It is easy to blame judges for corruption, but it is more accurate to blame them for ignorance and arrogance.

Homeowners (and my readers, in particular) are completely correct in asserting at least the appearance of corruption by judges. Virtually all of them have their retirement invested partially or even mostly in funds that rely heavily on purchasing “Mortgage-Backed Securities.” Hence, if judges were to rule against the lawyers asserting representation of banks like “U.S. Bank as trustee…” (Blah blah), they would be ruling against the interest of their retirement.

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Let’s remember the meaning of corruption. It means that people in public office are violating their charter or oath primarily to benefit themselves. If someone in public office takes some action that produces a benefit that includes them, it is not corruption unless that was the main reason or the only reason they did it.

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So if you are going to accuse a public official (like a judge) of corruption, you must base that accusation on known facts that you can prove, establishing that the only reason the judge did what he/she did was to preserve their retirement account. If you can’t do that, you must find another way to hate the judge.

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But the fact that the judge is literally invested in the outcome of litigation is a correct statement of the facts. That alone should be sufficient to force the judge’s recusal and substitution of a judge with no such conflict. My reason for this opinion is that lawyers and judges must avoid even the appearance of impropriety under the ethical rules governing professional conduct.

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And yet I use the strongest possible language to dissuade homeowners from using that as a foundation for a challenge to a judge, who seems unfriendly. My primary reason is that it never works and annoys the judge.

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And some people point to my inconsistent statements as evidence of a defect in my mental condition. But there is a method to my madness. And being 75 going on 76 does have the advantage of seeing and experiencing many improbable events.

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The first point is that it is highly unlikely to find a single judge anywhere who does not have a retirement package. It is also extremely unlikely that the retirement package would be devoid of investment in falsely labeled “mortgage-backed securities.”

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The certificates are not securities according to changes in the securities law long sought by Wall Street and successfully implemented in 1998. When President Clinton signed that into law, he was letting tigers out of their cages. The fact that they ate everyone should have come as no surprise.

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Also, just as a reminder, the certificates are never backed by any debt, note, or mortgage issued by any homeowner. Arguments in court to the contrary are lies protected b y the doctrine of litigation immunity that applies to both lawyers and their clients.

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So the problem is that if a judge recused himself or herself from the proceeding based upon the appearance of impropriety, there would be nobody to replace the judge. The simple political fact of life is that this is unacceptable in our society. And while you can argue the philosophical pros and cons, it will never happen.

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Then there is the other problem that has no answer at all. Exactly how much does the judge know about his/her investments? I have friends on the bench, and I can report that out of about a dozen, only one is well-versed in investments, particularly their own investments. The rest depend entirely on the manager of retirement funds. They have no idea whether their decisions are favorable or unfavorable to their own financial situation because they don’t know how their money has been invested.

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I have suggested that experienced lawyers who are fairly well-known to the judge could ask if they could conduct voir dire on the judge, himself or herself.

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This would include questions about their ability to render a fair verdict even though their retirement funds may be affected. While this is unlikely to produce a recusal, it is highly likely to focus the judge’s attention on the specific requirements of evidence and procedure that are often ignored by judges in foreclosure cases. It is, in my opinion, a possible first step in educating a judge and persuading them to rule in favor of the homeowner.

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I have several reasons for believing that judges can be convinced to rule in favor of the homeowner. The first and most major reason is that I have done it dozens of times. The second reason is that I have seen other lawyers do it hundreds of times. The third reason is that I have received reports of pro se homeowners doing it thousands of times.

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There is some truth to the matter asserted by homeowners who are given to conspiratorial thinking. Most judges are afraid of pulling the plug on the entire financial system. But I think both homeowners and lawyers give too much credit and weight to judges’ intelligence, knowledge, and experience. It is simply not true that judges know anything about the securitization of debt — in theory, in documents, or in practice. In fact, they don’t know there is a difference. The problem is that they think they know.

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So there you have it. Judges’ dismissive rulings are because they have convinced themselves they know what they are talking about. They don’t. Ego gets in the way of recognizing their ignorance even though they have no problem dealing with it if the subject matter is medicine or technology. This has happened before, and it will no doubt happen again. Judges are just as susceptible to memes or fads as anyone else.

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So I have suggested to lawyers, especially experienced trial lawyers, that if they want to win, they need to probe the judge and watch the judge’s reactions during the proceedings. They are looking for “tells” that show or reveal the things that the judge thinks are most obvious about the case, so the lawyer can reveal that the opposition cannot corroborate that “obvious fact.”

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Then when the judge rules for the homeowner, it isn’t about whether the debt is real or unreal. It is about the lawyer for the foreclosure mill having messed up, and the judge is issuing a punishment for having messed up the case. This is the primary reason I have won so many cases. It wasn’t that the judge was finally convinced that foreclosure was fraudulent.

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Judges like to do that because if they don’t enforce court rules, their courtroom becomes a circus. And a circus produces absurd rulings that get reversed. And reversed rulings lead to dead ends for ambitious judges — they will never be promoted to an appellate bench if they are constantly reversed.

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