James M. Redwine

Indiana University

Football vs. Politics

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Democracy is messy but usually bloodless. Football is sweaty and sometimes painful. Football teams choose representative colors such as black and orange or cream and crimson. American politics are red versus blue. Football teams are led by coaches and financed by taxpayers or fat cats. Political parties are led by politicians and financed by drips and drabs via the internet or fat cats. Football teams have a few stars supported by several Sherpas. I was happy to be one of the Sherpas on the Pawhuska, Oklahoma high school Huskies football team a while ago and enjoyed every minute of it, except for wind sprints of course. I am still enjoying supporting the Huskies team which is undefeated and on their way to what I hope will be Pawhuska’s first state championship in football.

Political parties have a few stars supported by, usually, faceless minions. Football teams have one mission, to win, whoever the opponent is. Political parties believe their mission is to provide better government than competing political parties would provide. I will leave it up to you, Gentle Reader, if you believe any political party manages to achieve this goal.

Both football teams and political parties are governed by rules of procedure and conduct. With football teams a conference sets the standards and with political parties governments from the local level on up to the top have a hand in determining policy and ultimate victory. Football games are controlled by officials on the field who can enforce the rules. Their rulings are immediate and not subject to appeal but some can be reviewed. Albeit the final ruling, in effect, is made by the same people who made the initial one. Political races are governed by laws and can be subject to recount, review, repeal and reversal. Football fans sometimes must just grimace and bear a referee’s egregious error, such as giving one team an extra down as in the 1990 Colorado v. Missouri game. Of course, the problem with any attempted remedy in football is it would be impossible to completely and fairly recreate the original game circumstance. On the other hand there is the benefit that, other than endless conversations over beer, the calls at football games are final. But political races such as Bush v. Gore in 2000 may end up in the U.S. Supreme Court and may never be universally accepted as final.

As for me, I am currently marveling how my alma mater, Indiana University, can be undefeated in football after many years of wandering in the football wilderness. This column was written before Michigan v. I.U. upcoming on November 7, 2020, so I am hopeful it remains valid when you read this. And I am chagrined that Oklahoma State University where I started college could have lost to Texas last Saturday. I want a recount! I know I personally saw several blown calls that might have changed the score of the Cowboy game.

Regardless, what I have decided after suffering through the entire 2020 political season and cheering (or moaning) my way along the football season is that the temporary pains that I experienced playing football pale in the excruciation caused by the clanging brass of competing political parties and noxious news anchors. I am thankful for football and am past caring about the motes in the eyes of those who do not see eye to eye with me on politics.

 

Legally Thinking

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Mount Rushmore

 

My brother, Philip Redwine, that is Philip spelled with the Biblical one “l”, graduated from the Oklahoma University Law School while I was an undergraduate at Indiana University. When I asked him what he had been taught he told me the entire process boiled down to “learning to think like a lawyer”. When I excitedly quizzed him about that arcane and mysterious subject he replied the whole three years of law school could be summarized by the following story:

“A client asked his attorney for advice as to whether he should file for a divorce. The client told the attorney that each time he tried to climb the stairs to the second floor of the couple’s home his wife would kick him back down. The man said to the attorney, ‘Doesn’t that show she doesn’t love me anymore?’ The attorney reflected on the situation and thoughtfully responded, ‘Either that or she just doesn’t want you upstairs.’”

So, to think like a lawyer means to objectively consider a situation from all sides and apply any relevant analogies to it. After three years of my own legal education at Indiana University, then ten years practicing law and forty years of being a judge, my conclusion is my brother was right and that lawyer-type analysis requires imagination and objective open-mindedness. I respectfully suggest we may want to try this approach to our COVID-19 impacted situation as some of our greatest legally trained presidents might have done. Yes, we must act now but we should do so with wisdom, courage and imagination.

Vision and objectivity have certainly been displayed by several of our greatest non-legally trained presidents. George Washington and Theodore Roosevelt readily come to mind. However, I would like to discuss with you a few of our legally thinking leaders who helped guide us through tough times by having the ability to seize opportunity from crisis by winnowing the wheat from the chaff.

