Attorney General Brenna Bird - Is politics influencing America's judges?

 Judges are expected to decide cases based on the law—not political ideology. So what happens when concerns emerge about bias in judicial training materials? Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird joins the show to discuss controversy surrounding a withdrawn federal climate guide for judges and broader questions about political influence in the federal judiciary. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Welcome back to the Lars License Show. It's a pleasure to be with you, and I'm glad to get to your phone calls and emails in a moment. When it comes to federal judges, they play a very significant role in the lives of average American citizen. Why is that? Because the decisions made by those federal judges can literally, some of the federal judges are willing to say, why I can veto something that's even done by the Congress or done by the President of the United States? That's how much power they hold. And yet a federal guide for training judges was written recently by a climate activist lawyer. So who's really educating the people, and especially the judge that's overseeing your case in the federal courts? I thought I'd put that to Iowa Attorney General Brenner Byrd, who joins me now. AG Byrd, welcome to the program.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Well, thank you. Good to be on.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Now you just got appointed to something called the Federal Judicial Center Foundation. What's that all about and how does it relate to what we're talking about today?

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Well, basically, that Federal Judicial Center Foundation, um, it helps to support what is uh I'll call it School for Judges. It's an organization that Congress created that trains new judges. There's a lot that judges come across they might not know about. So they have reference guides that are from this organization to help them understand some things that could come up in the cases before them.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Is that a little frightening that somebody who's going to oversee a case and has to uh be the neutral arbiter in the center deciding what a jury gets to hear and what they don't get to hear, what kind of arguments can be made in front of a court and which can or in front of a jury and which ones can't, that the judges don't know much about what the what they're overseeing?

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Well, I I it's just deeply wrong that these guides would be written by one side of the case, right? Um because they're supposed to be impartial and fair, focused on justice, not a political outcome. And, you know, one of the big things, uh a big rule that that federal courts have and all courts is whenever one side wants to talk to the judge about their case, the other side has to be there too. Or it's a major ethical violation. So for one side to be writing this guide and be uh putting their slant into it, their politics into it, you know, that's deeply wrong. It's supposed to be neutral information, kind of like a fact reference that judges could take a look at.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Well, I mean, for example, even even people who don't have much familiarity with the courts, if you've watched any television or movies and you see the judge, you know, one one uh one lawyer says, Your Honor like a sidebar, he wants to go up and talk to the judge, the other lawyer comes up, and they both are participants, or at least one is an observer of what the other one is doing and saying and what the judge is saying. And if they get called into chambers, you know, where the judge gets off the bench and goes back into his or her private office, both of the lawyers show up there. And in fact, I don't even know, is there even an exception for any kind of case where only one side gets to go into the judge's chambers and and be able to t chat with the judge about something that's going on in the case?

SPEAKER_00 3:16

You know, not about something that's going on in the case. That's just not allowed. There's times that they can seek an emergency order, but then there's a hearing with both sides present. So it's it's a bad bock principle that both sides are there when their case is being discussed. And just think about how dangerous that is for one side to be educating judges. And until we had heard this was happening, we didn't even realize it was a problem, that the other side was getting in, uh getting all their information before the Federal Judicial Center Foundation, you know, we didn't even know it was a problem until we realized what was going on.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Aaron Powell Well, and by the way, this one had to do specifically with climate science. But does that mean they're also being, quote, educated or indoctrinated, the judges are uh by one side of other kinds of issues?

SPEAKER_00 4:02

Aaron Powell Well, this was the issue that really stood out to us, but I'll tell you what, with my appointment on the Federal Judicial Center Foundation, I'm going to make sure that it's fair and impartial. You know, I'm conservative, but I'm also not going to try to make sure that judges uh are only educated in one way, uh, even if it's the conservative way. I'm going to make sure it's impartial, it's neutral, it's something that we can uphold justice with. So I'm going to be looking at everything that's coming out of their training and their guides just to keep an eye on it. I want it to be neutral.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

Well, let me ask you this since you're sitting there on the board of directors of the Federal Judicial Center, I'm talking to the uh attorney general from Iowa, Brennan Bird. Is I I mean, were there any of the players within this? I mean, the ones who are in charge of putting together all this curriculum, did anybody raise a question and say, should we have this written all by people who are total, you know, climate, climate science true believers, or should we actually get some point of view from the other side? Seems like somebody would have had an inkling this is not the way you do it.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

Well, you would think so, and that is the way that it should be. I do know that once that guide was put out there and there was that outcry about the big, I'll call it a huge slant in the training, uh, that then they quickly pulled it back. But we need to make sure this doesn't happen again. Uh we just shouldn't be uh playing whack-a-mole, right? Uh seeing what could go wrong next, but just make sure what what should it be? It should be fair, it should be impartial, it should be something where we're upholding the integrity of the courts because you know, trust is something it takes a long time to get trust, and once it gets broken, it's easily lost.

SPEAKER_01 5:38

Well, and and that's the other problem is that when you think about the kind of things these judges are educated about, I would have expected that some of them say more conservative judges would have seen that. But I wanted to ask you about the comments of Associate Justice Elena Kagan of the U.S. Supreme Court. Now, I don't think much of Justice Kagan. I don't like her positions on most issues. Occasionally she might get something right and right on the right side of a decision from time to time, but she actually wrote the forward to this thing and then had to admit under oath in front of the Congress that she never even bothered to read it before she wrote the forward to it.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

Yeah, and one of the things that she said too is they she and realized that between the two of us, we probably don't see the world in the same way. That would be an understatement. No doubt. But she said, yeah, no doubt, right? But she said the reference guides should have no slant whatsoever. I a hundred percent agree with that.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

Well, i except that I'm not even sure there are certain issues on which I'm not sure you could get one without a slant because you either believe that CO2 is a leading indicator or a leading cause of climate change, or you believe that that CO2 is a following indicator that that the wor the earth is getting warmer. For example, I mean there's a major difference, and which way you go with that dis that uh that belief makes a big difference in how you see the climate change issues, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 7:01

Oh, it sure does. And I'm really glad you brought up that issue because uh I don't think the the guides should educate judges at all on climate change. That's exactly what I think they shouldn't do. These are guides to help a judge who maybe uh doesn't have a lot of understanding about science or technical evidence, just to help them understand scientific and technical evidence, the the terms, you know, some of the basics, but not the controversies of climate controversies and things like that, but just the basics of understanding scientific or technical evidence, you know, how to some some keywords that you want to come up to speed on, some concepts, uh a basic desk reference guide that way, not to have them decide what they think about climate change.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

No, and I I think you're you're making a very good point, is that they they should it should be somehow neutral, although I can think of a lot of subjects on which you could write about something knowledgeably and say, well, my point of view isn't biased. Well, that's what most of the liberals believe. That is Brenna Byrd, she is the attorney general of the state of Iowa. She now sits on the Federal Judicial Center Foundation Board. Can you imagine federal judges being indoctrinated before they hear cases like that? Back in a moment. You're listening to the Laris Larson Show and the Radio Northwest Network.