In 1985, President Ronald Reagan appointed me as a federal judge. I was 38 years old. At the time, I looked forward to serving for the rest of my life. However, I resigned Friday, relinquishing that lifetime appointment.... When I became a senior judge in 2013, my successor was appointed, so my resignation will not create a vacancy to be filled by the president.
Despite being a Reagan judge at the time of appointment, Wolf handed the power to appoint the next judge to President Obama. Wolf is sloughing off senior status to gain a power for himself, the power to speak freely. And what he wants to talk about is Trump's "assault on the rule of law." He ends the column by quoting RFK Sr. — "Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope" — and the poet Seamus Heaney — the “longed-for tidal wave of justice can rise up, and hope and history rhyme.”
ADDED: For more detail on that Seamus Heaney line, here's Bill Clinton:
After Bill explains the "hope and history rhyme" quote, he goes on to talk about something in Seamus Heaney's Nobel speech. As Heaney put it:
It is said that once upon a time St. Kevin was kneeling with his arms stretched out in the form of a cross in Glendalough... [A]s Kevin knelt and prayed, a blackbird mistook his outstretched hand for some kind of roost and swooped down upon it, laid a clutch of eggs in it and proceeded to nest in it as if it were the branch of a tree. Then, overcome with pity and constrained by his faith to love the life in all creatures great and small, Kevin stayed immobile for hours and days and nights and weeks, holding out his hand until the eggs hatched and the fledglings grew wings, true to life if subversive of common sense, at the intersection of natural process and the glimpsed ideal, at one and the same time a signpost and a reminder....
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54 comments:
So he's 78 and retiring, okay, but not quietly, needs to make a public statement on a national media platform.
Everyone wants their 10 minutes of fame these days.
Seamus Heaney frequently wrote poems about petrified dinosaur poop and ancient bog people, so that quote seems fitting.
"And what he wants to talk about is Trump's "assault on the rule of law.""
Please correct me if I am wrong, but it is my impression that the Trump administration has, to date, complied with the rulings of the district court judges. Appealing them is not disregarding them.
Soon, these tiny unnoticed ripples in the pond will coalesce into a mighty tsunami of progressive sanity that will sweep away all vestiges of MAGA from the political landscape.
The judicial royalty: off with his head.
The man doesn't know what a judge's job is. It's not to strike a blow for what he imagines to be "justice". It's to apply the law as written and intended to the case before him. And the fewer idealists on the bench, the better; so good riddance to him.
Maybe once upon a time
The old guard is worried that monotonic divergence will be mitigated, thereby exposing the twilight fringe including wicked solutions, progressive corruption, debt, viability, etc.
It’s a sign of the dysfunction of a Trump deranged judiciary that this is the thing that gets attention…Wake me when there’s outrage over Hawaiian judges inventing their own powers while micromanaging the powers of…everyone else.
Do better…
Injudicious judgments have made a queer bargain, but its progress may not be a weird accompli. Abort.
Seamus Heany also wrote this, about a friend who loved to shout down into wells. It seems fitting:
Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,
To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring
Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme
To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.
This man is full of shit. Every single time the rogue leftist district judges try to exercise a veto over the clearly defined executive power of the President, he has abided with their orders, until the appeal inevitably overrides their lawless sedition.
As is said about pointing fingers, 4 are pointed back at you. This Senior Judge is admitting he made decision based on politics rather than justice or the rule of law, and when democracy voted for a new set of policies in which he disagreed, the judge decided to resign, so he could publicly admit being impartial without facing the consequences of the rebuke for the impartiality. Golf clap.
This bloke sounds like a cranky old man who has gotten pretty full of himself over the years. The founder's idea for lifetime judicial appointments was bound to lead some judges down this path.
Oh it was the atlantic skip on by
More fucking gaslighting by the Far-Left. This time its a judge, who ignores the out-of-control District judges stopping every move and action by Trump by issuing injuctions and rulings untethered to law or the constitution. No, the problem is Trump - he's crazy!
As for being "restrained" - Justice Jackson doesn't seem very restrained.
What was the life expectancy when the the Constitution was ratified?
My husband clerked for a real, federal judge, who had stayed behind in a Nazi war camp in Italy pretending to not know Italian, in order to help other inmates escape. He was made into the Italian-American character in The Great Escape, though details that would have made his sacrifice and wit even more heroic were changed. I think he was 95 when he retired. He came to work every day. That was a judge to respect. That was a judge who knew how to serve his country. He reformed the treatment of prisoners and the treatment of victims alike.
Old man retires so he can shout at clouds.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, being a judge involved a lot of riding on horseback. Retirement must have beckoned each mile a judge rode.
One of Trump's greatest skills: Trump gets people to finally complain about what never bothered them for years under other Presidents. From a distance it looks like magic or mind control.
What ruling by the berobed set did Trump defy exactly?
By the way their oath is to not badmouth decisions by the superior court or make political statements so that defendants can be assured decisions are made fairly without regard to politics. So yeah if you can't meet that crucial low bar you shouldn't be a judge.
