Turnabout Trials

The judging of judges is generally a neglected task. Lawyers tend to shun it --at least publicly--because they may later have to appear before the very judge they criticize. Fellow judges are not anxious to question the performance of a colleague, and the press rarely pays attention to any but the most flagrant judicial transgressions. Nonetheless, in three disparate instances at home and abroad, the competence, propriety and qualifications of judges have been called into question:

> Chicago's magistrates have long been known as "precinct captain-judges," meaning that they handle relatively minor judicial matters and usually earn their renewable one-year appointments through loyal service to the Democratic and Republican political machines. No one minded much until a new state constitution, adopted last December, automatically elevated all Illinois magistrates in office on July 1, 1971, to associate circuit court judgeships--complete with four-year terms, a salary raise from $23,000 to $32,500 and considerably expanded judicial responsibility. Appalled at the potential impact on the administration of justice, the activist Chicago Council of Lawyers set out to review the magistrates' qualifications. On the basis of interviews with hundreds of lawyers, the council concluded that only two magistrates were fully qualified to be judges; 14 more were better than the rest, though they were not endorsed; insufficient information on another nine made judgment impossible; and 82 were deemed "clearly unqualified" on varying grounds that included competence, character, judicial temperament, respect for the rule of law, or age. Singling out ten magistrates judged to be among the most "flamboyantly" awful of all, the council's report recorded a series of scathing opinions. "Difficult to believe he had ever attended law school," it said of one. "A loudmouth, showoff, vicious, vindictive bully," was one lawyer's judgment on another magistrate. On still another: "Ignorant, arbitrary, contemptuous of those who appear before him and highly bigoted against various groups, especially blacks." The more Establishment-minded Chicago Bar Association, by contrast, found only 38 of the magistrates unqualified and 69 fit to be raised to associate judgeships. Two weeks ago, despite their trial by opinion, 101 of the magistrates, plus nine new ones, duly took their new positions as associate judges. Only six were removed from office for lack of qualifications.

> In Boston, the issue of judicial propriety v. a judge's private right to speak out on public issues is being tested in the case of Massachusetts Judge George A. Sullivan Jr. After considerable soul searching about the U.S. involvement in Viet Nam, he came to the conclusion that he could "no longer accept that keeping silent is 'being a loyal American.' In my opinion, my silence is aiding and abetting a felony." As a result, he joined 3,000 other demonstrators in a peaceful but admittedly illegal sit-in last May to stop Government workers from getting to their jobs at Boston's John F. Kennedy Federal Building. He was not arrested (though 115 others were), but he was spotted in the crowd. A complaint was filed with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which referred the matter to its complaints committee. When the committee reports, Judge Sullivan might be officially reprimanded or suspended from his $25,000-a-year job. His critics question whether a judge can command respect for the law if he breaks it, and how impartially he could preside at a case of any accused demonstrator that might come before him. Judge Sullivan argues that he has a private responsibility as a citizen. "Don't talk to me about impropriety," he says. "The time has come for the adult population to be outraged and not wrapped up with propriety." Moreover, he adds, "because of a judge's knowledge and respect for the law and because of his primary responsibility to uphold the Constitution, a judge has a special obligation to draw attention to the lawlessness of this war."

> In Vienna, a criminal court has the highly unusual task of judging a judge accused of falsifying his law-school degrees. For 20 years and more than 1,000 cases Austrian Judge Dr. Karl Kofler, 49, had a creditable judicial career. Then he lodged a slander charge against a lawyer who had criticized him. The lawyer, Rudolf Pippan, got mad and, as he put it, "began listening to local gossip" that Herr Dr. Kofler might not be all he said he was. Indeed, evidence gathered first by Pippan and then by the Austrian Ministry of Justice and a West German archivist from Bonn suggested that Kofler was not even close to being what he said he was. Appointed to a judgeship in the postwar chaos of 1947, Kofler had documented his qualifications with photostats of copies of various certificates and diplomas from the German universities of Konigsberg (now Kaliningrad, U.S.S.R.) and Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland). Witnesses pointed out that the University of Breslau granted its last doctorate as a German university a month before the date on Kofler's degree. His law-school certificate bore significant differences from the formal language used at the time and was signed with the name of an apparently fictitious dean. As for his high school record, various classmates and teachers testified that he had left school after two unsuccessful efforts to finish the second year. When the prosecution claimed that a close friend of Kofler's had tried to bribe a witness to testify that Kofler had served as an assistant judge in Poland, Kofler collapsed from a heart attack. The trial is now in recess, but the Austrian Supreme Judicial Court has already cleared up one urgent question --and probably saved the courts years of work--by upholding in a test case one of Kofler's earlier verdicts. Its reasoning: it is not learning that makes a judge, but his formal nomination by the federal President. Indeed, Kofler's decisions were seldom reversed on appeal, and though known as arrogant and overbearing, he showed intelligence and insight in assessing testimony in criminal cases. Had he not been promoted from a county court to a criminal court, he might never have been found out. But if the allegedly unlearned Kofler is now convicted of falsifying his documents, his penalty for two decades of illegal legalizing could be five to ten years in prison.

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