Cornyn out of context

I reproduce here an email I just sent to Profs. Glenn Reynolds and Ann Althouse based on their two recent posts about Texas Senator John Cornyn's so-called "stirring up hatred against judges":

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Profs. Reynolds & Althouse, with due respect, I think you are buying in wholesale to comments of others who are taking Sen. John Cornyn's comments WAY out of context, and thereby propagating and giving additional credence to a misimpression.

John Cornyn, as you probably know (but may have forgotten) was the Attorney General of Texas and an Associate Justice of the Texas Supreme Court before he was elected to the US Senate.  In both of those capacities, he was extremely responsible and well-balanced.  As the chief law enforcement officer of the State of Texas, he certainly had no record of encouraging lawlessness.  He has no history of demagoguery.  Lumping him in with nuts at either the left or right extremes simply isn't justified based on his past record.  He's neither a Tom DeLay nor a Robert Byrd.  There's no plausible basis to argue based on his own history that by speculating about a possible cause-and-effect link, he's sending a "coded message" approving and endorsing violence against judges. 

Prof. Althouse comments (and Prof. Reynolds quotes approvingly) that "[i]t is really a shame how little people understand of the reasons judges decide cases the way they do."  With due respect, Prof. Althouse, ex-Justice Cornyn may have a better understanding than you, Prof. Reynolds, or I (judicial clerkships notwithstanding).  I don't think you should be so quick to impute to this senator an intent to encourage violence against judges like those among whom he recently sat himself, especially given his own track record of combatting violent crime as a Texas Attorney General.

And in context, Sen. Cornyn's remarks are actually CONSISTENT with your observation, Prof. Althouse.  He's not commending or endorsing the people who "understand [little] of the reasons judges decide cases the way they do."  But he's certainly commenting on the fact that many people don't understand why judges decide cases the way they do, and observing, admittedly speculatively — with concern and alarm, not approval — that the misunderstandings of some of those people may turn to frustration that could potentially turn to violence.  And how does he characterize these hypothetical misunderstandings and actions?  As being "certainly without any justification"!

The left half of the blogosphere — including posts you've linked, Prof. Reynolds — are painting Sen. Cornyn's comments as "endorsing violence against state and federal judges."  But that's not at all what he actually said, even in the truncated quotes contained in the WaPo article linked by Prof. Althouse.

One can make the argument that judicial activism breaks down public respect for the judiciary, and the further argument that decreased public respect for and increased public frustration with the judiciary might encourage fringe elements to break the law.  One can lament that as a potential consequence without endorsing that consequence.  One can lament that without encouraging violence.  One can indeed condemn violence as an inappropriate solution to the problem; if Sen. Cornyn's comments can be faulted, it's only for failing to condemn violence more strongly than he did.  But in fairness, it probably never occurred to him that anyone would misconstrue his comments as being an endorsement of violence against judges.

Neither of you two are suckers.  But with due respect, I think you've both been suckered, badly, this time.  I urge you to think twice.  And read the whole speech — link here — which includes statements like this one:

This is not a blanket condemnation. I hope I have made it clear that I respect the men and women who wear the robe, but having been a judge myself I can state that part of the job of a judge is to criticize the reasoning and the justification for a particular judgment. I certainly did that daily as a state supreme court justice. And I might add that people felt free to criticize my decisions, my reasoning and justification for the judgments I would render. That is part of the give and take that goes into this. I make clear my respect generally for the Federal judiciary, including the U.S. Supreme Court.

Then tell me truthfully if you think the WaPo linkage of this speech to Tom DeLay's veiled threat of impeachment-type retaliation against the Schiavo judges is fair, or a cheap shot.  I think it's definitely the latter.

Best regards,

- Bill Dyer a/k/a Beldar

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Regarding quoting out of context, here's what came immediately before the bit that the WaPo quoted:

I believe the increasing politicization of the judicial decisionmaking process at the highest levels of our judiciary has bred a lack of respect for some of the people who wear the robe. That is a national tragedy.

Does describing a "lack of respect for some of the people who wear the robe" as a "[n]ational tragedy" encourage violence against judges?

And here, from the very beginning of the speech:

Before I start, let me just say I have the greatest respect for our judiciary, the men and women who wear black robes — whether it is on a municipal court or a county court or a district court like I served on in San Antonio, Bexar County, TX, for 6 years, or those who work on appellate courts, whether State or Federal, like I did on the Texas Supreme Court for 7 years.

For 13 years of my professional life, I have worn a black robe, judging cases, first presiding over the jury trials, and coming to have a great deal of respect not just for those judges but for men and women who serve on juries and decide hard cases, cases which, perhaps, they would prefer not have to sit in judgment of, some involving even the death penalty.

