Judge Copied ACLU Text in Dover Intelligent Design Ruling
Posted on December 12, 2006
It seems that everytime I post something about Intelligent Design the debate gets ugly. Hopefully we can avoid that this time, and focus on what this report is actually aiming at, the irony of hailing a judge as an outstanding thinker in his Dover decision when his ruling was actually a lazy “cut and paste” from the ACLU.
The key section of the widely-noted court decision on intelligent design issued a year ago on December 20 was copied nearly verbatim from a document written by ACLU lawyers, according to a study released today by scholars affiliated with the Discovery Institute.
“Judge John Jones copied verbatim or virtually verbatim 90.9% of his 6,004-word section on whether intelligent design is science from the ACLU’s proposed ‘Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law’ submitted to him nearly a month before his ruling,” said Dr. John West, Vice President for Public Policy and Legal Affairs at Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture.
“Ironically, Judge Jones has been hailed as ‘an outstanding thinker’ for his ‘masterful’ ruling, and even honored by Time magazine as one of the world’s ‘most influential people’ in the category of ’scientists and thinkers,’” said West. “But Jones’ analysis of the scientific status of intelligent design contains virtually nothing written by Jones himself. This finding seriously undercuts the credibility of a central part of the ruling.”
The study notes that, while judges routinely make use of proposed findings of fact, “the extent to which Judge Jones simply copied the language submitted to him by the ACLU is stunning. For all practical purposes, Jones allowed ACLU attorneys to write nearly the entire section of his opinion analyzing whether intelligent design is science. As a result, this central part of Judge Jones’ ruling reflected essentially no original deliberative activity or independent examination of the record on Jones’ part.”
Jones’ copying was so uncritical that he even reprinted a number of factual errors originally made by ACLU attorneys.
This pretty much makes a joke out of the judge’s ruling. I’m sure it makes many wonder if his mind was already made up on the matter before hearing both sides. 5,458 words of his 6,004 section was taken virtually verbatim from the ACLU’s proposed “Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law” submitted to Jones nearly a month before his ruling. Of course this doesn’t change anything, the ruling still stands, but it was no masterpiece of scholarship. It was a straight up “copy and paste” even copying the ACLU’s factual errors. The judge’s credibility on the decision is definitely undercut by this new information.
Some of the factual errors copied from the ACLU included a claim that “ID is not supported by any peer-reviewed research, data or publications.” In fact, the court records showed several such publications. Another example claimed that a biochemist’s statement on the evolution of the immune system was misrepresented and came directly from the ACLU’s “Findings of Fact.”
Discovery Institute’s John West told reporters yesterday, “The finding that most of Judge Jones’ analysis of intelligent design was apparently not the product of his own original deliberative activity seriously undercuts the credibility of Judge Jones’ examination of the scientific validity of intelligent design.”
West and DeWolf conclude: “The new disclosure that Judge Jones’ analysis of the scientific status of ID merely copied language written for him by ACLU attorneys underscores just how inappropriate this part of Kitzmiller was – and why Judge Jones’ analysis should not be regarded as the final word about intelligent design.”
West contended the critics who saw the Dover decision as a major setback for intelligent design clearly were wrong, citing a recent New York Times report about a gathering last month of scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies where there was “a rough consensus” that the theory “of evolution by natural selection” was “losing out in the intellectual marketplace.”
Overall this copy and paste job will change nothing. The judge obviously agreed with the ACLU so much he was unable to stray even from their factual errors. It won’t change the ruling in anyway, but the inclusion of the ACLU’s errors does bring to question how much effort the judge put into weighing the facts of both sides in his final decision. Its all interesting but I don’t think it will change anything.
I’m not sure if extensive copying like this is common practice for a judge. It doesn’t make me feel any better about the decision. Instead of a judge writing laws we now have the ACLU writing it for them!
» Filed Under Uncategorized
Trackback URL
Comments
13 Responses to “Judge Copied ACLU Text in Dover Intelligent Design Ruling”
-
Affiliations
The Giants
-
Advertise
Donate
Our Store
Click the design to visit our store and help Stop the ACLU!
Stop the ACLU blogburst
-
More blogs about the ACLU
Syndicate Me
1. The decision was 139 pages long. That suggests that even if 5,000 words of it were “plagiarized,” the vast majority would still be original.
