What do you call someone who implies original authorship of material which he has not actually created and incorporates material from someone else's work into his own work without attributing it?
His honor.
Consider, for example, U.S. District Judge John Jones III. The man Time magazine hailed as one of the world's “most influential people” in the category of “scientists and thinkers” may need to be re-categorized as one of the most influential “cutters-and-pasters.” According to a new report by the Discovery Institute (DI), a significant section of the judge's ruling in last year’s controversial intelligent design decision appears to be copied-and-pasted from an ACLU document:
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 Institutes's Center for Science and Culture.
[...]
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.
The fact that Jones copied verbatim—even including factual errors made by the ACLU attorneys—is certainly troubling. But the bigger issue is that such blatant plagiarism isn’t considered plagiarism within legal circles. True, the legal scholars are quick to note that the practice is “highly disapproved of” and as Bright v. Westmoreland County makes clear,
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.
Still, the fact that such dishonesty is tolerated at all impugns the entire legal process. No matter what the lawyers may claim or how they parse the terms, it’s plagiarism. Are law students allowed to cut-and-paste “findings of fact” into their papers without attribution? If not, then why does the standard change when they put on judicial robes? Contrary to what Judge Jones and his fellow members of the bar might think, having a J.D. behind your name does not provide an exemption from ethics.
Addendum: Some critics of intelligent design are falling all over themselves to dismiss Jones’ lapse in judgement. Ed Darrell claims that “This is not at all unusual in such cases…” And Tim Sandefur of Panda’s Thumb claims that “adopting the plaintiffs’ proposed findings as his own” is “just what a judge does when he finds that the party has proven its case.” Apparently, Ed and Tim missed the AP story where a legal scholar acknowledged that it is “not typical for judges to adopt one side's proposed findings verbatim.”
Ed, Tim, and their defenders are embarrassing themselves. They should have condemned Jones breach of ethics and rightly pointed out that science is not decided by judicial decision. Instead, they’ve provided evidence for those who claim that since Darwinists can’t win in the court of public opinion, they are willing to lie, cheat, or steal to defend their beliefs. It’s shameful but, unfortunately, not particularly surprising.
Prediction: Boonton, ex-preacher, and Raven will not be able to resist coming to tell us that you have this all wrong, Joe, and that, BTW all of us who agree with you are drooling idiots.
Now just suppose if the judge had lifted, verbatim, 91% of DI's amicus brief and ruled the other way. Then the fecal matter would really hit the air-moving device.
Joe,
I'm sorry. You have sold your integrity to the devil. This is sad that you bear false witness like this.
You have utterly lost my personal respect and admiration.
Did you run this by Hugh Hewitt before running it?
Joe Carter:
" But the bigger issue is that such blatant plagiarism isn’t considered plagiarism within legal circles."
The Discovery Institute:
"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.”
Joe, I'm a lawyer. Each side to a case presents "Proposed Findings of Fact and Law" for the judge to sign. Each side writes those in the voice of the judge. The Thomas More Law Society did this in their losing sumbission. It is routine for the judge to accept most or all of the winning sided's proposals, and incorprate those, more or less, into the Judge's own written decision.
Judge Jones acknowledged reyingonthe parties' proposed findigns of fact and conclusions of law in the introduction to his opinion:
"This Memorandum Opinion constitutes the Court's findings of fact and conclusions of law which are based upon the Court's review of the evidence presented at trial, the testimony of the witnesses at trial, the parties' proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law with supporting briefs, other documents and evidence in the record, and applicable law."
Judge Jones is an honest man, and you have defamed him.
Sad. Again...fly this past Hugh Hewitt.
Joe McFaul-Define your terms-"incorporate."
Joe wrote, "Apparently, Ed and Tim missed the AP story where a legal scholar acknowledged that it is 'not typical for judges to adopt one side's proposed findings verbatim.'"
And guess what the Court didn't do in the Kitzmiller case. That's right, adopt one side's proposal verbatim. Even the DI hasn't claimed that the Court used all of the plaintiffs findings verbatim. Furthermore, the DI came up with their ~90% calculation by using a very loose defination of "virtually". Don't believe me? The Talk Origins Archive has copies of both the PFOF and the decision. You can go compare the texts yourself.
