>> judge judy: and you said? >> no. >> judge judy: why not? he paid for the bike. >> he's a minor. >> judge judy: is that the reason? >> no. >> judge judy: don't give me a lot of baloney, mr. miller! what was the reason? >> announcer: "judge judy." you are about to enter the courtroom of judge judith sheindlin. the people are real. the cases are real. the people are real. the cases are real. the rulings are final. captions paid for by cbs television distribution 17-year-old thomas miller and his mother, suzanne oliver, are suing thomas' father, jim miller, for the return of a dirt bike. jim says thomas doesn't deserve it. >> byrd: all rise. your honor, this is case number 489 on the calendar in the matter of oliver and miller vs. miller. parties have been sworn in. ma'am, have a seat. >> judge judy: what's your first name? >> thomas. >> judge judy: thomas, this is your mom and that's your father and this is the problem. parents are divorced? >> never married. >> judge judy: and they shared custody and visitation of you in a sort of informal re

our common and the judges in dept. 43 j judge bauer -- unlike judge bauer common the judges in department 43 are borden. there is no one to make objections or advocate for the people who go to these courtrooms, because they have never had them there. there is no lawyers, so what happens is i go into the courtroom, and i hide behind a broad-shouldered deputy so the judge does not recognize me, and i listen and watch. the judge comes in, and everybody rises, and the judge goes through the speech she gives to the defendants who have been waiting all weekend in many cases to get out because they are there for public intoxication or failure to appear for a warrant, so they have been picked up on the weekend. i will exaggerate. she comes up and goes, you are here charge, and you have the right to go to counsel. i will do the deal for you right now, and if you want a public defender, you can get a public defender. let's go. then what happened is a long line of guilties. guilty, guilty, guilty -- incontinent -- not guilty. no continent. guilty, guilty, guilty. i am an amateur, but even i am

judge vincent is now an outsider in terms of what the other federal judges, four other judges have ruled differently than the judge we are seeking clarification. >> what is the time line? >> we expect to hear back from the judge soon. the doj has filed their clarification request, the plaintiffs have responded. this week the judge indicated he would rule quickly. >> once that information is received from the judge, whose decision is said, yours, the attorney general's, the president's? or all of the above? >> our legal team is led by the department of justice, so we defer to their legal counsel. >> do you have official input into the decision? >> to the legal counsel's? >> as the secretary. >> our legal counsel is involved with the justice team, but they are proceeding to have this dialogue with the court. them are ok, i would disagree that the judge's decision was an out liar. my understanding, if you are keeping score, it is 2-2. >> no, it is 3-2. >> have we had another? >> i have to keep an accurate score. 12 have dismissed the case out. . >> all right. >> and the clarification i woul

our common and the judges in dept. 43 j judge bauer -- unlike judge bauer common the judges in department 43 are borden. there is no one to make objections or advocate

our common and the judges in dept. 43 j judge bauer -- unlike judge bauer common the judges in department 43 are borden. there is no one to make objections or advocate for the people who go to these courtrooms, because they have never had them there. there is no lawyers, so what happens is i go into the

people are clapping and the judge is pounding on the gavel. the judge says all right. all right. there is a lot of interest here. we're going to take 15-minute break and we're going to come back and i'll figure out what to do. 15 minutes later, by the way in the break everybody is coming up to steve and they are like, you know, shaking his hand and begging him to represent them. so, so, so she comes back and puts up on a microphone and for the rest of the day everybody could hear but i went back to that court the next day and steve was gone and so was the microphone. i went back to the court for weeks on end for the next five years because i wrote a whole chapter about this community and there was never another microphone and there was always that huddle. that huddle is what my book is about. it is about people who work in the system who become more attached to each other than they are to the jobs that they are supposed to be doing. and what they do is they lose a sense of what it is that is important and who it is that they are supposed to be protecting and instead, the justice

the judge comes in, and everybody rises, and the judge goes through the speech she gives to the defendants who have been waiting all weekend in many cases to get out because they are there for public intoxication or failure to appear for a warrant, so they have been picked up on the weekend. i will exaggerate. she comes up and goes, you are here charge, and you have the right to go to counsel. i will do the deal for you right now, and if you want a public defender, you can get a public defender. let's go. then what happened is a long line of guilties. guilty, guilty, guilty -- incontinent -- not guilty. no continent. guilty, guilty, guilty. i am an amateur, but even i am saying to myself, what is going on here famines -- what is going on here? i go to many of these courts and see exactly the same thing, so i start to ask what is happening, and basically, historically, the public defender's office has never put anyone there. it is almost like a client agreement between the two not to spend the resources. the reason i was there in the first place was because san jose had become like las vega

