Cpnservative jydge nude7/22/2023 ![]() The Examiner and panel in this case have acted as grand inquisitors on behalf of an allegedly scandalized public. Scapegoating and "cancelling" the most embarrassing among us becomes a quasi-religious way of purging collective shame and guilt. The complex and ubiquitous shaming and shunning rituals our society has concocted and enacted in recent decades may best be understood as an elaborate response to collective embarrassment. And this may be the unforgivable sin of our day. So what is really going on? In short, Judge Clark has embarrassed us-the Examiner, the Commission, this court, the judiciary, and the wider legal community. If the information about Judge Clark generated by this self-surveilling system genuinely showed sexual conduct that interfered with the ethical performance of his judicial duties, the Examiner, the Commission, and this court would have a duty to act on it.īut Judge Clark's actions did not have any real, factual connection to his role as a judge. This is the curious situation we now find ourselves in. I am reminded of the truth that the "greatest dangers to liberty" are often found "in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." And so reminded, wisdom councils that big brother himself is not obliged to act on every scrap of tittle-tattle that comes his way from ill-meaning little brothers. One consequence of this is that it's hard to get effective laws passed to curb corporate surveillance-governments don't really want to limit their own access to data by crippling the corporate hand that feeds them.'" "'ots of surveillance data moves back and forth between government and corporations. Governments have been unable to resist utilizing the vast store of data being collected by little brother to monitor the citizenry. ![]() And as many have observed, we are now well into the end game of surveillance which may be described as a kind of collusion between big and little brothers. The norming of 24/7 surveillance can lead to acceptance of the fact as not just a nuisance but as a positive good. Indeed, "it isn't some stern and monolithic Big Brother that we have to reckon with as we go about our daily lives, it's a vast cohort of prankish Little Brothers equipped with devices that Orwell, writing 60 years ago, never dreamed of and who are loyal to no organized authority." By turning "our lenses on ourselves in the quest for attention by any means" the "invasion of privacy … has been democratized." A truth Judge Clark now knows in full. ![]() We have become a society not so much subject to one all-powerful watcher but to the whims of a thousand-and-one watchers. Surveillance of all kinds (including the kind of self-surveillance practiced by Judge Clark) abetted by ubiquitous high-powered video and audio recording devices-along with the ease of publication and distribution offered by digital social media-has allowed for substantial increase in governmental and employer intrusion into the private lives of individuals. Rapid advancements and use of technology, however, have outpaced legal protections for privacy. Through a slew of judicial decisions, society has by now clearly decided that sexual conduct between consenting adults is none of the government's business. Indeed, the scope of private behavior protected from government regulation must be broader than simply sexual conduct…. For good or ill (or good and ill), that time has passed. To be sure, there was a time in our society when private, consensual sexual practices were not deemed off-limits to government regulation. Behavior that was only discovered by the Examiner and the Commission because it was disclosed by a disgruntled participant in that behavior. ![]() Because-let us be clear-the behavior we are talking about consists entirely of the lawful, private, consensual sexual practices of Judge Clark. Clark's behavior was embarrassing, foolish, and grossly immoral, it was not a violation of any of our rules governing judicial conduct. The Magistrate Judge had since retired, and didn't challenge the discipline, so the court concluded that it should "accept the stipulations and take no additional action." But Justice Caleb Stegall wrote an interesting concurrence (joined by Justice KJ Wall), which struck me as worth quoting at length: In Matter of Clark, the Kansas Commission on Judicial Performance had publicly censured a Magistrate Judge who had posted nude pictures of himself on a "dating website for couples"-something the Commission concluded violated Canons that mandated that "Judges should maintain the dignity of judicial office at all times, and avoid both impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in their professional and personal lives" and that they not "demean the judicial office."
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