The Recorder is one of Law.com's network of legal newspapers, and the California based publication has been giving special attention to the ABA meeting. Mike McKee reports on a powerful ABA panel, "Judges on ABA Panel Describe Living in Fear, Years After Unpopular Rulings."
More than two years after enraging right-wing groups by ordering Terri Schiavo's feeding tube removed, George Greer still peers over his shoulder nervously at times.
In fact, the Florida judge told a rapt audience Friday at the American Bar Association's annual meeting, he even used an alias when he registered at his San Francisco hotel on this trip.
Two years ago, he said, someone in the Bay Area threatened to kill him over his decision to end life support for the brain-damaged Schiavo. And even though that person was prosecuted and jailed, Greer said, he's taking no chances.
"It is a little unnerving," he said. "I still can't see a strange car come down my street without wondering [who's behind the steering wheel]."
And:
Besides Greer, there was New Jersey Supreme Court Justice Roberto Rivera-Soto, who 10 months ago participated in a ruling saying gay and lesbian couples deserve the same rights as married couples, but stopped short of approving same-sex marriage.
Eileen O'Neill, a former Texas judge who in 1993 held Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry and other anti-abortion activists in contempt for violating an order directing them to quit harassing several Houston-area doctors, was on the panel. And so was former California Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso, kicked off the bench by voters in 1986 along with two other justices for reversing death sentences.
All four spoke about the consequences of their actions, but stood firmly behind them, while fretting somewhat about the political and social pressures facing judges these days. Unstated, but hovering in the ether, was the fact that many judges believe the current presidential administration has exacerbated the problem by blaming unpopular rulings on "activist judges."
"It's not easy being a judge, but one of the things we uphold is the Constitution," Philadelphia-based U.S. District Judge Berle Schiller, chairman of the National Conference of Federal Trial Judges, told the crowd at the start of Friday's seminar. "And all these [four] jurists have been willing to stand up for the Constitution."
At their own risk, one might add.
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