2. The strength and value of a legal opinion is found in the law, not in the statement of facts.
3. Do you KNOW what a “proposed finding of fact” is? I’ll let you go look that up. I’ll wait here for your red-faced apology to the judge.
gentrfam is correct.
From AP:
“The judge obviously agreed with the ACLU so much he was unable to stray even from their factual errors.”
What factual errors were these? You wouldn’t just be unthinkingly regurgitating the Discovery Institute’s lies, now, would you? Tsk tsk. So lazy.
Just read what parts you want to Paul. Relying on proposed findings is common and that is stated in this article:
The study notes that, while judges routinely make use of proposed findings of fact, “the extent to which Judge Jones simply copied the language submitted to him by the ACLU is stunning. For all practical purposes, Jones allowed ACLU attorneys to write nearly the entire section of his opinion analyzing whether intelligent design is science.
It is the extent that was not so common, the irony that he is hailed as a critical thinker when most of his opinion isn’t his own, and the fact that he even included the ACLU’s factual errors that make this a story.
Tsk, tsk to those too lazy to read.
Some of the factual errors copied from the ACLU included a claim that “ID is not supported by any peer-reviewed research, data or publications.†In fact, the court records showed several such publications. Another example claimed that a biochemist’s statement on the evolution of the immune system was misrepresented and came directly from the ACLU’s “Findings of Fact.â€Â
As gentrfam pointed out, the findings of fact represents only a small portion of the ruling and arguably an unimportant part at that. The meat of the ruling is found in the other 100+ pages of his opinion.
I haven’t read the opinion, so I can’t testify in regards to its insightfulness, but given that the section in question is only a fraction of the overall ruling and the practice is acceptable, it seems unreasonable to question the man’s reputation on these grounds.
Also, you’ve said multiple times that “his ruling was actually a lazy ‘cut and paste’.” Since only one section of the ruling was copied, it is factually inaccurate to say that ruling itself was a “lazy cut and paste.” I hope that you make the proper revisions.
Geez. The trolls are loud and stupid.
“For all practical purposes, Jones allowed ACLU attorneys to write nearly the entire section of his opinion analyzing whether intelligent design is science.”
What it says is that the judge accepts from the ACLU what the findings of facts are. That means he didn’t examine them himself. I don’t care if it’s “common practice” or not — look at what you’re defending, trolls. You’re defending the failure to analyze documents presented as findings of fact.
That’s the bottom line, and it doesn’t surprise me that leftists will defend judicial sloth as long as it gets their views across.
Try on some irreducible complexity for a change.
“That means he didn’t examine them himself.”
LOL.
No. It means that he accepted the proposed findings of fact. Jumping from that narrow conclusion to a broad one like “he didn’t look at the facts,” will get you an F on any law school exam!
“the extent to which Judge Jones simply copied the language submitted to him by the ACLU is stunning.”
Compared to what? Read the study. Note that that section is bare assertion, unsupported by any sort of comparison to any other case or citation.
That sort of argumentation will get you an F in law school too. “Conclusory.”
I don’t think anyone gets to claim judicial sloth until they’ve read all 139 pages of the opinion. And you should be thankful that you aren’t required to sit through all 40 days of trial.
But, if you guys want to conclude that this judge is lazy, maybe we should agree and let that be a lesson not to trust judges appointed by George W. Bush.
OK, I’ve had my nose in a book studying for finals for far too long so have I missed something? Has the Discovery Institute suddenly gained credibility? Somehow, I doubt the DI has abandoned its policy of science by press release and its misleading spin. In fact, I can tell from the contents of this post that the DI has done no such thing.
As so many others have pointed out, every case involves disputed facts. The factual “errors†in the ACLU’s statement were disputed facts, not errors. The judge included these “errors†not because he was lazy, but because after hearing both sides of the story, he believed those facts over the school board’s version of the facts. It shouldn’t be a surprise that the DI believes these disputed facts are errors, but from one registered Republican who voted for Bush in 04 let me just say: You can’t believe a word the DI says. I know there’s at least one judge out there who agrees with me.
Paul Yanna,
As you posted earlier… Even if you do come up with something a little less hysterical and more accurate sometime, jeez, try toning it down just a little.
Take your own advice. As “Paul Yanna” you are fine, as “Vaginiform Grin”, you’ll be sent packing.
Now you know who that loboinok “tool” is.
Speaking of cut and paste, here is something y’all might find interesting… or not.
