Cappy, high court defended
You owe your readers an apology and Pennsylvania Chief Justice Ralph Cappy a retraction, for your editorial of Aug. 24, “Punitive Action: Law professor silenced for court criticism,” is flat-out wrong. Chief Justice Cappy had nothing to do with the cancellation of a series of programs regarding the court by Duquesne University law school professor Bruce Ledewitz.
Had you checked with the law school’s dean, you would know that he and Mr. Ledewitz concurred that the programs would not be held prior to any conversation between the dean and the chief justice. The dean would also have told you that when he and the chief justice did speak – with a witness present no less – the chief justice defended Mr. Ledewitz’s freedom to voice his views. To say, as you did, that the chief justice attempted to punish Mr. Ledewitz is completely false and in some minds may be defamatory.
Contrary to what your reporter wrote in the story upon which your editorial was based, the circumstances that led to the law school’s forwarding curricula to the Supreme Court’s Continuing Legal Education Board were not unusual. In fact, the CLE board’s director specifically refuted that assertion when interviewed, but the reporter apparently chose to ignore that refutation and you chose to be glib rather than accurate.
While you oddly attribute some hindrance of academic freedom to my quoted comment that Mr. Ledewitz is “as critical a person I know about the Supreme Court,” the fact is that his program was held in Pittsburgh at Duquesne under the auspices of the Supreme Court’s Continuing Education Board, the sole such CLE program that Duquesne registered with the CLE board. So much for hindering academic freedom.
Chief Justice Cappy, with his colleagues, has initiated more meaningful advances in Pennsylvania’s justice system than probably any other jurist in recent history.
By contrast, a variety of Professor Ledewitz’s “reforms” are already in place in slightly different forms, or have been deemed unrealistic and unworkable by long-time, independent observers of Pennsylvania’s court system.
I invite your readers to learn more about advances in our courts from the Judiciary’s Web site ( www.courts.state.pa.us
). Simply click on the upper left hand drop-down box, “Jump to a page in this list,” click “The State of the Commonwealth’s Courts,” and then click “Looking to the future: The State of the Commonwealth’s Courts” on this web page’s left hand column to view the report.
While Mr. Ledewitz has derided this effort (and ignored other efforts) by the Judiciary to communicate with Pennsylvanians regarding challenges in our courts, the final fact is that the chief justice, the Supreme Court and many others within the judicial system are working hard to meet those challenges and to share solutions with whomever will seriously listen.
Thomas B. Darr
Deputy Court Administrator of Pennsylvania
Harrisburg