Thomas Jefferson saw the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 and the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1803-1806 as a means of expanding the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific and discovering the untold resources of our country. Jefferson did this at a time when most Americans still feared, or too much admired, Great Britain. And he had to maneuver the funding through a skeptical Congress.

The Golden Spike

Abraham Lincoln was faced with the possibility of California seceding from the Union and with slavery remaining as a state option even if the South were defeated. He boldly issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and that same year signed the bill funding the Intercontinental Railroad. Lincoln did not live to see the golden spike driven at Promontory, Utah on May 10, 1869, but his use of grants of public lands and issuance of bonds helped preserve the Union he so admired.

Franklin Roosevelt saw the need for a great infusion of public funds for the education and re-employment of our out-of-work Americans during the Great Depression. Thanks to his vision America was much better prepared to respond to Japan and Germany in World War II.

John Kennedy started us on the elliptical route to the moon as financed with public monies. The vast number of jobs, products and conveniences the Space Program brought are still being enjoyed by our citizens.

I do not cite these heroes’ legal training as required for a novel approach to the Novel Virus. Millions of Americans can see that borrowing trillions of dollars to help people for a short time merely delays the pain. A cure requires applying our resources with a long view. We can invest in ourselves for the future while helping those in need now.

Germany’s Autobahn

One need not be a lawyer to see an issue such as COVID-19 from all sides and apply similar solutions as were used in similar prior crises. President Eisenhower was a West Point trained soldier who planned the greatest military invasion in history and could envision the benefits from a German Autobahn-type interstate highway system for America. And my friend, Warren Batts, is not an attorney but a rock ’n roll musician who suggests we could build a national high speed railway passenger system utilizing the middle portion of our already existing interstate rights-of-way between the separated lanes of traffic.

What we need, from our lawyers and non-lawyers combined, is the vision to prepare for our new society as it will surely be transformed by the Corona Virus. We will be changed but we can transform not regress. New skills can be taught using public funds as we did with the Lewis and Clarke Expedition, the Transcontinental Railroad, the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Space Program.

I realize these are not new ideas. That is my legally thinking point. You, Gentle Reader, will surely have several similar suggestions of your own, which I encourage you to share.

In The Beginning …

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Mr. A.H. Holloman owned and operated a gravel pit near the small town of Frederick, Tillman County in southwest Oklahoma. The pit is about one half mile wide and 7 miles long. Holloman discovered numerous artifacts of ancient human occupation in the pit in 1920. The supposed age of the items suggested modern civilized Homo sapiens created them 130,000 years ago. However since this conflicted with the generally accepted theory that Homo sapiens arose in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, Africa 60,000 to 80,000 years ago, the scientific community discarded the archeological evidence at the Holloman dig for many years.

Then Professor David Deming of Oklahoma University published an article claiming modern humans may have originated in Oklahoma. Deming (born 1954 in Terre Haute, Indiana) graduated from North Central High School in Indianapolis, Indiana then graduated from Indiana University in 1983 with a BS degree in geology. He earned his PhD in geophysics from the University of Utah in 1988.

As a matter of full disclosure, I am an IU grad and currently live in both Indiana and Oklahoma. Most importantly, I garnered all my information about Professor Deming and his research from Wikipedia. At least it wasn’t Twitter.

Anyway, as a member of the faculty of the National Judicial College in Reno, Nevada I am currently helping to teach an on-line course to sitting judges. The course concentrates on courthouse security, ethics, court technology and what are the proper roles and behaviors for America’s judges with an emphasis on rural courts and judges new to the Bench. A rural court is defined as a jurisdiction having one to three judges and a less urban atmosphere. Mr. Joseph Sawyer, long-time NJC staff and faculty member, is in charge of the course that relies on several experienced judges as teachers.

At our first class session for 2019 which was Thursday, September 12 the general discussion pertained to what cultural purposes do judges serve and what do and should citizens expect when they attend court. In other words, what, if anything, other than wearing black robes and pontificating do Americans perceive judges to do?