Backgrounder on the Significance of Judicial Copying
On December 12, 2006, Discovery Institute released a report which found that “90.9% (or 5,458 words) of Judge Jones’ 6,004-word section on intelligent design as science was taken virtually verbatim from the ACLU’s proposed ‘Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law’.†Since that time, we have received questions from various media sources and members of the public. This backgrounder on the report will help answer some common questions:
Why is this report important?
The section on whether ID is science is the most celebrated and expansive portion of the Kitzmiller opinion, which Judge Jones hoped would have an impact on future courts. As constitutional law scholar Stephen Gey said, “the critique of ID and science is the most important part of the Kitzmiller opinion . . .†Yet even the anti-ID legal scholar Jay Wexler agrees that this section was NOT necessary to the ruling and is highly controversial. The discovery that Judge Jones’ section on whether ID is science was taken almost entirely verbatim or near-verbatim from an ACLU brief will likely give future courts good reasons to have significant hesitation before citing to this section of the ruling.
Moreover, this report is changing the verdict of the court of public opinion upon the issue. The report recounts the unyielding praise many Darwinists previously gave Judge Jones, but now even the arch-Darwinist biochemistry professor Larry Moran is admitting, “The legal significance of the decision doesn’t change but my opinion of Judge Jones does. He is no longer the brilliant man who was able to grasp complex scientific concepts in the blink of an eye.â€Â
Other members of the public would agree with the report’s central arguments that “the extent to which Judge Jones simply copied the language submitted to him by the ACLU is stunning†and that “[t]he revelation that Judge Jones in effect ‘dragged and dropped’ large sections of the ACLU’s ‘Findings of Fact’ into his opinion, errors and all, calls into serious question whether Jones exercised the kind of independent analysis that would make his ‘broad, stinging rebuke’ of intelligent design appropriate.â€Â
Are you accusing Judge Jones of plagiarism or any other violation of judicial ethics?
No. As the report reads, “Proposed ‘findings of fact’ are prepared to assist judges in writing their opinions, and judges are certainly allowed to draw on them. Indeed, judges routinely invite lawyers to propose findings of fact in order to verify what the lawyers believe to be the key factual issues in the case. Thus, in legal circles Judge Jones’ use of the ACLU’s proposed ‘Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law’ would not be considered ‘plagiarism’ nor a violation of judicial ethics.â€Â
Don’t judges do this all the time?
Not to such a high extent of copying that Judge Jones employed. While there is no absolute prohibition against what Judge Jones did, the Associated Press reports that a legal scholar at the Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics at Fordham Law School explained that it is “not typical for judges to adopt one side’s proposed findings verbatim.â€Â
Do Courts Approve of this Practice?
The answer to this question is clearly “noâ€Â: The Third Circuit, which governs all federal courts in Pennsylvania, has strong law discouraging judges from simply adopting ‘verbatim or near verbatim’ the findings of fact of parties in a case. One Third Circuit ruling in 2005, In re: Community Bank of Northern Virginia, held that it is “highly disapproved of†for judges to adopt the briefs of parties in a “verbatim or near verbatim†fashion.1 In 2004, the Third Circuit also had harsh words for a judge which unilaterally adopted the recommendations of one party:
Judicial opinions are the core work-product of judges. They are much more than findings of fact and conclusions of law; they constitute the logical and analytical explanations of why a judge arrived at a specific decision. They are tangible proof to the litigants that the judge actively wrestled with their claims and arguments and made a scholarly decision based on his or her own reason and logic. When a court adopts a party’s proposed opinion as its own, the court vitiates the vital purposes served by judicial opinions. We, therefore, cannot condone the practice used by the District Court in this case.2
A 1964 U.S. Supreme Court case called a judge who adopted a party’s findings of facts verbatim ‘not the product of the workings of the district judge’s mind’ and noted the findings of fact had been ‘mechanically adopted’ by the district court.â€Â3 The late federal appellate Judge James Skelly Wright, famous for desegregating New Orleans public schools, was favorably quoted by the U.S. Supreme Court for instructing judges to avoid the blanket adoption of lawyers’ arguments:
I suggest to you strongly that you avoid as far as you possibly can simply signing what some lawyer puts under your nose. These lawyers, and properly so, in their zeal and advocacy and their enthusiasm are going to state the case for their side in these findings as strongly as they possibly can. When these findings get to the courts of appeals they won’t be worth the paper they are written on as far as assisting the court of appeals in determining why the judge decided the case.4
Finally, in a 1985 U.S. Supreme Court ruling the Court similarly noted that “[w]e, too, have criticized courts for their verbatim adoption of findings of fact prepared by prevailing parties, particularly when those findings have taken the form of conclusory statements unsupported by citation to the record.â€Â5 Thus, it is clear that while the “verbatim or near verbatim†adoption of a party’s findings of facts practice is not prohibited, it is also highly disapproved of by many courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which governs Judge Jones’ own court. There is a good reason for this: it “vitiates the vital purposes served by judicial opinions.â€Â
Why are you issuing this report now, almost a year after the ruling?