"The Talk Origins Archive has copies of both the PFOF and the decision. You can go compare the texts yourself."
Dont expect them to do any such thing...from the perpective of creationist/idists,the mere suggestion that their beloved cause might have been treated unfairly by the courts is proof that they were right all along and that the TOE has just been knocked to the floor...and they wont be messing with that delusion.
Joe Carter,
I am shocked and outraged ... I can barely put digit to keyboard, my hands are shaking so!
I just ran a sophisticated proprietary statistical analysis of this post of yours... well read the results for yourself:
A) Approximately 40.009% of this alleged "article" was directly cribbed from anti-Darwinist pro-I.D. propogandizing websites.
B) Approximately 97.8862% of the analysis and conceptualization of your "commentary" is substantially identical to the analysis and conceptualization available from and predominating on the same two source propogandizing websites referenced above in result A.
It's all I can do to force myself to squeeze these words out of my keyboard -- I've never been so scandalized by the shameful "standards" of weblogging in my entire life. I have to sign off now, I hope you understand.
I'm shocked, totally shocked, that a judge who put so much thought and effort into considering the evidence presented, the merits of the arguments, and then to formulating his decision would put so little effort into writing his opinion.
;/
Joe M. Joe, I'm a lawyer. Each side to a case presents "Proposed Findings of Fact and Law" for the judge to sign. Each side writes those in the voice of the judge. The Thomas More Law Society did this in their losing sumbission. It is routine for the judge to accept most or all of the winning sided's proposals, and incorprate those, more or less, into the Judge's own written decision.
You obviously didn’t read what I wrote. As I said, I don’t care how many lawyers accept the practice, its plagiarism. I don’t care if it is “routine”, its plagiarism. I don’t’ care if groups that I tend to agree with also engage in the practice, its plagiarism.
Judge Jones acknowledged reying on the parties' proposed findigns of fact and conclusions of law in the introduction to his opinion:
You are not seriously trying to claim that “relying on the parties' proposed findings of fact” means that you can cut and paste entire sections verbatim without attribution are you?
Judge Jones is an honest man, and you have defamed him.
Judge Jones is a plagiarist who got caught. Your defense of him is embarrassing.
Even the DI hasn't claimed that the Court used all of the plaintiffs findings verbatim.
No one is saying that Jones used the entire Findings of Fact verbatim. But he did cut and past entire sections verbabtim.
Reed A. Cartwright Talk Origins Archive has copies of both the PFOF and the decision. You can go compare the texts yourself.
Um, did you read what they have to say at Talk Origins? They are claiming that it is only about 60% to 70% copied rather than the 90% that DI claims.
Matthew I am shocked and outraged ... I can barely put digit to keyboard, my hands are shaking so!
Et tu, Matthew? Though you might disagree with ID I thought you’d definitely stand for integrity. I’m disappointed.
What do you call someone who implies original authorship of material which he has not actually created
Is this actually correct? Does the incorporation of factual findings in a decision really imply original authorship of that material?
Prediction: Boonton, ex-preacher, and Raven will not be able to resist coming to tell us that you have this all wrong, Joe, and that, BTW all of us who agree with you are drooling idiots.
On the contrary, the judge should have either put the findings into his own words or used quotation marks and references to indicate that he was using the ACLU brief.
But Joe exhibits his usual scumbag qualities when he writes:
Instead, they’ve provided evidence for those who claim that since Darwinists can’t win in the court of public opinion, they are willing to lie, cheat, or steal to defend their beliefs.
I'm not sure why Joe seems to go insane whenever evolution comes up. It's not even a character flaw...at this point it feels like a borderline mental problem.
Anyway just because a portion of a decision is plagerized has nothing to do with the validity of the decision. If I plagiarized my book report on For Whom the Bell Tolls off of its original NY Times book review that doesn't mean what I report is factually incorrect. It most likely is factually correct, my 'crime' of plagiarism is a personal one. You're free to fire me as a writer or give me an F but my report would be accurate.