Since I had just last weekend read about Professor Deming’s work, as we engaged in class discussions about the proper role of judges, I merged my thoughts of history and modern judicial culture. I asked myself what is it you, that is I, have been doing as a judge for the past 39 years and has any of it mattered other than to provide me a paycheck? Basically, what is a judge and what should be a judge?

While I should have been concentrating on the interesting comments of my fellow faculty members and our student judges I found myself musing about the folks that inhabited the Holloman gravel pit about 130,000 years ago. That’s probably about the time society decided we needed some way other than clubs to resolve disagreements. I envisioned three families of the earliest Homo sapiens existing in proximity in three separate huts. Let’s imagine the wife of the man in hut number 1 decides to decorate her hut with flowers that only grow beside hut number 2. Wife 1 gathers up the flowers and wife 2 takes umbrage. The husbands of 1 and 2 each grab a club and mayhem is in the offing when the wife in hut number 3 suggests a meeting run by her husband, ergo the first judge.

The judge suggests a compromise whereby the flowers are shared and the wives in huts 1 and 2 work together to beautify both huts as well as the judge’s hut with the participation of wife 3 (was this our first courthouse?). Crisis averted. Peace restored. Justice done. A system of justice created.

Gentle Reader, I confess that in my humble opinion, judging really is about that straight forward. All the rest is just window dressing.

 

A Summer Place (Not the Movie)

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I was married, had a son and was broke when I started Law School in Bloomington, Indiana in the summer of 1968. Although I was working full-time on a night stock crew at a Kroger’s grocery store and was receiving the G.I. bill for my Air Force service, our family just made it. My mission was to get out of school as quickly as possible. I.U. allowed 44 of us new law students to enroll on a new 27-month plan instead of the normal three years with three summers off. Only 6 of us completed the program where we actually started in June 1968 and took the Bar Exam in the summer of 1970 before we graduated in August.

What this did for my family and me was to allow me to become a lawyer when that would not have been possible had we had to remain in Law School another year. My G.I. Bill benefits were used up by the spring 1970 semester and we could not survive on my Kroger pay.

Now I will leave it up to my past clients and those who have appeared in front of me as judge to determine if I.U. made an error in judgment in allowing me to cram three years of education into two. But as for me it was a necessity. However, it also showed me how the summertime, when most Law Schools are not in session, could be put to use.

Another long-term association I have had as judge is with the National Judicial College in Reno, Nevada. While NJC does conduct summer continuing education sessions for judges from every state and many foreign countries, these courses, due to the demands of working judges’ schedules, usually are a maximum of two weeks. In two weeks judges can have existing skills more finely honed. However, the in-depth education and training one should experience before being charged with the thousands of critical judging decisions affecting our citizens requires a greatly expanded curriculum and much more time. Unfortunately, in America today all judges get their judicial education after they become judges. Such a system of on-the-job training might work well for workers on a night stock crew, but it is anathema to receiving equal justice from new judges.

In some countries, the pool of potential judges is formed in Law Schools where those who wish to someday be a judge must complete a rigorous and specially designed regimen. That is in contrast to America where if one wishes to be a judge all that is required is that he or she graduate from a law school. And in Law School not even the law professors are likely to have a clue about what a judge’s role really entails.

What I suggest is a system of developing a pool of attorneys who have a Law School specialty of Judging much as in medicine where one must be trained as a neurologist before they operate on someone’s brain. Naturally the students who want to later be considered for election or appointment as judges should have at least all the education and training of any attorney who will appear in front of the judge, so the judicial specialty must call for additional Law School time just as a medical student who wants to specialize needs extra education and time. I suggest the three summers of a Law School education are a natural fit for a Judicial Specialty. I will more fully address these issues in future columns. Try to curb your excitement.

A Trap For Fools

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When I set out to trap whatever varmints were stealing our cat’s food I felt confident. After all, I was pretty sure my adversaries were not members of any “… well-regulated militia” nor graduates of any accredited educational institutions nor associated with any liberal or right-wing political groups. I, on the other hand, have had experience surviving struggles with all of these.

