Rules for lawyers:
Never try a divorce case
on the day the judge
fought with his wife.
Never try a disability case
before an alcoholic judge.
These are the usual rules
when trying to maintain impartiality
to reach a decision consistent with the law
and not flawed by human will
which should be set aside
to follow the dictum of this land
that no man is above the law.
The law is turned on its head
by Judge Cannon and her MAGA crew.
Attorneys of good will and sound ethics
now face bending of these rules:
Never try a criminal case
when the criminal conspires with the judge.
Never try an emergency order
before a judge intent on delay.
No judge forum shopping is allowed.
So find a court where the only choice
is a judge the criminal appointed.
Judicial impartiality is a rule
oft’ influenced, it is true, by experience and inclination,
but not by partiality, blind to the rule of law
instead of impartial justice;
but not by a judge who rules
before the evidence is even given,
but not by a judge who rules
that the man who gave her her job
is above the law she pledged herself to.
How can a judge be allowed to sit
in a court where law is not followed
and where blatant disrule becomes the rule?
Impartial judges sew the threads
holding the law together.
Judges who put down the needle
and rip the fabric of law
can destroy justice for us all.
Tearing apart the fabric of law
will leave us all naked,
vulnerable to autocratic rule.
FALLING FROM A MORE PERFECT UNION
Alito’s words stilled my own.
A falling body has no time
to waste on words when breath
is so precious and undermined
by space displaced by diving
thoughts toward a very dark place.
It is not just Roe which falls with me;
but, likely Obergefell, Griswold
and Loving, too. So old,
I recall them all. The sacred tome
which gives the rights owed humanity
is our constitution which gives privacy a home
of safety, freedom and security.
Alito steals them all from me.
The greater fear is that he would say
mob rule would bind our hands again
with state’s rights to up-end a nation’s democracy.
The word privacy does not exist, so he says.
Nor does the word slavery, nor contraception,
nor sexuality, nor women’s and persons of color’s
right to vote and have a say in lives they own;
because they don’t in the words originally
written for white land-owning gentlemen alone.
But that is the point, one no longer hidden.
White male supremacy, and protecting the wealthy
is Republicans’ true north. Which is why
even women support letting democracy die.
Why even kind men still vote for extremist
candidates they know can save their wealth
by telling the most outrageous lies.
Stolen election is not the first lie.
The first was that women and Africans are less
than any white man of wealth could allow
to be free, for fear their fields of wealth
once shared, would lie fallow.
I thought I could no longer write poetry
while my love for country makes me cry
knowing my beloved Law is often denied.
The law is sacrosanct, you see.
Alito’s words mean the courts are no longer free.
And that will be the death of the rights
of you and me, and perhaps the world
whom my country once led toward democracy.
The world is falling along with me.
I am not alone if you join me and vote
for those who would protect us as we fall,
and right the wrong words which stand so tall
we can no longer recognize truth at all.
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Filed under COMMENTARY, POETRY, POLITICS
Tagged as constitutional rights, end of democracy, extremism, Griswold, Justice Alito, Loving, miscegenation, Obergefell, ROE V. WADE, rule of law, slavery, VOTE, voter suppression, white supremacist, women