I don't want anyone to misunderst[an]d what I am going to say as being a blanket criticism of either the judiciary or the U.S. Supreme Court, in particular. From my own experience, judges, although they have important jobs to do, are no different than you and me. What I mean is they are mere mortals, subject to the same flashes of mediocrity, sometimes making mistakes, and sometimes displaying flights of brilliance. These are not, as some people have suggested, high priests able to discern great truths that you and I are unable to figure out. They are generally very intelligent, with outstanding educational pedigrees, but none of us have agreed that judges, particularly Federal judges, can be or should be a law unto themselves.

Demagoguery? A call to violence?

Hardly. Actually a damn good speech. But read the whole thing for yourselves, please, before buying into anyone's characterization of it, including mine.

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UPDATE (Tue Apr 5 @ 2:30pm): Argh. Jonah Goldberg's been suckered too. Doesn't anyone bother to read before blogging anymore? It took me all of ten seconds to find the speech on Cornyn's website and three minutes to read it start to finish. I expect better than this from these folks, frankly. You should too.

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UPDATE (Tue Apr 5 @ 3:55pm): To his credit, Josh Marshall of  Talking Points Memo responded promptly and very politely to my emailed request that he post a link to Cornyn's actual speech, although without quoting any of the passages that his earlier posts and the WaPo article left out:

To me, the offending passage — suggesting a connection between judicial activism and violence against judges — speaks for itself, notwithstanding the fact that other passages say (what else do you expect?) that such violence cannot be justified.

But, no need to take my word for it. Read the context and decide for yourself.

My reading of the context is very different, obviously, but I thank Dr. Marshall for his intellectual honesty in posting the link to the speech so his readers can make up their own minds.

John Hawkins likewise faults Prof. Reynolds for over-reacting to the WaPo excerpt. If the WaPo excerpt were fair — if, as Prof. Althouse's post's title suggests, Sen. Cornyn was "stirring up hatred against judges" — I'd have had a similar reaction to theirs.

But contrary to Prof. Althouse's update, I don't believe that read in context, Sen. Cornyn's speech "legitim[ates] hostility toward judges," or that "portraying the judges as out-of-control power-wielders" is in any way an endorsement of violence against judges. Nor do I agree that "he's expressing understanding for people who snap and express hostility with violence" — certainly not understanding in the sense of condoning, much less endorsing, that violence. Perhaps Prof. Althouse will rethink after re-reading the speech and her post, and then sleeping on it. And in any event, I don't think it's fair for bloggers — left, right, or center — to quote selectively from the WaPo article without linking the actual speech and/or recognizing that it requires an intuitive leap to get from the text of the speech (even as excerpted in the WaPo article) to the conclusion that Sen. Cornyn was supporting or encouraging violence against judges. Such a leap might be arguable if Sen. Cornyn's career otherwise supported the notion that he's a rabble-rouser who speaks in code to encourage lawlessness. But that's simply not the case.

Jonah Goldberg was also prompt and kind in linking my post in response to my email, and K-Lo has now linked the full text of Sen. Cornyn's speech. My thanks to them both.

And Prof. Reynolds has also been kind enough to link this post and, much more importantly, Sen. Cornyn's speech in an update to his original post. Prof. Reynolds thinks the speech was rambling and asinine; I respectfully disagree. He asks: "[W]hy drag in the violence-against-judges thing — when, as Jonah [Goldberg] points out, there's no reason to associate any of these events with the kind of stuff that Cornyn is complaining about — at all?" Well, to begin with, Sen. Cornyn himself, even as quoted selectively in the WaPo article, questioned whether there's any cause-and-effect linkage; i.e., he was musing, speculating, wondering. Why was he wondering? I suspect it's because he identifies with judges who are wondering if there's any way to explain the increased violence. Should he have avoided speculating? Should he have forcefully condemned any possible tendencies for disrespect to translate into violence? Maybe. But that's a whole different kettle of fish than encouraging violence against judges, which is the way the speech has been painted.

Via Prof. Reynolds' update, I see also that Jon Henke has up a post with many links from the left and the right, and James Joyner has weighed in briefly as well.

I stress again: Truth is the antidote to confusion. Hyperlinks are your friend. Read the speech, and decide for yourself.

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UPDATE (Tue Apr 5 @ 7:24pm): K-Lo has Sen. Cornyn's clarification on the Senate floor tonight:

Mr. President, I rise to follow up on some remarks that I made on the floor of the Senate on Monday. A full transcript of those remarks, which had to do with judges and recent decisions of the United States Supreme Court, are available on my official website for anyone who would care to read them.

As a former judge of 13 years, who has a number of close personal friends who still serve on the bench today, I am outraged by recent acts of courthouse violence. I certainly hope that people will not construe my remarks on Monday otherwise. Considered in context, I don’t think a reasonable listener or reader could.

As I said on Monday, there is no possible justification for courthouse violence. Indeed, I met with a federal judge in Texas just this past week, to make sure that we are doing everything we can to protect our judges and courthouse personnel against further acts of violence.

