Nothing, apparently.
I bet a diet coke that this judge is getting secret instructions and orders from Obama.
Posted on 05/14/2020 5:27:26 AM PDT by karpov
The Constitution limits the jurisdiction of federal judges to actual cases and controversies. They may not offer advisory opinions or intrude on executive or legislative powers, except when the other branches have exercised them in an unconstitutional manner. Federal judges are umpires deciding matters about which litigants disagree. If the litigants come to an agreement, there is no controversy. The case is over.
Many judges disapprove of this limitation on their power. Not happy being umpires, they want to be commissioner of baseball. Thus courts have arrogated to themselves powers the Constitution explicitly denies them. They have invented exceptions to give themselves jurisdiction over cases in which there is no longer any controversy between the litigants.
It is against this constitutional background that we should evaluate Judge Emmet Sullivan’s Tuesday order inviting friend-of-the-court briefs advising him whether to accept the prosecution’s motion to dismiss the case against Mike Flynn—a motion to which the defense consents.
By inviting the irrelevant opinions of outsiders, Judge Sullivan is unconstitutionally encroaching on executive power. Only the executive has the authority to prosecute or not. Implicit in that exclusive power is the sole discretion to decide whether to drop a prosecution, even if, as in this case, the court has accepted the defendant’s guilty plea. Once prosecutors have agreed with the defendant that the case should be dropped, the court loses its constitutional authority to do anything but formally enter an order ending the case, because there is no longer any controversy for it to decide. There is case law, and a judge-written procedural rule, supporting Judge Sullivan’s order, but that doesn’t make it constitutional.
Federal judges don’t have “roving commissions” to do justice as they see fit.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Isn’t this precisely what the Supreme Court ruled on unanimously just the other day, striking down the 9th Circus? And isn’t this exactly what the judge in the Flynn case is trying to do?
Nothing, apparently.
I bet a diet coke that this judge is getting secret instructions and orders from Obama.
Sill peon! Judges can declare themselves prosecutor now if they want. This proves it. Get with the program, they are the bosses in this country.
Yes, it is. A highly relevant decision (and precedent) if there ever was one.
If Sullivan’s blatant nonsense is unchallenged it will effectively change the nature of our judicial system.
So why not appeal to the Supreme Court?
Political judges, too many of them.
“I bet a diet coke that this judge is getting secret instructions and orders from Obama.”
Probably but he was also appointed by Reagan.
We don’t know yet how Barr will challenge this latest judicial outrage.
Can you appeal before a ruling?
The constitution doesn’t limit squat. It’s nothing but a facade. Courts and government have distorted it by various means, ignoring inconvenient parts, redefining words and phrases, and excusing excesses out of some pretend necessity.
If the constitution limited Sullivan the way this article pretends, then Sullivan would not have issued this order.
There should be no need. The lawyers for Flynn need merely present the recent ruling to the judge. If he refuses to acknowledge the precedent of the Supreme Court, he will quickly be slapped down by a higher court and maybe disciplined.
I doubt it.
The Fokker case is cited for the proposition that a court can't interfere with the government charging decisions. That case doesn;t apply, because the proposed charging decision at issue right now, is a charging decision by the judge.
Most people are unaware that it is possible for judge to be the prosecutor, but that is exactly what criminal contempt allows. This is not the "Flynn lied to the FBI" case, that one is not being prosecuted, government abandoned it. This is a separate case, "Flynn lied to the judge when he plead guilty." There is no separation of powers in criminal contempt. The judiciary has this power, and the legislature has codified this fact in statutory law.
Don't people withdraw guilty pleas all the time?
This is not a new power. This particular form of "criminal contempt" is an odd creation, it is outside the usual system. But it exists, it is used.
https://law.justia.com/constitution/us/article-3/11-the-contempt-power.html
I wouldn't say it is common, but doing so certainly isn't unprecedented.
Sullivan is out of line and out of whack. This incident illustrates that the "Rule of law" can be abused, and in the hands of dirty judges and dirty prosecutors, is (abused).
Sullivan isn’t a ringmaster, he’s an affirmative action clown in the center ring.
More importantly, the very case Sullivan cites as his authority to do this (US v Fokker) resulted in a mandatory ruling from the DC Court of Appeals that no district judge has the authority to do this.
Appointed by Reagan but put on the federal bench by Clinton.
Yesterday a freeper posted a story from Gary Aldrich, I believe, who said that when looking for federal judges Clinton chose the ones with more skeletons in their closets - easier to manipulate of course.
Sullivan is a Clinton seedling now paying off.
The alleged perjury was when he made his plea to the judge, he testified that he wasn’t under duress.
Now the judge doesn’t want to take into consideration the new evidence by the AG that there was no legal basis to open an investigation and that it in fact Flynn was under extreme duress.
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