Salt Lake City Weekly: Censored by the Bar

The Utah State Bar proposes to effectively put a muzzle on legal practitioner whistleblowers

Eye opening story this morning's Salt Lake City Weekly, touching upon a topic that's near and dear to our Weber County Forum hearts, Utah "Cash Cow" Justice Courts. Here's the lede:

City Weekly, recently reported how the Utah State Bar is considering a rule change that could mean conduct reprimands for lawyers who don’t defend the justice system in Utah. Even prior to the rule proposal one attorney was cited for unprofessional conduct for criticizing justice courts in a recent article.
Charles Schultz, attorney cited in CW's March article "Box Elder’s Broken Court” was reprimanded for conduct “prejudicial to the administration of justice.” His quotes for the article in reference to justice courts were: “To use the term ‘justice’ for these courts is a joke.” In reference to Judge Kevin Christensen mentioned in the story Schultz was quoted as saying that he “routinely fails to advise [defendant’s] of their rights. It’s a complete power trip for him.”

Read the full article here:

• Censored by the Bar

Although it's been quite a long while since we last railed on the topic of justice courts, we're delighted to observe CW's recent devotion to the subject. In that connection, here are a few other recent CW articles which we'll suggest for our WCF readers' Thursday reading lists:

• Don't talk smack on justice!
• Box Elder County's Broken Court
• Nickled & Dimed by Utah's Justice Courts Page

Specifically, some at the Utah State Bar seem to believe that a couple of Utah legal practitioner/whistleblowers have been a mite too publicly outspoken and vocal, and that it's time to shut them up:

Rules of Professional Conduct (Proposed Summary)
RPC 08.02. Judicial Officers. Amend. Prohibits knowingly making a false
statement about the judicial system. Encourages lawyers to defend the
judicial system.

Sounds vague and ambiguous to us, and inimicable to the First Amendment too. And who gets to decide when a statement about the judicial system is "knowingly false," we ask?

Case in point. This statement is attributed to attorney Charles Schultz: “To use the term ‘justice’ for these courts is a joke.” How in the hell, we ask, could anyone decide whether this statement is "knowingly false"?

And although it's probably laudable to "encourage" practicing lawyers to defend the legal system when it works, isn't there a commensurate duty on the part of officers of the court to blow the whistle in instances where the system appears to be broken? See what we mean? It's more than slightly nuanced.

The lumpencitizens of Utah have a strong public interest in being informed of problems in our courts system. Remember people. We citizens are called upon at regular intervals to vote on judical retention. And what will happen, we wonder, to our citizen judicial retention oversight, if strong voices like Mike Martinez and Charles Schultz are intimidated into silence by this new, vague and ambiguous disciplinary rule?

We're hoping against hope that this new proposed amendment to the Utah Rules of Professional Conduct will quickly find it's way the the State Bar trashcan. The chilling effect of a rule like this is disheartening in America, to say the least.

And what say our gentle readers about all this?