Washington Courts

John Bradbury is an Idaho Second District Court Judge.  He is running for a seat on the Idaho Supreme Court.  He has run before and almost got elected.  Judge Bradbury has challenged the Idaho judicial-legal fraternity.  Finally, he has been able to gain a forum for debate about the judiciary in Idaho.  See this article in the Times News.

Judge Bradbury has been told he’d better sleep overnight at his house in Grangeville or be without a job.  So said the Idaho Supreme Court today.  See the Spokesman-Review story.  The paper has also put the decision up on the web.  

Reading the decision, the majority decision, one gets the distinct impression the judge who wrote the opinion and the judges who signed on to it do not much care for Judge Bradbury.  The decision seemed subjective.  It seemed as thought pot shots were being taken at the judge.  That he was not a good person for filing this or that motion. 

That he wanted to know who his accuser was, wanted to confront the accuser was wrong, the court said. According to the courtm that right was only to be found in criminal cases.   Not true, that right is found in due process and due process requires that a person be able to confront persons against him any time a valuable personal right is about to be taken from one in a judicial proceeding - for example his right to hold public office.  The right is part of the due process clause of the 14th amendment to the United States Consitution.  The due process is applicable to the states.

The Idaho Supreme Court made Judge Bradbury into a “bad man” (that is how one must read the opinion) because his “residency” in Grangeville (Idaho County) is not what the majority of judges think his residency should be.  It seems the term has something to do with the number of nights a person spends in his residence.  That is what the court says.  Some new law on the “law of residency” is being made here in the opinion of this writer.  Seems the definition the court came up with is quite subjective.  And, when a definition is subjective law becomes arbitrary.  The judge who dissented got that point and said so.

So what is to be made of all this?  The “Idaho Supreme Court”  has decided.  The majority of judgegs have explained why and how they decided. 

But, there is something not quite right about the whole affair.

A federal judge had a message Friday for the Idaho Republican Party, which claims Idaho’s open primary election system violates its constitutional rights: Prove it.

That’s the lead paragraph in a story about a challenge to the Idaho open primary.  Spokesman - Review.  The judge said you may be right but you have to prove voters crossed over from one party to the other to establish that the open primary violates the constitution — the 14th amendment to the United States Constitution, I presume.

This is the same sort of cast I brought in Washington state court contesting the Washington Open Primary.  The case was brought to challenge the open primary in the context of the facts of a particular election where the incumbent Republican told his supporters to cross over to the Democratic Primary and vote for a candidate who would not stand a chance against him in the general election.  The case did not turn out to well.  The attorney for the Republican said I was bringing a quo warranto proceeding when in fact I was not.  He got the court to go along with his mistatement of the case and the Court of Appeals agreed.  I paid thousands in attorneys fees.  It was a sad deal.  I hope the Idaho case fairs better for the plaintff and plaintiff’s lawyers.  See Reid v. Dalton, 124 Wn. App. 113 (2004).