see the same lively judge.we're not looking for nielsen ratings. nor would we probably even register in the lowest kill, but it might be a there's a couple cases that come to my mind that really illustrate why cameras are so important. one example was when there is a question of the recall of the governor of california and whether the election would go forward. but would be more significant to the people of california that was in a big case and was televised nationally. i had to laugh. i got a few calls from people. most people didn't want to comment on the merits is that i like your scarf. other than that, it's not like the public proof such there's going to be a safety can learn. another case on which i sat where we approved the cameras was national security case, involving wiretapping of telephones. there were a number -- many, many parts of that record were under the highest security level possible and access to the judges. i felt like when they brought the document is handcuffed to the agent and i had to l

see the same lively judge.we're not looking for nielsen ratings. nor would we probably even register in the lowest kill, but it might be a there's a couple cases that come to my mind that really illustrate why cameras are so important. one example was when there is a question of the recall of the governor of california and whether the election would go forward. but would be more significant to the people of california that was in a big case and was televised nationally. i had to laugh. i got a few calls from people. most people didn't want to comment on the merits is that i like your scarf. other than that, it's not like the public proof such there's going to be a safety can learn. another case on which i sat where we approved the cameras was national security case, involving wiretapping of telephones. there were a number -- many, many parts of that record were under the highest security level possible and access to the judges. i felt like when they brought the document is handcuffed to the agent and i had to l

it's not that judge easterbrook or judge poser, any judge who has been an academic consults their own legal writings and refreshes the recollection of what they thought as a matter of three before deciding a case. what they do is they read the briefs and they read the record of the case and they can find themselves, they discipline themselves to that process because that is the process of judging. so that is how i understand that difference, and that's how i would approach the job. >> and i also know that been a lot of comments about writings and taking certain things you have said to try to demonstrate what people think might be your judicial philosophy. and do you want to describe in your own words without just taking one sense out of something you wrote, what your judicial philosophy is? >> sure. my judicial philosophy in a nutshell i think is that the courts of the united states have a very limited role in our system of government. it's limited because the members of the judiciary hold a life tenure without electoral accountability, and they are asked to review substantive only of

even the judges in santa clara county who were giving the colloquies, and the judges who would turn to defendants and say, i would like to get this resolved today, which basically means to plead guilty or no contest, they talked grudgingly. >> watch out if you ask someone out for a drink. i know in your study one of the things you found was there was a tremendous amount of pressure that came from the judges. can you talk briefly about that? >> sure. does this still work? >> one of the things we found that was very disturbing in our study was that nearly three out of four offices reported they had been pressured by county commissioners to cut costs. a good example of fat was recently reported -- good example of that is that it was recently appreported sacramento was planning to cut a third of their budget, yet their caseloads are already at twice the number of the national standards permit, so you have got that kind of economic pressure. there is also another type of pressure that comes from the lack of professional independence, the way we structure our public defense, especially our c

who judges? we are sitting there, people in applications, there are a couple of ways you could decide. one is by law to which we tend to think is fair. so they pulled it out and you have 13 seats and the first 13 the author is first-come, first-served, and the other which we are talking about now is by some kind of judgmental ruling who's got the biggest circulation and who we think is a legitimate blog or -- >> those are the judicial ethics and talk about transparency and feet in the judiciary is 1.2 or something. >> some people might think it was diminishing faith in the judiciary for the judge to sit and pass judgment on which of the media was allowed in his or her courtroom so these are not -- it's not that simple that you could take a very broad ethical, setting out some ethical standards and move it into something as vague as the area we are getting into. i'm not sure what our interest is in us being the ones to decide who's the good guy and -- >> especially if you're in a situation where y

tell us that story. >> this is a story of a judge in upstate new york, and he is a judge in a place called troy, new york, which has historically been a beautiful day. -- beautiful town. he got the idea he wanted to help clean up troy. if you walk the streets with hank bauer, he is a celebrity. people are hanging out their windows, do you need an umbrella? he is that type of guy. i told him i was writing a book called "ordinary in justice," and you are one of the main characters, and he would pick up the phone, and i could hear him smiling, because in his heart of hearts -- he has been kicked off the bench by the new york state judicial commission, but he drew the things he has done nothing wrong, -- he truly it sinks he has done nothing wrong, and when they told him -- he truly thinks he has done nothing wrong. when they told him he did things like not reading people their rights, not assigning an attorney, and pleading someone guilty without him even being in the room -- he looked at the charges commo, and he said, very serious. how does the have the reflection of himself as a good judge

