Across the political landscape this morning, people on one side are discovering that lawlessness is bad, while people on the other are discovering that the machinery of our justice system is harsh. If experience is any guide, these lessons will last a lunchtime.

Whole thing here.

“Are you showing contempt for this court?” “No, I’m doing my best to hide it.” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Kim Davis in federal custody removes all doubts about the criminalization of Christianity in this country. We must defend #ReligiousLiberty!

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) September 3, 2015

Henceforth when I think of Gov. Mike Huckabee it will be as someone unfamiliar with the legal concept of contempt of court. Gabriel Malor has dissected Huckabee’s enthusiasm for a purported right to defy SCOTUS rulings.

Kim Davis purges the contempt if she either carries out her public duties or quits her public office. So she is not in jail for refusing to violate her religion, unless her religion requires her to keep her public job (cool religion!). And while the traditional contempt power of the Anglo-American courts does generate various disturbing results — jailing dads for breaking a court order to see their kids, for example — pressure to resign a public office rates, to me, fairly low on the scale.

Speaking for myself, if my lawyers encouraged me to commit contempt of court, I might begin to wonder whose side they were on. Kim Davis’s Liberty Counsel lawyers, of course, were at the center of the extraordinary Miller-Jenkins case, much covered at this site, in which a client not only defied a court order but kidnapped a child along the way. And from Michelle Meyer, professional obligations of lawyers counseling clients re: contempt. (N.B.: Staver says Liberty Counsel “would never counsel a client to violate the law.”)

Plus: As Chris Geidner notes at BuzzFeed, Kentucky does not provide for recall of county clerks or removal by the governor for official misconduct. And Carly Fiorina, grown-up in the room: “when you are a government employee, I think you take on a different role.”

P.S. In general, courts have a range of remedial options when faced with contempt, such as fines. Their discretion is bounded by various factors; for example, they are not supposed to resort to harsher remedies if milder ones would obtain compliance. Many of the comparisons being bandied about, by the way, involve officials who were defying some law but were not themselves personally under a court order not to do so.

A curious argument making the rounds posits it as somehow relevant that marriage law changed after Davis won elected office, supposedly upsetting her reliance on expectations of what duties she would be called on to perform. That’s not really a legal question, in the sense of casting any doubt on whether she is expected to follow the laws of Kentucky and the United States in current form if she wants to hold office. It’s more of a union shop steward’s argument — “you can’t change my job duties unless you bargain with me first.”

And: Thoughtful Dan McLoughlin what-goes-around-comes-around on lawlessness, Kim Davis, and the pervasiveness of double standards.

A note on Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

I could find about a thousand far more sympathetic examples of folks screwed over by government land use regulations — e.g. people whose puddle in the backyard is suddenly a wetlands that they can’t build on. But for some reason Conservatives all rushed to pile on this one example. Stupid.

Only a thousand?

Additional Bundy Ranch thought is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

P.S.: Yet more views from Coyote and from Brian Doherty.

Cliven Bundy and the U.S. Constitution is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

I hate to see how many on my side who are upset at Obama’s violation of the Rule of Law cheer the Bundys’ criminal contempt of a court order. The Bundys are claiming a right to graze upon federal lands without paying or consent of the landowner on the grounds that the federal government has no sovereignty over Nevada. The US BLM has taken twenty years and multiple court proceedings to kick them out, winning twice in the Ninth Circuit. In response, armed militias showed up this week to defend the Bundys, who have threatened range war. The government has temporarily caved to avoid the possibility of armed confrontation. This really isn’t a close question, and threatens to tar all small-government and Second Amendment supporters.

It has been objected that ownership of vast tracts of the American West by the federal Bureau of Land Management is a very bad idea, might have appalled many Framers and early legislators, and has been advanced into our own era through aggressive policies to curtail the participation of private users. I’m having trouble seeing the relevance of all this, however, to Bundy’s supposed right to defy multiple court orders. The federal government should not be in many different lines of business that it currently is in, but that doesn’t create a right of individual citizens to occupy federal installations for personal economic benefit despite court orders directed against them to the contrary.

Ted also calls our attention to this article by Logan Churchwell and Brandon Darby on the 20-year history of the controversy and the positions advanced by rancher Cliven Bundy to justify contempt of the court orders:

“I believe this is a sovereign state of Nevada,” Bundy recently told a radio reporter. “…I abide by all of Nevada state laws. But, I don’t recognize the United States Government as even existing.”

More: A different emphasis from John Hinderaker (arguing for sympathy with Bundy while conceding the meritlessness of his legal position) and Kevin Williamson.

On the Bundy Ranch confrontation is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

August 10 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Judge Jails Litigant for Provoking Supportive Emails to the Judge” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Judge sentences man to 6 months in jail for yawning” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

July 21 roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

After a hearing yesterday, Delaware County Court President Judge Joseph P. Cronin Jr. turned down Chadwick’s latest request for Christmas furlough, declaring him “a significant risk of flight.”

Had the court let him out for Christmas, Chadwick could have cut off his electronic-monitoring bracelet and used his money and contacts to fly off in a helicopter, his ex-wife’s attorney, Albert Momjian, said.

By now Chadwick has spent more time locked up for his contempt than any American in history.  While I don’t sympathize with Chadwick (who now suffers cancer) if he’s really hiding the money from the court and his ex, surely at some point his indefinite detention becomes a due process violation.  Unlike most who serve life sentences, Chadwick has never been adjudicated a criminal, and debtors’ prisons were abolished centuries ago.

Via WSJ Law Blog, but first spotted at A Public Defender.

Christmas In Jail is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system