Guess who’s replaced New York’s Finest as Public Enemy No. 1 among the city’s self-styled progressive establishment?
The answer is the three judges on the federal appeals court who removed Judge Shira Scheindlin from the stop-and-frisk case on the grounds that a reasonable person might find her biased. You think?
The judge’s allies are striking back. A lawyer representing Judge Scheindlin cried “character assassination” when the city invoked the Second Circuit decision to ask the judge’s entire ruling be tossed out. Meanwhile, The New York Times accuses the Second Circuit panel of having “embarrassed itself” for calling into question Scheindlin’s “unassailably just” findings.
Now five retired federal judges and 13 professors of legal ethics have chimed in, claiming that “what the Court did, and how the Court did it, chills the judicial independence on which our judicial system relies.”
The importance of these words is less the effect they will have in the courtroom than the ammunition they provide for those intent on assailing the legitimacy of the Second Circuit panel. The effort seems to work the way the long campaign against the NYPD has worked, with constant intimations that the gains on crime have come at the expense of civil liberties — especially for black and Latino New Yorkers whose neighborhoods have benefitted most from the dramatic reduction in violent crime.
When Scheindlin deemed stop-and-frisk unconstitutional, she tarnished the cops and provided cover for whichever Democrat was elected mayor this month and whatever plans he or she might have to handcuff the police on this practice.
Now the Second Circuit has ripped that cover away. In so doing, the panel exposed all those who cheered on a high-handed judge because they knew she would deliver exactly the ruling they wanted. And if you think they are furious now, just watch what happens if the court panel ends up vacating Judge Scheindlin’s ruling altogether.