and his girlfriend came out, "judge, oh, you really saved him." you know, you get that once in a while. not all the time, but you get it. and it's what makes it possible to go back and deal with the other cases where you're not so successful. >> hinojosa: so give me a success rate, judge. what are we talking about? >> i have no idea. >> hinojosa: i mean, are we talking about... >> most of our kids are wonderful young people. the vast majority, i'm talking 95% of our kids, are just that-- children who were in the wrong place, or did something stupid one time or twice. you know, but really aren't bad. they're not out trying to hurt people. we have that small group of kids who keep coming back, who are our robbing people, intimidating people, who are violent. yes, ma'am, they exist, and we need to deal with them. but we don't need to throw them away. we need to take the time to try to change their lives. when you find out the history of some of these children, what they have been through... >> hinojosa: and you... are you able to ask that from the be

he has a reputation as a judge's judge, which means that the judges believe he is very hard-working, thoughtful and fair. local lawyers praise him for being well prepared for hearings and for trials, and he's very diligent in moving cases forward. he's presided over 22 trials that have gone to verdict during his tenure on the bench. equally important is judge battaglia's dedication to service outside of the courtroom. he's the past president of the national federal magistrate judges association. he's twice been selected by chief justices of the supreme court to serve on a national advisory committee that reviews criminal court rules. in short, judge battaglia's career stands out as a testament to his dedication and to his devotion to the law and the legal community of san diego both inside and outside of the courtroom. so i close my comments here by congratulating the judge and his family on this momentous day, and i urge my colleagues in the senate to vote to confirm this highly qualified nominee to the bench. i'm very grateful to the judiciary committee who have twice voted him out

media and it became apparent some judges did, some judges didn't come there were no rules, everybody would some sort of winging it, and as a reporter with the generals don't like to wing it. [laughter] and it's better to have rules and journalists like we have rules that they can point to and say we are supposed to have this privilege. so that's why we proposed an order the court to appoint zero is to set up a pilot courtroom at one of the state's busiest courts to test all of these things. judge kendall just mentioned reporters were not blogging and i sure there's a lot of cases reporters were not there because it's just less of us out there. the irony is citizens journalists now have that capacity to blog. they can videotape and audio tape, but there are no rules and guidelines on how to do that for the purpose of what we are doing to provide that opportunity in a controlled environment taking input from the court, the press, and the public as we go forward. >> what is it we don't know now we will know by the end of this? >> - we didn't know anything. [laughter] when we proposed th

in this case, judge henderson should sign the order.e hasn't done so yet, but it is a week, where the department, which is embattled in so many ways can say we are getting past this one. it will be a significant development if and when the judge signs the order. >> belva: talk about pelican bay. >> pelican bay was one of the super max prisoneds opened in the country in 1989. it was a place to incapacitate violent inmates. inmates that failed in other institutions. sometimes called the worst of the worst. but when pelican bay opened, it was meshed in violence, not just by inmates but by staff and we had horrible stories of inmates being thrown in to boiling water, severely burned, shot, shot for very little reason other than perhaps refusing to hand in their food trays. there was a culture of abuse by the staff. there was a culture of violence by the inmates and it's worth noting the aim of the institution was to incapacitate prison gangs. it didn't do that. in fact many of the inmates that i have spoken with use the environment of viole

judging is a human enterprise. we want judges to consider many things in making decisions. we want them to consider the text of the constitution that's most important, want them to consider what the framers of the constitution thought. we want them to look at the sweep of american history, what's that taught about the meaning of the constitution. we want them to look at precedence, the appropriate policy arguments, and we also want them to look at the human dimension. to me, empathy is part of the equation. empathy doesn't justify ignores precedent or the language of the constitution, but deciding what's reasonable or compelling empathy matters. i remember when president obama said he wanted to appoint justices with empathy and was ridiculed for that. all i could think of with a response is someone without empathy is a sociopath. we don't want that on the court. [laughter] in the justice -- >> in the justice roberts nomination before the senate judiciary committee, he raised a language that judges should be like umpires and no one goes to a game to see the umpire and the um