Now just suppose if the judge had lifted, verbatim, 91% of DI's amicus brief and ruled the other way. Then the fecal matter would really hit the air-moving device.
Indeed, if the judge did that he would have picked the wrong brief to crib from. That would be like plagerizing your world history report from the Mell Brooks movie A History of the World Part I.
I'll let Joe McFaul comment on whether or not this is the standard in law. I'm not a lawyer so I don't know what the customs are for quoting sources in decisions. My instincts are to say that if the judge isn't going to custom write his own findings of fact he should use quotation marks or some other reference to say he is taking them from one of the briefs.
Reed
Joe wrote, "Apparently, Ed and Tim missed the AP story where a legal scholar acknowledged that it is 'not typical for judges to adopt one side's proposed findings verbatim.'"
Errr get your facts straight. Unusual things happen all the time. If the charge is plagerism then the only relevant question is whether the legal standards are to cite the specific source. There is no requirement that a judge give a little bit to each side when he is making findings of fact.
Joe:
You obviously didn’t read what I wrote. As I said, I don’t care how many lawyers accept the practice, its plagiarism. I don’t care if it is “routine”, its plagiarism. I don’t’ care if groups that I tend to agree with also engage in the practice, its plagiarism.
No its plagiarism if it violates the professions rules for citing sources. Different disciplines have different rules. Academia has very strict rules while journalism has very loose ones. If this is the practice what you should be saying is that you feel the rules should be tighter in judicial decisions.
Wow.
Also: Joe, it's amazing that so many of your commenters are the people who start out predisposed to disagree vehemently with you.
It all kind of reminds me of when Bush got the Oil Companies to write his Energy Policy...
It all kind of reminds me of when Bush got the Oil Companies to write his Energy Policy...
In a prior topic you claimed you didn't hate Bush, and yet in a topic completely unrelated to the President you go out of your way to get in a cheap shot. You claim to be a Christian, but it's rather obvious that you are a lot more obsessed with hating Bush than you are with loving God. Seriously, what specifically do you have against Bush that you hate him so. Did he dump your sister or something?
Joe Carter,
Matthew: "I am shocked and outraged ... I can barely put digit to keyboard, my hands are shaking so!"
Et tu, Matthew? Though you might disagree with ID I thought you’d definitely stand for integrity. I’m disappointed.
Wow, I think this is the nicest thing, or at least tied for nicest thing, that you've said about me, Joe. Thanks!
I was making a few points with my satirical statistical analysis:
1) Your own post was actually 40% "verbatim" lifted from two other sources. It certainly wasn't plagiarism, of course, since you clearly indicated by formatting and context that you were using block quotes.
However, the idea that someone could not have conducted a valid analysis of the facts and the issues in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District if that person relies extensively on other sources is clearly specious: if you couldn't do it for a simple blog post, how could a judge do it when ruling on any matter outside his own areas of personal expertise.
2) You relied on certain conventions (namely clear attribution, providing easy links) that allowed you to quote verbatim without opening yourself up to charges of plagiarism, and without opening yourself up to charges of misappropriating someone else's material.
If Judge Jones followed the established and approved conventions of his forum (namely listing his sources in his prefatory remarks, and working the verbatim portions into the normal context of a judicial ruling), then he is not guilty of anything either. If he followed the rules for normal verbatim usage, then your argument is not with Judge Jones, but with the rules themselves.
So the real question is, what are the rules governing verbatim usage of findings of fact in a judicial opinion?
Unfortunately, you and I are not lawyers, and we probably don't have enough experience with the law to give an authoritative answer. But it shouldn't be that hard to uncover the rules if you are really so disgusted with the alleged ethical transgressions of Judge Jones.
If it turns out that you are right, then I will agree with you that Judge Jones should be ashamed of himself. But if you are wrong, then you owe him a big, fat sincere apology.
Of course, as Boonton points out, none of this has any bearing as to whether or not Judge Jones happened to have decided his case correctly. If it turns out that Judge Jones did in fact violate the letter or the spirit of judicial norms, then your side has some moral claim to a do-over, but it does not have a moral (or intellectual) claim to a decision in its favor.
