This October 17, 2013 broadcast of
"The Virtual Round Table" suggests there can be critical differences in finding fault with individual judges or judicial decisions and pursuing fundamental reforms of America's legal and judicial systems. Your VRT host,
Zena Crenshaw-Logal, presents
Third Branch Triage, 2013 - A Retrospective on U.S. Judicial Reform Advocacy. Featured guests are
attorney Michael McCray and
Dr. Andrew D. Jackson.
Click here to tune into our October 17, 2013 broadcast of The Virtual Round Table
America is approaching a decade since the late William H. Rehnquist, former Chief Justice of our U.S. Supreme Court, noted with dignified but clear alarm in his 2004 year-end report on the Court that, at the time, there was a dramatic increase in public criticism of judges. National Forum On Judicial Accountability (NFOJA) emerged approximately five (5) years later, committed to restoring the balance between America’s judges and its sovereign citizens; a balance NFOJA contends is lost when judges essentially control all government processes for evaluating their conduct.
NFOJA’s emergence defied the earlier prediction of Russell Wheeler, a scholar in Governance Studies, that the “hot button issues” on judicial accountability that troubled late Chief Justice Rehnquist and many jurists, would cool and fade from national debate. But was this 2007 forecast of Wheeler merely off by a few years? As of 2013, has judicial reform advocacy in America simmered to occasionally loud complaints about individual judges, but relatively muzzled calls for serious, system-wide changes of America’s judiciary?
Joining NFOJA administrators, attorney Zena Crenshaw-Logal* and Dr. Andrew D. Jackson, to answer such questions is attorney Michael McCray whose case, Michael McCray v. Thomas Penfield Jackson, was a motivating factor in the creation of NFOJA.
*Bar admissions limited to the 7th Cir. COA