David Ignell: Liberal judges and the tyrants they become

By DAVID IGNELL

Abuses of judicial power by liberal judges who erode our constitutional rights have drawn the ire of Alaskan citizens for a long time.  Not only do our state court judges repeatedly overstep their constitutional boundaries, but the practice is rife throughout federal courts in our country as well.

Fortunately, President Donald Trump has listened to the American majority who elected him and has stepped up to openly challenge liberal federal judges.  President Trump has called the decisions of these political activists for what they are: unlawful and partisan.

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy would be wise to follow his lead and challenge our liberal state judges. Under Article 3, Section 16 of our Constitution, the governor has a duty to restrain violation of any constitutional power, duty or right.

The mainstream media has immersed itself into this fray, seemingly desperate to protect socialist ideology in our courtrooms by smearing President Trump and supporting the conduct of the liberal judges.

The MSM paints liberal judges as protecting our fundamental rights and liberties, but here in Alaska we know the opposite is true.  Liberal judicial activism by our Supreme Court has run rampant for decades in its agenda to normalize Constitutional violations.

A recent Washington Post article carried the headline, “retired judges warn that the rule of law is unraveling.”  The Post said they interviewed a dozen former judges who “described a judiciary under incredible strain and its integrity threated by partisan attacks [and] antagonistic rhetoric from public officials.”

President Trump sees it differently.  His spokesperson Abigail Jackson has said, “the real threat to the rule of law are these lower court judges who are consistently ignoring the law in service of their own personal political agenda.”

Trump is not only 100% correct, but every member of the federal judiciary should acknowledge this glaring problem by calling public attention to their own judicial canons.

“Deference to the judgments and rulings of courts depends on public confidence in the integrity and independence of judges.”  These words come straight out of the first sentence in the Commentary to Canon 1 of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges.

Merriam-Webster states the core meaning of deference is “a yielding or giving way to the judgment or wishes of another out of respect.”

Canon 1 makes it abundantly clear that judicial integrity is a foundational element of gaining public deference to judicial decisions.  How are judges to earn this integrity?  The answer lies in Canon 3 – by being faithful to the law and not swayed by partisan interests.

Boom, there it is.

Public confidence in judicial integrity is paramount to judicial power, which by constitutional design, is unable to physically enforce its orders.  When liberal judges begin making up law or catering to partisan interests, they undermine the broader judicial objective of having citizens willingly yield to their judgement.  Teetering along the path from deference to outright rejection, these judges deserve all the criticism the public and the executive branch dish out.

If the judges in the Post article want to see public faith in the judiciary restored, they would be wise to clean up their own act and stop pointing the finger at President Trump.

Ironically, a great example of the federal judiciary’s disregard of its own canons came to me courtesy of the Post article.  Underneath their headline was a picture of retired federal judge Nancy Gertner standing next to a “Trump is Not a KING” sign.

I looked into this, and it turns out Gertner is also a Harvard law professor.  She was a featured speaker, along with a union organizer, and an immigration rights advocate, at a No Kings Day rally in the Boston area.  Gertner urged the crowd of 2000 people gathered, “if ever there was a time to resist with every fiber of our being, it is now.”

So much for impartiality.  But with Gertner, her political bias didn’t start on No Kings Day.

Gertner attended Yale where she became friends with Hillary Clinton.  In 1994 Bill Clinton appointed her as a federal court judge.  She retired from the bench in 2011 at the age of 65.

Gertner’s Wikipedia page says that before becoming a judge she “was notable for being a supporter of liberalism and feminist ideals, wearing bright red clothes in court, carrying her legal briefs in shopping bags, and keeping files on lawyers and judges she felt to be sexist.”

Gertner’s background certainly doesn’t inspire confidence in the Judicial Canons requiring the federal judiciary to be free from political bias.  Once the liberal genie is out of the bottle, it’s hard to put her back in.  How was it then, that the judicial canons were disregarded in the process of Gertner becoming a judge?

Well for starters, consider who nominated Gertner. President Bill Clinton certainly didn’t have much respect for the sanctity of the Oval Office when he invited Monica in and then was impeached on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

Next, consider who presided over the Senate Judiciary Committee which is charged with evaluating judicial nominees. Joe Biden was the chair from 1987 to 1995.  (Incidentally, within 6 months of Gertner’s approval, Biden’s committee also approved Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer to fill vacancies on SCOTUS.)

Finally, significant blame must fall on Gertner herself.  She should have declined Clinton’s nomination. Canon 2 states that judges should avoid even the appearance of bias.  The commentary states that an appearance of impropriety occurs when “reasonable minds, with knowledge of all the relevant circumstances disclosed by a reasonable inquiry”, would conclude that the judge’s impartiality is impaired.