Thanks again, Joe, for noticing that I stand up for integrity. Every time you make complimentary comments about me, I know my appraisal of you as being a excellent writer has been confirmed yet again ;)
Kyle,
Joe, it's amazing that so many of your commenters are the people who start out predisposed to disagree vehemently with you.
I am just as likely to leave a comment when Joe writes something I agree with as when he writes something I disagree with.
Nonetheless, it is not as amazing as you seem to think that so many of Joe's commenters disagree with him. I think most people don't normally feel very motivated to leave a comment unless they have strong feelings. I think such feelings are more likely to be provoked in a comment thread by disagreement rather than agreement.
But it is already clear that this particular judge in this particular case twisted facts and accepted blatantly fallacious arguments simply to get the result he wanted. He confuses and conflates several distinctions relevant to the issue at hand. I'll give one crucial example. He confuses religious motivations for wanting something taught in a school from religious content taught in a school. The former is not constitutionally prohibited, since we don't have any problem teaching kids that it's wrong to steal or that it's wrong to be intolerant. Many people believe such things on religious grounds. Some object that you could also believe those on non-religious grounds, but the same is true of the classic philosophical teleological argument that ID really is. It simply is not religion, and anyone who thinks it is is just philosophically ignorant or intellectually dishonest.
It's also true that it's not, strictly speaking, science. Depending on the particular argument in question, one of its premises is usually something that is a conclusion of scientific work, e.g. the narrow range of constants required for life or the complexity of various living cells or organs. But the fact that the argument is philosophical in nature (as many arguments in science are (e.g. the preference for simpler explanations) simply does not make it religion. This judge showed his inability or unwillingness to pay attention to such important issues in his blanket description of all ID as flat-out being religion.
ucfengr,
Lighten up man! What about our Christmas truce?
I seriously hate the direction Bush is taking the country and I'm very passionate about it. You are right though, that was kind of a smart ass comment, but you've made some too, right?
Over on the other topic, I've asked Cheesehead, if I should continue commenting on this blog, and if so, any advice on communicating better. What do you think? Any advice? I'm serious-I think I've got a communication problem.
JohnW
The "offended party" got the ruling it wanted, so the legal point is moot. The ethical one isn't.
A far more interesting question is, why are judges deciding what's taught in schools in the first place? Isn't that something school boards, which have at least some degree of accountability, should do?
Why are some people (a tiny minority, since most Americans rightfully are skeptical of Darwin) so upset by the notion that ID also be presented to kids? Don't they think Darwin can withstand the scrutiny of a bunch of 16 year olds? Is the theory that weak? Well, yes it is, but that's besides the point.
Let parents decide. This is, at least in some respects, still a representative democracy.
JohnW,
I may be the one person who comments at the E.O. who is a bigger supporter of President Bush than Ucfengr.
However, your comment that,
It all kind of reminds me of when Bush got the Oil Companies to write his Energy Policy...
did not offend me in the least.
There was no reason for me to take offense, since the drafting of energy policy under President Bush is a perfectly valid analogy to judicial reliance on briefs submitted by plaintiffs and defendants.
The fact that Ucfengr did take offense is not a bad thing either. Your casual jab could not have annoyed him if it didn't make some kind of an interesting point, valid or not.
You were asking for some advice, though, on what you should avoid doing. Here's my advice: For the purposes of your own thought processes, don't assume that people like John Dean and Bob Woodward know and speak the truth about President Bush and others in his administration.
Why not? Because while they do know and speak the truth up to a point, they are only looking at one version of the reality that they are investigating, their own personal version of reality.
There are other points of view about President Bush that are just as valid. If you learned more about those other points of view, you would come away with a more balanced and thorough understanding of the president and the issues he grapples with.
Sometimes it is hard to appreciate, or even understand a point of view that you disagree strongly with. But if you make the effort to appreciate those points of view, you will find it was worth it.
John Salmon,
You raise a very good question: why should a court be ruling on a school curriculum? School curricula are in the province of school boards.