As to a well-regulated militia, the United States Air Force should qualify no matter what our U.S. Army soldier son thinks and Indiana University is respected if football is not considered. When it comes to the mish-mash of current political “thought”, I have managed to avoid or ignore the clanging vapidness of extremists on all sides.

Anyway, I counted myself as at least equal to raccoons, opossums, skunks and our only neighbors’ straying house pets. But as coach and television sports analyst Lee Corso might say, “Not so fast, Jim”. Apparently in the war of wits between the purloining pests I am not sufficiently armed.

A few weeks ago when I finally figured out our once feral cat was upset his morning meal kept going missing I contacted my friend Paul Axton who is a Department of Natural Resources Officer. Paul brought me out a trap and showed me how to use it; this took some patience on his part.

As instructed I baited it with giant marshmallows (who knew?) and set it beside the cat’s food tray. My first and only catch was our cat. He was not amused and still tries to claw my hand when I put his food out.

The way this trap is supposed to work one baits it and when a thief enters the trap seeking a marshmallow a metal plate is tripped by the weight of the animal and the only door falls behind it. Unfortunately, our cat is the only animal dumb enough for this to work. On the other hand, perhaps I have furnished enough marshmallows to whatever stealthy animal miscreant is gorging itself on sugar it will catch diabetes. However, it is probably more likely to die laughing at my efforts as it dines at my expense.

What this whole imbroglio brings to my mind is one of my favorite poems by Rudyard Kipling entitled If. One of the lines goes something like this (apologies to Kipling):

If you can bear to see
your plans twisted by
varmints to make a trap
for fools …

 

I guess one just has to determine what fool is being trapped.

p.s.     I know I have written about this before, but I figure no one reads these columns anyway and I am really ticked off; I need the therapy.

Forty Bowl Games And Counting

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Americans rushed to California in 1849 seeking gold. Most found what the little boy shot at. But now there is gold to be found by college football teams heading to California, and Florida, Texas, etc., etc., to play in one of the college bowl games. It is estimated that in excess of half a billion dollars will change hands between the first bowl game on December 16, 2017 (The Celebration Bowl played between Grambling and North Carolina A & T in Atlanta, Georgia) and the National Championship Bowl to be held January 08, 2018 in the same place.

My alma mater, Indiana University, will not be among the 80 colleges participating. We will, however, share in a portion of the bowl revenues that other Big 10 universities will rake in. Maybe we can use the money to help fund the one event I.U. students always get to play in, the Little 500 bike race. Okay, enough sour grapes. Let’s move along with the main topic which is the college football bowl season.

Less than forty years after the end of the Civil War (1902) the first college bowl game was held between the University of Michigan (representing the east) and Stanford University (representing the west). America’s Civil War wounds were still too raw to pit a northern team versus a southern one. The game was conceived as a fundraiser to help Pasadena, California defray the expenses of the Rose Parade that was always held to celebrate the New Year. Unfortunately, Michigan beat Stanford so badly that Stanford walked off the field and quit in the third quarter (49-0). This was so embarrassing the Rose Bowl game was not held again until 1916.

However, due to the financial success of games from 1916 up to the time of the Great Depression other communities jumped on the bowl bandwagon. Miami, Florida started the Orange Bowl in 1933, New Orleans added the Sugar Bowl in 1935 and Texas started the Sun Bowl in 1936 and the Cotton Bowl in 1937. A true gold rush was in full swing.

The 2018 Rose Bowl will be held New Year’s Day between The University of Oklahoma and the University of Georgia. Each school’s conference will be paid $40 million dollars and each of the two schools playing will get paid over $2 million as “compensation for expenses”. My guess is each university will use the money to snag five star recruits and build evermore state of the art practice facilities. I say we should not expect the money to be invested in each university’s academic needs. On the other hand, Peg and I have not seen fit to buy any tickets to watch the exciting lectures on physics at I.U. instead of the moribund football games!