also, you have to be independent of the judges. we found they were intimately involved in selecting the people who would appear before them. we found 90% of public defenders reported judicial pressure to expedite cases. that means when you are under one staff -- understaffed and overworked, the judge says, you have enough time. we need to move things along. this train that has to be speeding -- i think that is a real problem. judges are implicit when public defender offices are not given the resources to do an adequate investigation, so i think those are big problems we see. >> you raise an interesting point about whether a public defender should be elected or appointed. let me ask you this. you are appointed common and and i saw when you made your case -- you are appointed, and i saw when you made your case, they basically accuse you of mismanagement common and and they pointed the finger at year- end said, you have a $300,000 deficit. -- at you and said, you have a $300,000 deficit. i am curious to know, because you are appointed

to my immediate left we had judge john jones, u.s. district court for the middle district of pennsylvania. he was confirmed back in july july 2002. he has had several notable cases, the best known for the landmark case kitzmiller versus dover area school district, where he found it on comp additional to require teaching intelligent design in public schools. we have judge walker with a gui heard firm and with a great presentation. judge walker interceded recently retired. is that correct? [laughter] recently retired. >> not quite. [inaudible] >> well, that's a good thing. i will. i'll be on my guard. judge walker is the reputation of being media friendly. we heard his presentation. most notably he had the property case that we heard about. and finally, pete wade sues the justice news correspondent since the early 90s was press official in various capacities for a number of years. all of these people are highly equated with high visibility cases and that's what we're going to talk about today. high visibility cases in the digital age. n

media and it became apparent some judges did, some judges didn't come there were no rules, everybody would some sort of winging it, and as a reporter with the generals don't like to wing it. [laughter] and it's better to have rules and journalists like we have rules that they can point to and say we are supposed to have this privilege. so that's why we proposed an order the court to appoint zero is to set up a pilot courtroom at one of the state's busiest courts to test all of these things. judge kendall just mentioned reporters were not blogging and i sure there's a lot of cases reporters were not there because it's just less of us out there. the irony is citizens journalists now have that capacity to blog. they can videotape and audio tape, but there are no rules and guidelines on how to do that for the purpose of what we are doing to provide that opportunity in a controlled environment taking input from the court, the press, and the public as we go forward. >> what is it we don't know now we will know by the end of this? >> - we didn't know anything. [laughter] when we proposed th

i'm not saying that the judges in this terrible region were biased all i'm saying is that english judges had no moral right to disqualify themselves. did they rescue themselves because they fear driven to what they claim that they feared for their lives when i told them look police officers too can get killed does this mean they shouldn't be doing their job or that i can get killed does this mean i should do nothing but. well if judges have concerns about their safety maybe it's not the fault of the judiciary perhaps is the fault of the law enforcement system. because the least can't ensure their safety. no it's not like that anymore if you think your job is not see fit or that your safety is not properly insured and you should resign and get another job . so good for nothing. if government officials all come up with excuses and see they could get murdered so i can provide for you border guards for everyone to meet their wishes when you're a public even the president can get killed as your own experience indicates. but this didn't send us running and hiding right of course the border gua

you talked about judges. and this is your writing about how you think judges should perform. in binding character are by constitutional understanding demand a more complex explanations and conventional account of the courts as an independent socially detached decision makers that say what the law is. enduring task of the judiciary, you say, is to find a way to articulate constitutional law that the nation can accept as it's own. closed quote. well, first, i think the marvin versus madison was the decision -- had the famous line that a judge's role is to say what the law is. but you go quite a bit further from that. and then in your writings and then when asked about it, you give a statement that justice scalia could give about the role of a judge. so i guess you -- doesn't this go far beyond what you just said? >> senator, i think that's the first time i've been accused of channeling justice scalia. >> well, it was a good statement. >> thank you, senator. >> but it's not consistent with, i think, what you wrote. >> well, senator, i don't recall. i'd be happy to look at the pa

local officials they all do their work we can't offer protection to judges alone most of the judges would recuse themselves but i'm sure that a new chairman of the supreme court who shares my views on the issue will improve the situation. not long ago you said quote. is in desperate need for new qualified workers with fresh ideas with a puppet a knowledge and training and capable to use cutting edge technology unquote and this produced quite a stir and to shed tears some people fear that you're preparing for a major reshuffle of your stuff. as that's true and you know it's not exactly like that. let me put it this way of course we do need young blood but not in the top echelon. it seems to us after some analysis that we've done and that the media lashon on which is actually the most important one you consist of people aged fifty or sixty or even seventy years if that and quite often these older people are not quite open to new and daring ideas. so we thought it all over and we discussed it. and eventually we decided to refresh the middle ashqelon. i want everybody. to have more young peop