You give a partial answer to your own question: the courts give rulings when parents raise certain kinds of complaints. So the underlying question becomes, are complaints about Intelligent Design valid?
I would say, not only are they valid, they are entirely justified.
If some school board wanted to teach that one race is inferior to another race, few people would have a problem with a court putting a stop to that. In the instance of I.D. theory, the basis of the complaint is not that the content of I.D. theory is immoral, but that I.D. is not science and to present it as science is inappropriate and perhaps even fraudulent.
There are lots of things that parents will object to in any school district's curriculum. You can't please (or not offend) everyone. But pseudo-science in the science classroom shouldn't be something parents should have to tolerate. In the school district wants pseudo-science so badly, have them create a special assembly or put on a street fair -- anything would be better than sneaking it into a science class.
JohnW--I don't recall a truce being declared and I'm not sure what one would entail.
I seriously hate the direction Bush is taking the country and I'm very passionate about it.
There is nothing wrong with disagreeing with the President, I do it all the time, but your obsession borders on the irrational. It reminds me of the stuff you see about Jews in many Arab countries. You know, Jews use the blood of Muslim children in their Passover matzohs, etc. Lot's of folks have this obsession, but I find it troubling in a Christian. Anyway, we've probably followed this rabbit trail far enough.
Good question:
"So the real question is, what are the rules governing verbatim usage of findings of fact in a judicial opinion?"
The Discovery Institute is not the first loser to complain about the judge accepting the winning side's proposed findings.
Here are some typical earlier appeals and their results:
Technique to be utilized by trial judge in complex cases--which accommodates requirement of specialized assistance in preparation of findings of fact to rule that such findings are to be his and his alone--is for counsel for party who is due to prevail in tentative opinion of trial court to submit proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law to court with copy to adverse counsel, and thereafter at hearing attended by counsel for all interested parties, court will enter findings and conclusions as proposed or as appropriately modified.
Keystone Plastics, Inc. v C & P Plastics, Inc. (1975, CA5 Fla) 506 F2d 960
As matter of general practice, prior to reaching and announcing any decision, District Court should request proposed findings from both parties as to all disputed factual and legal issues, preferably with references to record supporting fact requested to be found, then prepare its decision based upon its analysis of these proposed findings and evidence of record; however, District Court did not fail to meet its obligation under Rule 52(a) to find facts specially and state separately its conclusions of law thereon when it adopted essentially verbatim proposed opinion prepared by plaintiffs' counsel..." Lilly v Harris-Teeter Supermarket (1983, CA4 NC) 720 F2d 326
By having prevailing party submit proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law, trial judge followed practical and wise custom in which prevailing party has obligation to busy court to assist it in performance of its duty under Rule 52(a). In re Woodmar Realty Co. (1962, CA7 Ind) 307 F2d 591
That's the law. And that's pretty much how this cae was handled. All the courts and all the lawyers realize that the proposed findings are subject to being lifted verbatim into the court's opinion. It doens't happen every case, but it's not uncommon or unexpected at all. Since the propsoed findigns from both sideds are matters fo publci record and the opinion is,too, anybody who wants to compare how the opinion tracks with a party's prosed findigns can do it.
One final thing. Soemtimes, one party is so wired--the facts ans law are on their side, and the other party is so off base, the judge will sign the prevailignparty;s propsoed findings without change as an implicit rebuke to the losers.
I have at least 5 federal bench trials and a couple of federal appeals. The attribution that Joe Carter is so concerneed about isn't anissue at all because all concerned have access to the only docuemtns the court can draw from.
Furthermore, the judge routinely acknwoledges that he relied in the Propsed findings, as Judge Jones did so in this case. That's not plagiarism at all. Joe Carter's complaint is based on raw ignorance about the law. What are his thought on attribution of medical diagnoses in surgical post-op reports prepared by brain surgeons? Not enough? Too much?
John Salmon,
One more thing, sir.
Why are some people (a tiny minority, since most Americans rightfully are skeptical of Darwin) so upset by the notion that ID also be presented to kids?
