ACLU-NC Calls on Commission on Judicial Performance to Dismiss Charges Against Justice Anthony Kline


For Immediate Release: July 24, 1998

The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California today urged the Commission on Judicial Performance to dismiss disciplinary charges against Justice J. Anthony Kline of the First District Court of Appeal. The Commission has charged Justice Kline with willful misconduct, because of his stated refusal to follow a California Supreme Court precedent permitting parties to agree to the reversal of a lower court opinion. Justice Kline wrote that he conscientiously believed that stipulated reversals allow affluent litigants to purchase justice. Because those parties will not seek high court review, Justice Kline sought to return this issue to the California Supreme Court by refusing to accept a stipulated reversal.

In a letter from Executive Director Dorothy Ehrlich and Staff Attorney Margaret Crosby, the ACLU-NC charges that the disciplinary proceedings pose a threat to an independent judiciary, "the cornerstone of a living Constitution." The ACLU letter argues that "American constitutional history has been advanced by courageous judges who, in rare and significant cases, have taken bold steps to prod a higher court to re examine prevailing legal doctrine." For example, the United States Supreme Court in 1940 allowed public schools to expel Jehovah's Witnesses school children for refusing to salute the flag. A three-judge court sided with the devout schoolchildren. On appeal, the Supreme Court reversed its own three-year-old precedent, in an eloquent, landmark precedent on right of individual conscience against government orthodoxy.