The postlude that ended Bob Bergstrom's “service of witness to the resurrection” on June 8 couldn't have been more apt. As the 4th Presbyterian organist blared out “Anchors Aweigh,” one had to quell the impulse to march sprightly to the reception, which was catered by his beloved Union League Club.
A Navy man and barrister of piercing visage, Bergstrom personified the plea of poet laureate John Masefield in “Sea Fever”: “...all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.” For him, the ship was the integrity of the judiciary, and the star he steered by was hope for a non-partisan appointive system.
Bergstrom meant what he said in a 1995 article for Illinois Issues that cajoled the legislature. “For 40 years supporters of keeping judicial jobs as political party patronage have been able to block that extraordinary majority,” which he termed “the needle's eye of a three-fifths vote of both houses.”
Sadly, he said what he meant six years later in a letter to this writer that “When I look at the chances in the cold light of reality, I realize that the augmentation of the old party patronage opponents ... reduces the possibility of future reform to almost zero.”
As one of the last samurai of appointive judicial selection, Bergstrom recognized that he was of a dying breed in world of public apathy and political opportunity.
The star he steered by was dimming, but he never ceded the light of possibility. As Bergstrom quoted from William the Silent, Prince of Orange, “It is not necessary to hope in order to attempt, nor to succeed in order to persevere.”
The memorial service closed respectfully with the Navy Hymn: “Eternal Father, Strong to save, Whose arm hath bound the restless wave, Who bid'st the mighty Ocean deep, Its own appointed limits keep.”
Then it was farewell and godspeed to a faithful servant of the law and the seas. (See Epilogue).
Credit Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for stepping up and chiding congressional Republicans for proposing an office of inspector general to oversee federal court activity and report suspicion of judicial misconduct to the Justice Department.
“That's a really scary idea,” Justice Ginsburg told an ABA audience in May. “It sounds to me very much like the Soviet Union was,” she added during her observation that “the judiciary is under assault in a way that I haven't seen before.”
The bar is under similar assault from mischievous denizens of Capitol Hill. The so-called Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 might be better connoted as the Abuse of Bankruptcy Attorneys Act, given the reading by ABA President Michael Greco in the July issue of ABA Journal.
He decries the requirement that practitioners be identified as “debt relief agencies,” rather than as lawyers, and bow to onerous requirements to certify the accuracy of assets and liabilities in bankruptcy schedules, or face harsh penalties.
Even scarier is Greco's view that the burden of hiring investigators and appraisers to verify information would result in lawyer-client distrust and skyrocketing costs. Bankruptcy representation might become unaffordable for many debtors, and pro bono services could evaporate.
Speaking of scary ideas, the president has taken to appending his own interpretations to the legislative bills he signs – sort of like a marginal law student who usurps a privilege of marking his own papers.
Those somewhat legal “signing statements,” which nettle both the Congress and the federal judiciary, often contradict the intent of enacted legislation and blur the black letter of laws from clear adjudicative focus.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales seems poised to put on a scary face and spook editors and reporters who contemplate publishing information that the administration deems sensitive to national security.
“There are some statutes on the books which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that (prosecuting journalists) is a possibility,” he said May 21 in a television news broadcast.
That sounds a bit too much like China's proposal to sanction journalists for disseminating, without government permission, timely news about such sudden events as earthquakes, plagues, insurrections, murders and assorted mayhem.
Back in Illinois, where journalists are usually on better terms with the establishments they chronicle, the scary ideas are fewer.
The Supreme Court, in late June, overturned an appellate ruling that publications could be sued for reporting allegations that are made in public proceedings. That may seem self-evident, but it is comforting to know the precept is on the record.