Science is often taught as a vast and comprehensive compendium of facts and results. That is a shame, though, because the business of science is skepticism.
Science is a very particular and rigorous and systematic application of skepticism to the world around us. So you are right, that any scientific theory that is afraid of skepticism is scientific in name only.
However, the champions of I.D. are most decidedly not the champions of skepticism. They are the champions of faith masquerading as skepticism (although they may or may not be aware that that is what they are championing).
Why is that? Because I.D. is not experimental, it is philosophical or theological. It has never proposed any testable or experimentally verifiable hypotheses. If it were experimental, then I.D. would deserve its skeptical seat in the science classroom.
If we present the non-scientific as scientific, we would be committing an offense against learning and truth.
Joe Carter,
Thanks to Joe McFaul for doing the legwork on my question.
So Joe (Carter), are you willing to stipulate that Mr. McFaul is correct? If you are, when can we see that big, fat sincere apology that you owe Judge Jones? ;)
Joe's real problem with Judge Jones is: A) He didn't like the decision. B) The fact that Judge Jones adopted the proposed findings of fact means that the ACLU case was utterly compelling.
He would not be complaining in the slightest if the decision had gone the other way.
As far as Joe's new persona as media whore for the Religious Right, well....
"I think one of the things that Dr. Dobson is realizing is, frankly, when you whore yourself to politics, you shouldn't be surprised if you're treated like a whore."
-David Kuo, former deputy director of the Bush White House Office of Faith -- Faith-Based Initiatives.
"What do you call someone who implies original authorship of material which he has not actually created and incorporates material from someone else's work into his own work without attributing it?"
Gospel writers
Patrick,
Joe would be complaining if the case had gone the other way -- provided he had heard about the verbatim usage of the defendant's briefs, which is not something he would be likely to learn about from the Discovery Institute.
Go easy on Joe, he raised a very interesting point about judicial rulings. He just reacted a little hysterically. If he apologizes to Judge Jones, then he deserves forgiveness.
Ex-preacher,
Excellent point.
I don't go to this site much anymore, because it's mashed up in Firefox, but I had to open ol' IE to respond to this bit of abject nonsense.
Apparently, Ed and Tim missed the AP story where a legal scholar acknowledged that it is “not typical for judges to adopt one side's proposed findings verbatim.”
Not typical, but evidently not unheard of, and nobody's found any specific law or ethical canon that was actually violated here.
The judge adopted the plaintiff's lawyer's proposed ruling's text.
So what?
You guys still lost, and lost on the merits.
They should have condemned Jones breach of ethics and rightly pointed out that science is not decided by judicial decision. Instead, they’ve provided evidence for those who claim that since Darwinists can’t win in the court of public opinion, they are willing to lie, cheat, or steal to defend their beliefs. It’s shameful but, unfortunately, not particularly surprising.
It is your side that is being dishonest: given that all the documents are publicly available, the judge in his ruling is merely putting his authority behind the side that prevailed, and rightly so.
It's been a year, now, and the DI has not been able to gain any traction whatsoever with the stunning loss they incurred in Dover, and this is the best they can do.
You don't want to argue the case on the merrits, because when that happened you lost, and lost big, so you attempt to gin up these teapot tempests that mean nothing whatsoever.
Creationism - er... "intelligent" "design" is as dead as political and religious conservatism. Like Communism, these ideologies have been tried and have been rejected by most people.
Get used to it.
I don't go to this site much anymore, because it's mashed up in Firefox, but I had to open ol' IE to respond to this bit of abject nonsense.
Apparently, Ed and Tim missed the AP story where a legal scholar acknowledged that it is “not typical for judges to adopt one side's proposed findings verbatim.”
Not typical, but evidently not unheard of, and nobody's found any specific law or ethical canon that was actually violated here.
The judge adopted the plaintiff's lawyer's proposed ruling's text.
So what?
You guys still lost, and lost on the merits.
They should have condemned Jones breach of ethics and rightly pointed out that science is not decided by judicial decision. Instead, they’ve provided evidence for those who claim that since Darwinists can’t win in the court of public opinion, they are willing to lie, cheat, or steal to defend their beliefs. It’s shameful but, unfortunately, not particularly surprising.
