2012-13 Real Estate Section Chairperson

I have been named to serve as chairperson of the Iowa State Bar Association’s Real Estate and Title Law Section Council. ISBA’s president-elect, Cynthia Moser, made the appointment. The appointment is for the 2012-13 year. Dan Moore is the current chairperson.

According to its bylaws, “The purpose of the Section is to provide an organization in which members who have an interest in real estate and title law can meet for discussion and exchange of ideas.” The Section has “Iowa Title Standards” and “Iowa Title Guaranty” committees. The Section is to study and report on developments in the real estate and title area and facilitate the practice of real estate law in Iowa.

The State of the Judiciary

On October 18, 2011, the PBS NewsHour ran a story titled “U.S. Civil Court System Needs Major Overhaul, New Book Declares.” The co-author is Rebecca Love Kourlis, a former Colorado trial and appellate judge. I do not know that I agreed with everything the author said in the interview. About half-way through the interview, however, without naming Iowa by name, she basically says that Iowa has the right formula:

States are all over the map on this front. States, many states, have partisan, contested elections. Other states have systems that look like the federal system. And then there are a bunch of states that are in between, that have achieved this balance between impartiality and accountability. …

The appointing authority, usually the governor, appoints, and then that judge serves a provisional term in office, during which there’s a judicial performance evaluation, a report card, if you will. And that’s about the kinds of things we have been talking about. Is the judge running the courtroom well? Is the judge making decisions in a timely and understandable way? Is the judge well-prepared, knowledgeable on the law?

That information is packaged and available to the voters. And then the voters vote yes, no, up, down on that particular judge as to whether they want that judge to stay in office.

Meanwhile, there is an interesting commentary by Andrew Cohen, who bills himself as chief legal analyst and legal editor for CBS News, a Murrow Award winner, and as one of the nation’s leading legal analysts and commentators in the Atlantic titled “It’s Time to Stop Bullying Judges.” Cohen’s theme is clear: “too few in high positions of government, on any level, seem willing to do what always needs to be done to stop bullies: stand up to them.” And, Cohen does mention Iowa by name:

All over America, GOP-led legislatures are pushing to impeach state judges. Lawmakers in Iowa, Massachusetts, Missouri, Oklahoma, New Jersey and Pennsylvania have moved in on the judicial branch, the most infamous of these crusades being the effort in Iowa to oust those state supreme court judges who voted in favor of same-sex marriage. Evidently that is still a “high crime or misdemeanor” to some.

Cohen goes on to say: “Some political or legal leader or cultural leader needs to emerge to candidly tell these legislators not just that they are dead wrong in their analysis but that they are doing their constituents a grave disservice by projecting their own failures on the judiciary.”

Advance directives (sort of)

This just struck me as funny:

(See http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-05-09/ Copyright as indicated, no claim made to this work.)

No civilized society can do without lawyers.

«No civilized society can do without lawyers.» Quoted in David G. McCullough, JOHN ADAMS at 591 (Simon & Schuster 2001) (citing family letters).

John Adams (1735-1826) — the second president of the United States of America, diplomat, statesman, prime-mover of the Declaration of Independence, and author of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts — was first a lawyer. Without reading too much into Adams’ statement, it might be argued that Adams knew that the freedoms and rights we enjoy under our democratic, constitutional system of government can best be preserved by those skilled in the law giving assistance to those who need it most.

Adams might have been thinking of his own travails as a trial lawyer. Without hesitation, Adams took on the defense of the British officer and eight soldiers charged with killing five civilians in the “Boston Massacre” of 1770. The jury trial resulted in seven acquittals and two manslaughter convictions, with popular sentiment widely condemning the results. Adams knew that being a lawyer did not always involve being on the popular side.

«‘Facts are stubborn things,’ [Adams] told the jury, ‘and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictums of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.’» Id. at 68.