Don't let the door hit you in the ass...
Now that nobody is forced to listen to him, will anybody?
Trump is literally the most law abiding potus in my lifetime. Carter may have been better, but I don’t see how.
Trump isn’t assaulting the rule of law. He’s challenging the rule of lawyers and judges. They don’t like that.
Never mind 'assault', which Rule of Law has Trump actually violated? Is the judge peeved because Trump has challenged the law, or because he's challenged the Status Quo, too?
You mean the Law? God forbid a judge is constrained by that...
But all the leftists keep saying that democracy is being destroyed by ::checks notes:: the elected President...
I suspect that this joker believes in judicial supremacy over the legislative and executive branches.
Federal judges as a class are arrogant pricks. Some good ones, but as a whole, insufferable. Especially the old bastards like this one who lash out when they feel their own underserved privilege and status are threatened. They have lost the respect of millions of citizens and it is because of their own actions.
Underserved = undeserved.
Well, if he's no longer a judge, I guess he can't cite me for contempt for telling him to go fuck himself.
In 1985, President Ronald Reagan appointed me as a federal judge.
In 1985, the Massachusetts Senators were Ted Kennedy (D) and John Kerry (D). Both had blue slip control over nomination to the federal bench, which means the "President Ronald Reagan appointed me" is bullshit. Ted Kennedy appointed him, and Reagan agreed rather than leaving the seat vacant. Same with his predecessor appointed by Elizabeth Warren (D), who replaced Scott Brown (R) in January 2013. If this "Reagan appointee" was conservative, he would have sought a predecessor in 2012, when a Republican Senator could appoint him and Bush approve.
Restrained? Are we sure he knows the meaning? He wrote a 661 page opinion in the Whitey Bulger case.
Excellent point, Leland.
"Trump's "assault on the rule of law."" Like, how? As opposed to the attempted Crossfire Hurricane coup, lawfare by legal invention, Joe B opening the border, pardons by autopen, individual judges issuing baseless nationwide injunctions?
On the most important issue, Trump is enforcing the law by trying to kick out illegals. If you don't acknowledge that, and don't criticize judges who stand in the way, you have no standing to complain about Trump assaulting the rule of law.
One of the benefits of having Trump in charge is that it exposes the BS of the PTB, including "Reagan" judges.
I bet this judge was an arrogant prick when he was on the bench too.
What is it with the D. Mass. judiciary?
Does he really have something to say that hasn't been said a thousand times already by all other neverTrumpers?
BFD! If he had relinquished his $247,000 lifetime salary in protest, that would be something. Otherwise, he is just another Massachusetts, Ivy League gasbag who was a good lawyer in his younger days. Trump’s “threat to Democracy” is nothing compared to the threat of Wolf’s colleagues who can’t, or won’t, read Article 2.
“I can no longer bear to be restrained by the Canons of Judicial Ethics.” In a nutshell
“What is it with the D. Mass. judiciary?”
It’s simple. They are a bunch of Massholes.
So Judge Impartial found NOTHING to comment upon regarding the Obama and Biden Administrations?
It seems they did him a favor by muzzling him until he had retired.
This is a great way to launch his Substack, I'm sure.
"assault on the rule of law."
I suppose if I bothered to check, he listed specifics, right?
Right?
Is he promoting rule of law, or rule of tyrannical judges? Is there a way to tell the difference?
Boston radio guy Howie Carr is telling tales about Marc Wolff. Like the time when then-prosecutor Wolff sic'ed that IRS on him for reporting a story Wolff didn't like, and the time it was discovered that Wolff was the (inadvertent) source of leaks to the Mafia. Not all his decisions have been wrong, but he has been pushing for an "International Anti-Corruption Court" -- more power to self-appointed globalists.
BFD! If he had relinquished his $247,000 lifetime salary in protest, that would be something.
Serious question, can you impeach a judge after he has retired?
I imagine that this fellow used the line “I was appointed by Reagan” as an ironic punchline for many years.
Years ago I had a case in front of Wolf, with the government as the substituted defendant. He's nothing more than a public employee career hack, taking a public payroll check his whole life, with the weight and double chins to prove it. Every motion, and entire case itself, went one way = to the favor of the government itself. And why not since the government was paying his salary. More of the puke that comes from Yale undergrad and a Harvard Law grad. complete with the attitude that he's better than the rest of us.
Two-eyed Jack pointed out, that...
"..In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, being a judge involved a lot of riding on horseback.."
This might be a solution to our problems.
In the interests of PROTECTING THE ENVIRONMENT,
and CLIMATE CHANGE!..
Congress should pass a law stating that ALL JUDGES MUST travel on horseback.. AT ALL TIMES (or, no pay for them)
i Suppose, that IF a judge could PROVE, that they are disabled, that Then they could ride on a horse-drawn carriage.
I’m curious as to what the judge couldn’t say while he was serving as a judge. Aside from purely partisan things that would blow his cover.
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