It is your side that is being dishonest: given that all the documents are publicly available, the judge in his ruling is merely putting his authority behind the side that prevailed, and rightly so.
It's been a year, now, and the DI has not been able to gain any traction whatsoever with the stunning loss they incurred in Dover, and this is the best they can do.
You don't want to argue the case on the merrits, because when that happened you lost, and lost big, so you attempt to gin up these teapot tempests that mean nothing whatsoever.
Creationism - er... "intelligent" "design" is as dead as political and religious conservatism. Like Communism, these ideologies have been tried and have been rejected by most people.
Get used to it.
Joe, I have to agree with some other's here. This really isn't plagiarism as such. In a sense, the lawyers are offering the judge the right to use their words without attribution. I also think it's a really stupid point over which to get upset. It reeks of being a sore loser. I think the judge was wrong in his ruling and the fact that he pretty much used the ACLU findings of fact (errors and all) was intellectually lazy. Beyond pointing out where the judge is wrong and highlighting the fact that he appears to not have really done much judging of the facts, I think it is not justified to claim that he did something ethically wrong in using the ACLU findings of fact.
Joe: "Um, did you read what they have to say at Talk Origins? They are claiming that it is only about 60% to 70% copied rather than the 90% that DI claims."
And how does this support your argument that the Court copied 100%? And yes that is the argument that is made when you attempt to criticize the Court by quoting that it is "not typical for judges to adopt one side's proposed findings verbatim."
So, let me get this straight. This case is a year old. Almost everything you need to know about this case is publicly available. There isn't anything weird, apparently, about judges adopting language in findings of fact, and it isn't unheard of for a judge to simply sign off entirely on one side's findings. So, JUST NOW some DI flack gets around to launching this wild tangent on a non-issue?
You'd think they'd be busy at work with all that ID research. Oh yeah...
"You'd think they'd be busy at work with all that ID research. Oh yeah..."
Maybe they are helping O.J. find the "real killers".
Those who would push the pseudo-science of I.D. on impressionable youths to prop up their faltering worldview are unscrupulous to the point of discrediting that worldview themselves.
I think this post, illuminated by its comments, highlights the sewer of moral depravity and dishonesty we have seen from the religious right; this bit by the "Discovery Institute" is just the latest absurdist nonsense.
But it's the same kind of nonsense we've seen from Dobson's bizarre theories of sexuality.
It's the same nonsense that somehow allows them to overlook a Ted Haggard.
It's the same nonsense that says that "soy makes you gay."
It's the same nonsense that led lots of people on the religious right to claim a brain dead woman's eyes followed a balloon.
It's the same nonsense that overlooks the real murderous actions being committed in Iraq.
Really if anybody at this stage thinks that the religious right, and conservatives have any kind of credibility, they are either insane or deliberately dishonest or willfully ignorant.
And it's time they publicly apologized for their lies and slanders and statements like this post.
Judge Jones' Commencement Address at Dickinson College (2006):
Compare that to Frank Lambert's, The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America (Princeton University Press, 2003):
(Frank Lambert, The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in
America, pg. 3 (2003). You can also find this material online at http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i7500.html)
(HT: Discovery Institute)
Joe, this is so beneath you.
QUOTE THE WHOLE DAMN sentence!
Here's the judge's sentence:
As has been often written, our Founding Fathers were children of The Enlightenment.
He attributed it and did not claim it as his own thought.
You are so wretched.
Have you no shame, sir?
I'm a lawyer. I clerked for a federal judge. It is not considered unethical for a judge to adopt one party's recitation of facts as his own. It's in fact considered an honor, a triumph, for a litigator's recitation to be adopted in whole or in large part. It is highly unusual for such a long recitation of facts to be adopted verbatim, however. In this case, the worst I'd say is that he was kind of lazy.
I would like to know what Discovery Institute's methodology was.
