In law offices all around the United States, for decades, the Disciplinary Board of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has been a laughable joke, arbitrary and capricious, and a political enforcement arm of a notoriously corrupt, politicized court system.
It’s a good thing the Philadelphia Inquirer has no institutional memory left at all these days, because it should know better than most the long and troubled history of the court’s Disciplinary Board.
For just one memorable example (and there are many), consider a telling episode dragged up during the 1990s impeachment trial of state Supreme Court Justice Rolf Larsen.
Larsen was one of the state’s most overtly political judges. The episode concerns Larsen and a close court and political pal of his, attorney Richard Gilardi, of Pittsburgh.
“The grand jury said Gilardi went to Larsen’s chambers in 1988 and asked the justice to read his petitions in two cases,” the Inquirer reported, leading up to Larsen’s impeachment.
Larsen instructed Gilardi to write “yes” or “no” on the two petitions involving Gilardi, presumably to guide Justice Larsen’s decisions.
“On the cover sheet in a case in which Gilardi was opposing a request for appeal, he had written No, according to the grand jury. On the cover sheet in a case in which Gilardi’s client was seeking an appeal, the grand jury said, Gilardi had written Yes,” reported the Inquirer in the 1990s.
At the time, the implication, of course, was that Justice Larsen was fixing cases for his good buddy, attorney Gilardi.
And just who was Richard Gilardi?
“Richard Gilardi (was) a former chairman of the state Disciplinary Board responsible for investigating lawyer misconduct in Pennsylvania,” the Inquirer dutifully reported at the time.
In an article explaining, the Philadelphia Inquirer quoted a special prosecutor as saying, “It goes back to the appearance of politics… I have never heard it as much and seen it as much in play as in Pennsylvania.”
And it still goes on to this day. Today, as we see in Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s case, it’s even worse, because, more than ever, state judges must raise ever-more millions in campaign donations — as politicians — to get elected to our bench.
So they must continue to break their own rules, and use their politicized Disciplinary Board and newspaper pals to silence a dangerous and uncontrollable political foe.
EDITOR: For more information on the Pennsylvania court system, readers may want to consult Bill Keisling’s “We all fall down.”
