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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, October 18, 1979
Page 13
Well, they decided they didn't want to see us. They didn't have to. They
said: "You've got the other courts. You've got these other inferior
courts. You bother them, go through the appellate process. That's what
they're there for. You don't want us to see that all of those other
judges are unemployed..." What we are implying when we go to the U.S.
Supreme Court, among other things, is that "These other judges are incom
petent; we don't really want them to hear the case. They're either
incompetent or corrupt or some combination thereof. We want the Supreme
Court to hear it."
So the minute the Supreme Court would say "Yes," they would hear the case
at this stage, what would they be implying? They would be saying, in
effect, "We agree with you. If we would insist that you remain in the
appellate jurisdiction in California before the cas_e comes to us, you
probably will get a raw deal." Or, "Those people /the California court§/
probably wil1 not understand the case."
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And believe me, we have friends who are in the appellate courts whom I
know better than I probably know anybody in this audience. People with
whom I am on a first name basis and have known for ten, fifteen, twenty
years. And one of them recently told me, "Well Stan, you know there isn't
one lawyer in California on the bench who has a strong constitutional
background," which just happens to be a fact.
This is an issue of con
stitutional law. And it's well known that we don't have anybody right now
any place in California on any of the appellate courts who is known as an
expert in the field of constitutional law.
Constitutional Law Expert Joins Our Battle
so what we have done to kind of bridge that gap is we have gone all the way
to Harvard. We are now employing a Harvard law professor who is the lead
ing expert today in constitutional law, particularly with the first amend
ment and with procedure before the U.S. Supreme Court. He is a man who
is known by judges everywhere as an expert in constitutional law, a man
who would not lend himself to our case and put his name on our briefs if
he did not believe fully in what he is saying. This man is putting his
reputation on the line now. He teaches this field. He goes all over the
world, helping people and helping governments in the field of constitu
tional law. He writes textbooks and casebooks on the subject. He lectures
all over the world. He doesn't want to look foolish a year from now or
two years from now, having written these briefs, and being shot down.
It was necessary to acquire the aid of a man of this calibre, once we
confirmed that these judges in California don't understand constitutional
law, since they're not working in it. (Most cases, by the way, do not
involve constitutional law--not at this /Superior Court7 level.) So maybe
a judge took a course in constitutional Iaw 30 years ago and maybe he was
a "C" student in that course. Then you throw these ideas at him. They just
go right by him. He can't comprehend it anymore than the ordinary layman
could. So we're constantly refining methods that we use to educate the
court because education is part of the whole process.
So this man's name is Lawrence Tribe and he clerked for two Supreme Court
justices and he also clerked for the California Supreme Court. He is very,
very, very well known in just the field that we are dealing in. If we had
known for certain what kind of lack of attention our pleas would have