Clearly, Gertner’s flamboyant advocacy for liberalism should have disqualified her from ever being a federal judge.  She knew the canons but disregarded them.  This leads to another very relevant question: What other rules and laws did Gertner choose to disregard while she was a judge?

The Gertner example opens another yet valid question: How many other judges in the federal system have been approved despite possessing similar political bias?  This is exactly the issue that President Trump is exposing and the mainstream media is trying to avoid.

Here in Alaska, our state judges are required to follow a similar code of conduct.  Yet that didn’t deter retired Superior Court Judge Philip Pallenberg from being a keynote speaker at the No Kings Rally in Juneau this year.

In the midst of a crowd holding signs like “Dump Trump” and waving an upside-down American flag, Pallenberg proudly displayed his political bias by urging the crowd to support candidates in the upcoming election who will “not blindly support Donald Trump in violation of their oath.”

According to a Facebook post by an observer, Pallenberg began his speech saying that as a judge he was trained to not get involved in politics and to certainly avoid public speaking on current events.  But Pallenberg reasoned he could not remain silent anymore because he “truly believes we are seeing the authoritarian, fascist takeover of our country.”  Pallenberg told the crowd he believed in “liberty and justice for all – not just the rich, not just the powerful”.

Yet in practice, Pallenberg’s actions as a judge were much different than his words as an activist. In Juneau, he presided over both trials of Thomas Jack, Jr., an Alaska Native man from the small village of Hoonah who was not rich or powerful.  When Jack’s family ran out of money to pay his defense attorney, Pallenberg forced a new, unprepared state-appointed attorney to go immediately to trial.  He denied the attorney’s request for a continuance, despite the attorney telling him there was no way he could be minimally competent to try the case.

Pallenberg was also responsible for seating the two illegal juries in Jack’s trials, devoid of any Alaska Natives.  Pallenberg let prosecutors off the hook who withheld important exculpatory evidence from the grand jury, and ruled that Jack’s repeated denials of the allegations to law enforcement “did not tend to negate his guilt”.

Pallenberg’s rush to convict Jack occurred in an election year in which his name would be on the ballot for judicial retention.  In the review conducted by the Alaska Judicial Council Pallenberg received extremely low scores from prosecutors but his overall score was boosted by the high marks he received from social services professionals involved in court proceedings.

Pallenberg invited one of those professionals to participate in Jack’s case.  During both trials, Jack’s defense attorneys raised concerns with Pallenberg that the professional was interfering with witnesses, but Pallenberg didn’t do anything about either incident.

In 2013, a grand juror approached Pallenberg and said he wanted to change his vote to indict an Alaska Native veteran because of what he subsequently heard a key witness say.  Pallenberg ignored the grand juror and allowed the indictment to stand.  That indicted veteran was also not part of the rich and powerful, and as a result spent a few years in jail.

In 2016 Pallenberg was nominated by the Alaska Judicial Council to the Supreme Court.  In 2018 the Council nominated him to the Court of Appeals.  In both instances, the Judicial Council ignored the following comments by a member of the Alaska State Bar:

“[Pallenberg] alters the procedural rules, makes biased rulings, and twists the law to promote that side and to accomplish his desired results…. He is arrogant and judgmental…  He is so ambitious and concerned about appearing ‘politically correct… He panders to public opinion”.

These comments beg additional questions.  If the Alaska Judicial Council ignored severe bias like this in the Pallenberg nominations, for what other judges have they ignored bias?  Do the Alaska judicial canons mean anything to the Council?  Why hasn’t the Council investigated the extent of Pallenberg’s bias in Jack’s, the veteran’s, and other cases?

I tried to find out the answer in my requested grand jury investigation in September of 2022, 3 months before the passage of SCO 1993.  I specifically requested an inquiry into “the process of selecting judges in Alaska, in particular the political influences and persuasions with the Alaska Bar Association, the Alaska Judicial Council, and the Office of the Governor.  But the Presiding Judge in Juneau allowed the Attorney General’s office to hijack that investigation despite their glaring conflicts of interest.

Pallenberg sentenced Jack to 50 years in prison with 10 suspended.  Jack’s tribe later passed a unanimous resolution, citing several violations of due process in his wrongful conviction, and calling for his immediate release, a grand jury investigation, and for the Governor to issue him a Pardon of Innocence.

Jack has now been in prison for the last 15 years where he remains today.

When the rhetoric on the surface is peeled back and the facts are exposed, it’s really the liberal judges who act as tyrants, and from whom President Trump is trying to protect us.

David Ignell was born and raised in Juneau where he currently resides.  He formerly practiced law in California state and federal courts and was a volunteer analyst for the California Innocence Project. He is currently a forensic journalist and has written a book on the Alaska Grand Jury.