You can now watch last week’s debacle at the Michigan Supreme Court. It’s well worth the time to look at this and to realize that the court not only does not act by its own rules but that it blows off the doors to the Code of Judicial Conduct, too.
Justice Betty Weaver has posted this footage from the Michigan Government Television (is not available on line from that organization) on her own privately funded site (via YouTube). You might pay particular attention in the hour-long smack down the role that Justice Diane Hathaway plays: She lets the court know they are not playing by their own rules. As Justice Michael Cavanaugh puts it, the law means what he wants it to mean when he wants it to mean it. To heck with procedures. And from the three, to heck with the Code of Judicial Conduct. And the three, Justices Markman, Corrigan, and Young state again and again how deeply shocked they are, how devious Justice Weaver has been, how she’s compromised the Court, and how dreadfully mortified they are. Meanwhile, they all state for the record that, yes, they each signed the letter to the Judicial Tenure Committee asking for an investigation into Justice Weaver’s conduct. Justice Marilyn Kelly appears to want everybody to just get along. It’s not going to happen.
Here’s the deal: once you get the idea that Justice Weaver is not lying, is not not trying to save her own reputation or job, you begin to realize that somebody else is not telling the truth. …Or somebodies. This is not a simple disagreement over an interpretation and this is more than shading the truth; this is a flat-out assault with no bad behavior held back.
For the most part, people in the State of Michigan have regarded all this as a tempest in a teapot. If you’re in the teapot it’s raging. And those who are doing the raging have orchestrated this to result in what they hope will be a great embarrassment. I think they have badly miscalculated their target, but I do think it will be an embarrassment.
Why does this matter? If the highest court in this state is compromised by partisan politics or animosity what chance does the average person have how approaches the bench in the hope of a just resolution?
Well, time will tell.