Judge Jones issued his ruling in late December 2005. Discovery Institute subsequently published critiques of the Kitzmiller ruling in April 2006, with Traipsing Into Evolution, the first book-length critique of the Kitzmiller ruling. But we did not discover the extensive copying and pasting in Judge Jones’ ruling until September 2006, when Michael Behe was investigating the source of Judge Jones’ misquote of Behe in the Kitzmiller ruling. Work began on the present report at that time with aims to release it around the 1 year anniversary of the Kitzmiller ruling.
Did Judge Jones copy the entire opinion from the ACLU?
Other sections of the ruling were taken verbatim from the ACLU’s proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, but we have not conducted a quantitative analysis of the level of copying in those sections. The report covers only the section of the Kitzmiller opinion which purported to address the question of whether ID is science.
What role did this “ID as science” section play in the entire judicial opinion?
Under current constitutional law, Judge Jones could have struck down the ruling without addressing whether ID is science. But Judge Jones claimed it was “incumbent upon the Court to further address . . . whether ID is science.†Judge Jones even sought answer the question for all other courts, writing that “no other tribunal in the United States is in a better position than†him to address whether ID is science, and declared his “hope that it may prevent the obvious waste of judicial and other resources which would be occasioned by a subsequent trial involving the precise question†of whether ID is science (Online version, pages 63-64). Clearly, Judge Jones sought to settle the question of whether ID is science for all future courts. Yet, as the study aptly concludes, “The new disclosure that Judge Jones’ analysis of the scientific status of ID merely copied language written for him by ACLU attorneys underscores just how inappropriate this part of Kitzmiller wasâ€â€and why Judge Jones’ analysis should not be regarded as the final word about intelligent design.â€Â
Cases Cited:
1. In re: Community Bank of Northern Virginia, 418 F.3d 277, 300, 319 (3rd Cir. 2005).
2. Bright v. Westmoreland County, 380 F.3d 729, 732 (3rd Cir. 2004).
3. United States v. El Paso Natural Gas Company, 376 U.S. 65, 656, 657 (1964).
4. Judge James Skelly Wright quoted in United States v. El Paso Natural Gas Company, 376 U.S. 65, 657, fn4 (1964) (internal citations and quotations omitted).
5. Anderson v. Bessemer City, 470 U.S. 564, 572 (1985).
Lobo, I don’t have time to respond to the entire post, so I’ll just summarize my belief and we should be able to call it a day.
It could be argued that it requires insightfulness to recognize that another man has already said something best. As your post points out, there is legal value in restating it anyway, but unless someone can demonstrate a pattern, it’s unreasonable to assume his actions were due to laziness.
Anyone who complimented Judge Johns based on the composition of the Findings of Fact would be justified in retracting those compliments. However, you should take care not to assume that the retractions of some imply the retractions of all.
This was such a slam dunk case for the plaintiffs because they had all of their facts right, and these facts were documented. Had the defendents had the facts, instead of falsehood piled upon falsehood, then the judge could have “cut and pasted” their finding of facts.
Without actual facts, or science, to back them up, the Discovery Institute is doing what it does best, getting a Pavlovian response from the ditto heads by crying about the judge.
The problem is that the judge was absolutely right — ID is religion, not science, and when the Wedge Document went up on viewing screen, showing the lie in all its glory, the trial was all but over. Quotes from Dempski, Behe and that rabid Moonie, Johnston, didn’t help their cause since they showed the religious leanings of the ID proponents.
These proponents don’t try to convince scientists, since they have no real ammunition. They do have a public relations campaign to sway the scientifically illiterate with scientific sounding talk.
If they are successful, it will be to our countries detriments since more enlightened countries will take over biological discoveries.