But let me be clear: I am not aware of any evidence whatsoever linking the recent acts of courthouse violence to the various controversial rulings that have captured the nation’s attention in recent years.

My point was, and is, simply this: We should all be concerned that the judiciary is losing the respect that it needs to serve the American people well. We should all want judges who will interpret the laws fairly – not impose their own personal political views on the nation. We should all want to fix our broken judicial confirmation process. And we should all be disturbed by overheated rhetoric about the judiciary, from both sides of the aisle. I regret it that my remarks have been taken out of context to create a wrong impression about my position, and possibly be construed to contribute to the problem rather than to a solution.

Our judiciary must not be politicized. Rhetoric about the judiciary and about judicial nominees must be toned down. And our broken judicial confirmation process must be fixed, once and for all.

Bravo to Sen. Cornyn and his staff for the prompt reaction. And bravo to my fellow bloggers, left and right (and now including Prof. Althouse), who've linked to the full transcript from yesterday.

Now it's back to trial prep for Beldar — another trial starting on Monday, should be a barrel o' monkeys!

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UPDATE (Tue Apr 5 @ 10:04pm): One last bit that I can't resist, despite the risk of seeming picky or self-righteous. I have enormous respect for both Profs. Althouse and Reynolds, and give both of them credit for responsiveness and for being willing to look at additional context. But I just can't quite swallow Prof. Althouse's parting remarks, quoted approvingly (along with the text of Sen. Cornyn's clarification) by Prof. Reynolds:

Politicians know the spiciest part of a speech is the sound bite. Edit it out if you don't mean it.

Sure, that's great advice in general. But exactly what made the bit initially quoted by both of the good professors and others into a "sound bite"? This wasn't something said on the Capitol steps to a pack of reporters from the networks who could be expected to pick fifteen seconds for the nightly newscast. Rather, it was one paragraph out of a long speech given on a mostly-empty Senate floor and broadcast only on C-SPAN. And that paragraph was an aside, by no means the major topic on which Sen. Cornyn was speaking. There's no reason to believe that Sen. Cornyn himself intended, or expected, this paragraph to be "spicy." He's not much of a show-horse as politicians go, but heck, even he knows how to deliver a sound bite on cue — and the difference between a C-SPAN camera and one from CNN or ABC.

No ma'am and no sir, this became a "sound bite" only when yanked out of context by others, including the WaPo reporter, and then it became a big deal when that little bit of text was widely reprinted and broadcast without the surrounding context — including by folks who are generally a bit more skeptical and generally better than they were today in checking out the background facts and context. There's a big difference between a "sound bite" deliberately sculpted by a politician for mass rebroadcast and a "gotcha" (or attempted "gotcha") drummed up by others like this one was.

As for "editing it out if you don't mean it": Is this supposed to be a proscription against any speculation? Against musing in public? Because that's all Cornyn was doing. He didn't mean the misinterpretations some folks put on that paragraph, and he didn't say what he was mischaracterized as saying (i.e., even "hinting" at approval of violence against judges). Instead, in the very first section of the speech, Sen. Cornyn stressed his own respect for the judiciary in general, and pleaded for his comments not to be misunderstood. Immediately before the criticized language he referred to the decline in respect for the judiciary as a "national tragedy"; in the midst of the challenged language, he disclaimed a direct cause-and-effect relationship; and in the end of the challenged passage he had the "without any justification" language. Later in the speech, he repeated his sympathetic and empathetic remarks about the judiciary. And throughout, with the exception of this one paragraph, he talked about politics, not violence. But despite all this, obviously he was misunderstood — or misrepresented, intentionally or not — anyway.

Just how "gotcha-proof" can a politician make his speeches? Is he supposed to have someone holding up cue cards by his side, anticipating and dispelling every possible misinterpretation of what he's saying as he's saying it? And shouldn't that politician's past career — in Sen. Cornyn's case, as a judge and law enforcement official — confer at least some marginal protection against being misinterpreted as an advocate of violence? This whole thing smacks of the tempest in a teapot last fall over Dubya's "you probably can't win it" comment about the Global War on Terror. My immediate reaction to that was, "That can't be right — whatever else you think about Dubya, there ain't nobody who thinks he's a good enough actor to have concealed that so long if it was, in context, his real view!" And sure enough, the public didn't buy into that either; the quote disappeared as an issue by the time of the election, as Sen. Cornyn's quote will by the time of the first real Senate fight on judicial confirmations.

I guess these are rhetorical questions. I'm not fishing for mea culpas or abject apologies, and I'm certainly not suggesting bad faith on the part of those who posted without reading the whole speech. Indeed, I'm gratified that today's "blog swarm," to use Hugh Hewitt's term, is fizzling out; I view the whole episode as an example of the self-correcting tendencies of the blogosphere.

And there endeth the lesson, at least as far as longwinded Beldar is concerned. What you make of the lesson, if anything, gentle readers, is up to each of you.