Today in Supreme Court History: August 21, 1798

8/21/1798: Justice James Wilson dies.

Justice James Wilson

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

Matter of Disbarment of Gottfried, 518 U.S. 1043 (decided August 21, 1996): the Court disbars Lawrence R. Gottfried, who had been convicted of removal and destruction of government records under 18 U.S.C. §2071 (sound familiar?). Working for the VA, he evaluated appeals of denials of benefits. He made his job easier by extracting and throwing out documents and then referring the files back because they were incomplete. Eventually this attracted suspicion and then investigation. "From February 9, 1994, to May 10, 1994, the Inspector General copied thirty-eight veterans' appeals files before the cases were assigned to Gottfried. In thirty-two of the cases, Gottfried removed and destroyed medical records, service records and other documents, and, in each case, he recommended that the Board remand without deciding the merits of the appeal. Some of the missing documents were found among trash on the curb outside Gottfried's home and in his garage." (58 F.3d 648 (D.C. Cir. 1995).) When I was a new lawyer, in the days before e-mail, with a more subversive sense of humor, I asked some older attorneys: "What if every time something came to you, you threw it out without looking at it? How long could you get away with that?" The general answer was: about six months. I never tested this theory (though I later had a boss who seemed determined to explore the limits). As for Gottfried, he was on the job for 23 years before the roof fell in.

[Mr. Bumble]

captcrisis
August.20.2022 at 11:47 am
Flag Comment Mute User

Tomorrow's will be entertaining.

Entertaining to whom?

[DaivdBehar]

Cool way to avoid work. Thanks, bruh.

[DaivdBehar]

Can someone bring me up to date on the Twitter account of @Esqueer? She is on the faculty of Harvard Law School. I want to keep up with it.

[DaivdBehar]

It is not 1A friendly.

[DaivdBehar]

Saved the government $millions.

[David Nieporent]

Some of the missing documents were found among trash on the curb outside Gottfried's home and in his garage."

So he was a criminal mastermind.

Lazy in his job, and lazy in his criming.

[John F. Carr]

In today's news:

"Not a 'simple mistake': Previous cases of missing documents at the National Archives"
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/national-archives-missing-documents-cases-before-trump/

Then-US Attorney for Maryland Rod Rosenstein had one defendant banned from visiting "museums, libraries or any other places where documents are deposited" during his term of supervised release. (According to Wikipedia, Rosenstein is now in private practice "assisting with federal investigations", i.e. helping people escape people like his former self.)

[F.D. Wolf]

When it came to knowledge of government and political theory, two delegates at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 towered above the rest: James Madison and James Wilson.

Wilson was instrumental in insisting upon a single Executive (who Wilson thought should serve a one-year term, subject to reelection), rather than a committee, as some delegates. He was an advocate for a strong federal government and was generally unconcerned about "states' rights", as later evidenced by his opinion in Chisolm v. Georgia, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 419, 453 (1796) ("This is a case of uncommon magnitude. One of the parties to it is a State -- certainly respectable, claiming to be sovereign. The question to be determined is whether this State, so respectable, and whose claim soars so high, is amenable to the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of the United States? This question, important in itself, will depend on others more important still, and, may, perhaps, be ultimately resolved into one no less radical than this: "do the people of the United States form a Nation?")

He believed members of the Senate, like those of the House, should be directly elected, as to avoid state legislatures having too much control over the national Legislature. He believed that Congress should be one of general power, not enumerated ones (arguably it has essentially so become.)

Wilson was largely ignored by historians for a long time, the first full-length biography of him not appearing until 1956 with Charles Page Smith's James Wilson: Founding Father, 1742-1798. Part of the reason for this is Wilson died penniless and in debt, in fact, having spent at least two stints in debtor's prisons. He was a profligate land speculator, and apparently not a very good one. He spent his final two years on the Court riding circuit in the South, primarily to hide from his creditors.

A great deal of credit for the rehabilitation of Wilson's reputation belongs to famous historian Max Farrand who published his quintessential Records of the Federal Convention between 1911 and 1937. In his 1913 The Framing of the Constitution of the United States, Farrand wrote, “In some respects [Wilson} was Madison's intellectual superior, but in the immediate work before them he was not as adaptable and not as practical. Still he was Madison's ablest supporter. He appreciated the importance of laying the foundations of the new government broad and deep, and he believed that this could only be done by basing it upon the people themselves.”

[Bob from Ohio]

"rehabilitation of Wilson's reputation"

Wilson's reputation is actually set by the 1776 musical.

[DaivdBehar]

Great comment, bruh. Saved the government $millions, thus the 23 years before discovery. Likely they wanted to get rid of him, and began their standard nitpicking approach to squeeze him out.

[DaivdBehar]

Great comment, bruh. Can you say it in Ebonics?

[Michael P]

Protecting the integrity of the state, particularly at the borders, is one of a government's core functions. Having heavily armed thugs enforce a bloated, loophole-stuffed tax code is not.

[David Nieporent]

And CBP is by far the largest law enforcement agency in the country already.

[Michael P]

I bet that seemed coherent to you.

Abolishing special immunities for government agents is entirely compatible with small government.

[Bob from Ohio]

"small government"

QI is completely irrelevant to the issue of small government. Full, partial or no immunity would have no impact on the size of government. QI is only to how government agents can exercise their powers.

The "insult" makes no sense.

[DaivdBehar]

Immunity grows the enterprise. Liability shrinks it. The scumbag lawyer destroyed manufacturing in our nation. Torts is unauthorized industrial policy by greedy scumbag pirates.

[Michael P]

Ideally not by proceeds from heavily armed thugs collecting revenue through a bloated, loophole-stuffed tax code. Although you probably think that is the ideal.

[Bob from Ohio]

"how are those essential border protectors paid?"

These days, by having the Federal Reserve "buy" Treasury Bonds.

[Michael P]

Democrats are advancing a dangerous pro-crime agenda. But what does that have to do with the Supreme Court or Justice James Wilson? Was he part of that agenda?

[F.D. Wolf]

Very true. He detested slavery, but recognized its temporary acceptance as a necessary evil, or otherwise the Southern states would not accept the Union. He was one of chief architects of the "Three-Fifths Compromise", which he viewed as an undercutting of the very idea of slavery. As Madison wrote in his notes, "[Wilson] did not well see on what principle the admission of blacks in the proportion of three fifths could be explained. Are they admitted as Citizens? Then why are they not admitted on an equality with White Citizens? Are they admitted as property? [T]hen why is not other property admitted into the computation?”

Wilson was also a delegate at the Pennsylvania ratifying convention. There he expressed his view that the part of the Constitution that forbade Congress from restricting the importation of slaves before 1808, another unsavory compromise, stood for the proposition that after that date Congress could ban slavery altogether, and he expressed his belief and hope that it would. (Sadly, of course, things didn't quite work out that way.)

[Michael P]

Do you think the precise number of US government employees whose job is "shoot Americans and take their stuff" is relevant to whether that is a core function of government?

[Michael P]

Keep digging that rut deeper. It's quite the tell that you have to argue against imaginary statements.

[Bob from Ohio]

That's just nonsense.

[John F. Carr]

I doubt the constitution would have been ratified if it had explicitly said slavery could be banned from 1808, or if it had included any number of principles we now consider indispensible.