Ever see a Supreme Court justice?
The old adage advises that if you find yourself in trouble, get a good lawyer. But that logic was taken to a revealing extreme when the president of the Pennsylvania Bar Association rushed to the defense of the seven-member Pennsylvania Supreme Court for spending of $164,000 of your tax dollars last year for food, travel and lodging. William P. Carlucci, who heads the state’s 27,000-member bar association, fired off his own op-ed piece, offering a vigorous defense of the integrity of the state Supreme Court and praising its members for not wanting to live in an Ivory Tower. He praised them for, among other things, traveling the Commonwealth “to offer seminars to practicing attorneys on effective practice before the court.” He practically canonized some of them for “agreeing to serve as faculty for continuing legal education” at the bar association’s January meeting at a ritzy resort in the Bahamas.
Obviously attuned to which side his members’ bread is buttered on, Carlucci opined that we “must consider more than just numbers” on an expense report and should not engage in “narrow-minded criticism” when assessing judicial expenses. In this barrister’s own words, “…The justices of the Supreme Court could simply refuse to participate in our democracy. They could refuse to travel, refuse to help educate lawyers and refuse to meet with and speak to the citizens whose lives are influenced by their decisions.”
I don’t know about you, but I haven’t crossed paths with a Supreme Court justice in quite some time. I think the last one was Russell Nigro, who stopped by the newspaper office when he was running for election many years ago. And even at that time, he didn’t seem all that interested in getting any feedback from me or anyone else about the major legal issues of the day.
This is the same Russell Nigro who’s up for a retention vote this fall. According to the Harrisburg Patriot-News, Nigro billed taxpayers for generically labeled “court-related” business meals of $100, $200 and even $400. He also had you foot the bill for an $85 bottle of wine, and two $19 bottles.
Using Carlucci’s reasoning, perhaps Nigro needed the booze to help educate lawyers on effective courtroom presentation of drunk driving law cases. Or maybe he was giving a demonstration to “citizens whose lives are influenced” by driving under the influence. I have my own theory, but I don’t want to engage in any “narrow-minded” criticism just yet.
Four justices took the Bahamas trip, each billing the state at least $2,600, according to the Patriot-News. I’m no attorney, but I have watched “Matlock” on television enough to know that lawyers don’t have to travel out of the country to get solid “continuing education.” They do that to get what common citizens refer to as a “vacation.” Why should taxpayers pick up the tab for any Supreme Court justice’s out-of-country trip? Let the members of the bar association come to the justices if they want any tips on how to argue a case in state court. Surely a large enough room could be found in Harrisburg, Pittsburgh or Philadelphia.
And what about Justice Thomas Saylor’s charging you for 34 car washes? What does that have to do with educating lawyers? Using Carlucci’s logic, I guess you could argue that Saylor was merely taking advantage of the chance to “meet with and speak to the citizens,” provided that the guy washing his car also had some questions about the burning legal issues of the day.
Of course, Saylor wouldn’t have been able to share any of his own opinions on those matters, because judges are supposed to remain impartial, right? So if any conversation took place, it must have been pretty one-sided. Unless it was about something inane, like whether the Eagles would win on Sunday, or whether a Big Mac is a better burger than a Whopper.
But hey, getting out of the Ivory Tower is what it’s all about, right? Provided, of course, that Saylor first got out of his car while it was being washed.
But Fayette County is a big place, so perhaps I’m wrong about all of this. Maybe lots of you have run across a Supreme Court justice interested in escaping the Ivory Tower for a day. Drop me a line if you have.
Paul Sunyak is editorial page editor of the Herald-Standard. He can be reached at (724) 439-7577 or psunyak@heraldstandard.com