Judges in Danger: A Gathering Whirlwind?

News that a gunman was arrested outside the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh leads us to think of Robert Vance. He was one of the finest political figures we’ve ever met. When we covered him, he was leading the Democratic Party of Alabama, which was then in the thick of the civil rights struggle. The one-time segregationist ex-governor, George Wallace, ostensibly a Democrat, was running for President as an Independent.It was the part of Vance to marshal support in the Alabama Democratic Party for the national party’s presidential nominee, Hubert Humphrey, and face down the Wallace faction. After we left Alabama for the life of a foreign correspondent, we fell out of touch with the man we had come so much to admire. Then one day, in Europe, we unfolded the morning’s Paris Herald to find an eight-column headline on page one.It was over a story about a judge in suburban Birmingham, Alabama. Inside his home he’d opened his mail, only to die instantly from a pipe bomb concealed within a package. It took us a moment to process the fact that the judge who was killed was the same Robert Vance whom we had known years before and who had been riding the 11th federal appeals circuit. He is the only United States circuit judge ever to be assassinated.The killer turned out, the AP reminds us, to be a conspiracy theorist with a grievance against the 11th circuit. The court had refused to overturn his prior conviction on a bomb-possession conviction, and it had kept him from practicing law. He posted additional mail bombs to targets, including the NAACP, to make it look like a racially motivated crime. In 2018, the bomber was executed by the state of Alabama.The horror of that crime has often caused us to reflect on the courage of the 870 men and women serving as Article III judges. They are a remarkable lot — the only Americans who are required by the United States Constitution to behave themselves. A president, senator, or garden-variety congressman is not required to behave him- or herself (and often don’t). Federal judges get to keep their offices only “during,” as the Constitution puts it, “good behavior.”Moreover, they go to court every day aware that their work places them on the front lines of danger. In addition to the pressures they face to establish “equal justice under law,” they face an increased risk of violence and threats. CBS News reported in 2021 that threats against federal judges were up 400 percent versus five years ago. All the more troubling to see the Democrats use the kind of rhetoric they’re using.Justice Kavanaugh was directly warned by no less a Democrat than Senator Schumer. “I want to tell you, Kavanaugh,” growled the Empire State eminence grise. “You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” That was in 2020. The Chief Justice of the United States called the senator’s remarks “threatening” and “dangerous.”It’s not our intention to suggest Mr. Schumer intended to incite violence; we don’t believe he did. Yet it’s hard to deny that the rhetoric deployed by Democrats and their allies of late — questioning the legitimacy of the court and detecting the “stench of politics” in its deliberations — is a part, if only that, of fostering an atmosphere of hostility that could all too easily get out of control. We dread more headlines like the one about Judge Vance that so shocked us 33 years ago.

Judges in Danger: A Gathering Whirlwind?

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