Ex-federal judge and ex-governor: attacking judiciary poses danger and threat to democracy

An ex-Pennsylvania governor and former U.S. District Court judge Wednesday warned against politicians’ increasing verbal attacks against the independent judiciary, which they say have threatened democracy and led to threats on the lives of judges.

“This is the closest we’ve come to a constitutional crisis,” said former Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican who was governor from 2011 to 2015, at a forum at Saint Vincent College on the importance of the independent court.

“I can’t think of any other time that we’ve been in such a violent state,” Corbett, who was U.S. Attorney for Western Pennsylvania from 1989 to 1993, said at the 90-minute forum.

Corbett said calls for impeaching judges because politicians do not agree with their rulings is wrong.

“I’ve yet to hear one allegation of illegality,” Corbett said.

Criticism from on high that contains incendiary language results in judges being threatened, sometimes from those making numerous phone calls to place improper pressure and frighten them, said former U.S. District Judge Robert Cindrich, who served in the federal court in Pittsburgh from 1994 to 2004.

Neither Cindrich nor Corbett mentioned President Donald Trump by name as one who has verbally attacked judges who have frequently ruled against his administration in cases opposing his overhaul of the government.

Cindrich, a Democrat who was U.S. Attorney for Western Pennsylvania from 1978 to 1981, said unwanted pizza deliveries to a judge’s home also are threatening to their family’s safety. He cited the incident in New Jersey where a pizza delivery person, who turned out to be a disgruntled person involved in a court case, killed a judge’s son when he answered the door.

Unlike politicians who attack the judiciary, Cindrich said that “when scholars and professors criticize judges, we understand it is an intellectual exchange.”

Both Cindrich and Corbett urged the 60 people in the audience to turn down the rhetoric, to talk to those on the other side of the political spectrum and to search for information about the other side to balance that with information from sources that support their views.

“Don’t automatically assume I’m right and the other person is wrong,” said Cindrich, who called for tolerance.

Cindrich is part of a bipartisan coalition, the nonpartisan Keep Our Republic, that has more than 40 retired federal judges that are dedicated to democracy, the rule of law and separation of powers between the legislature, executive branch and judiciary.

Trump is by no means the first president to rail against the courts when rulings went against the nation’s chief executive, and there is a historical precedent for that behavior, Cindrich said.

“We’ve had a rocky period before … like President Andrew Jackson,” who basically “flipped off the court” during his administration, Cindrich said.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously tried to pack the Supreme Court in 1937 in a plan to add justices when one reached age 70, up to a maximum of six extra justices.

Roosevelt’s attempt at packing the court failed, but the Supreme Court later ruled in favor of the National Labor Relations Board in a battle against Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. of Pittsburgh. That gave the federal government the right to regulate labor-management relations.

On the other hand, President Richard Nixon, resisted when the Supreme Court ordered him to turn over audiotapes of his discussion of wrongdoing in the White House during the Watergate affair in 1973 and 1974.

“It was a frightening time,” Cindrich said, but Nixon released the tapes, even though he knew it likely would end his presidency, which it did.

Longtime Greensburg defense attorney Richard Galloway said he believes that Trump’s attacks on judges constitute a threat.

“I think he has put undue pressure on them,” Galloway said.