee, Notre Dame, Arkansas, Auburn, UCLA, and Texas A & M, with LSU, Clemson, and West Virginia not much better - doesn't that sound like a list of the usual suspects from about 1950 to 2000? Has there been a "realignment" in college football, in the language of political theorists?

On being a criminal defense lawyer at age 88

The Atlanta paper has this fun article on an experienced lawyer in Georgia.

Should the Bar disciplinary hearing docket be online?

This article in the Daily Press says that Bar counsel want a reversal of the Supreme Court's decision that the docket of upcoming hearings on disciplinary charges against Virginia lawyers should be accessible online to the public.

Funky Boucher-Wampler campaign of 1982 video clip

You can see Congressman Boucher, ex-Congressman Wampler, and some famous lawyers back when their hair was much different in the video clips that can be found on this page, with a report on the recount from the 1982 Ninth District Congressional campaign.

So not worth it

It says here, I think, that a judge lost his position (and his silk) because it was discovered that he lied about a traffic infraction, claiming that someone else was driving, only it turned out the someone else had died before the incident.

Paige v. Fishwick

Here, Vivian Paige answers the question, who is John Fishwick?

Worst idea for a movie ever

Last night, I went home and there was an old yellow Labrador who came out to see me and wanted in the car. The kid next door told me the dog's name is Gus and pointed out the house where Gus lives. When I saw him again later, I grabbed the line he was trailing and coaxed him back up the street. To me, he seemed kind of old and underweight and confused - but still wanting to chase those cats.

I own the book Marley and Me, but I wouldn't take money to go see the movie.