The sad thing here is that Judge Jones ranted a bit, and I thought it was just him carrying things too far, but I am dismayed that it was plaintiff that did that. I'd rather attribute poor reasoning to one judge than a whole movement.
I also don't think it's better to stick to the substantive argument. The decision was poor enough to attack on the merits, forget whether or not he drafted it.
Oops, I mean I think it is better to stick to the merits.
Also Joe is free to call it plagiarism. It doesn't mean he's right. The legal profession has its own accepted standards. Everybody involved in litigation knows that judges do sometimes adopt entire sections of litigants' proposed findings of facts as their own. I don't see why, if a judge adopts one side's factual recitations instead of another's it would be bad, considering that he is after all choosing sides. Particularly where the public will be able to judge the merits of his judgment no matter what the writing (which is what I suggest we do here).
Judges do not claim to be original. In fact, in some cases, they are not permitted to be original.
Joe, this is really beneath your usual standards (and I mean that sincerely). You have swallowed whole a bunch of nonsense from Casey Luskin and his pals at the DI. We aren't "falling all over ourselves" to debunk this, we have made numerous substantive arguments, not a single one of which you actually reply to (nor have they, I might add), as to why their accusations are false.
The quote you took from the Bright is completely out of context. One paragraph before the section you quote (which I suspect you just cribbed from Luskin, and this should tell you something important about trusting his honesty in situations like this), the court clearly distinguished the facts of that case from the facts of this one. Yes, the court said they could not condone what the judge did in that case. And if what the judge did in that case was what the judge did in this case, you would have a point. But one paragraph before the quote you use, the ruling says this:
In Bright, the judge copied the entire opinion from the proposed opinion filed by one side in the case (not just the findings of fact, which the ruling makes clear is okay, but the conclusions of law and everything else as well) before receiving any response briefs from the other side. It is immensely different than what Judge Jones did here. Luskin is being highly dishonest about the nature of that ruling, dishonest enough that if he tried that in a law school paper he might well find himself in serious hot water for it. And you should know better than to credulously accept his cites.
As for the rest of it, all you're really saying is that you don't think it should be normal and routine for judges to use proposed findings of fact without rewording them. But it is normal and routine. The reason why no one has raised this issue before now is because no one with any experience in reading briefs and court rulings is the least bit surprised by it. This is absolutely what one would expect.
Mathew Goggins-
"You raise a very good question: why should a court be ruling on a school curriculum? School curricula are in the province of school boards.
"You give a partial answer to your own question: the courts give rulings when parents raise certain kinds of complaints. So the underlying question becomes, are complaints about Intelligent Design valid?"
No. First of all, the courts are hardly competent to determine what is or isn't good science.
The important question is whether the small group of public school parents who object to ID being taught can use the courts to prevent the rest from having their kids educated the way they prefer.
The minority always has rights, but certainly not GREATER rights than the majority. Of course that's why the Left wants these questions settled in the courts in the first place, since the public so rarely agrees with their views.
Joe McFaul:
"That's the law. And that's pretty much how this cae was handled. All the courts and all the lawyers realize that the proposed findings are subject to being lifted verbatim into the court's opinion. It doens't happen every case, but it's not uncommon or unexpected at all. Since the propsoed findigns from both sideds are matters fo publci record and the opinion is,too, anybody who wants to compare how the opinion tracks with a party's prosed findigns can do it."
Uh. First of all, no one's saying that plagiarism occurs when person A uses person B's materials verbatim. Let's get that clear...
The question is whether it's plagiarism if A uses B's material verbatim AND doesn't cite it specifically.
In normal academia, it does no use to simply preface at the beginning of a paper: "I relied on William Shakespeare" or "I relied on the writings of Robert Nozick" and then not cite the specific elements of writing when they are used, even if they are public record (like Shakespeare)...
So it seems Jones' use of the ACLU findings of fact would quality under an academic's definition of plagiarism.
I take it you are saying that not citing verbatim is legitimate in the legal field with respect to (at least) complex findings of fact (and I believe you).
To which Joe Carter would say he thinks it's still plagiarism, even if the legal field doesn't think so, which is a completely reasonable opinion to have.
Stop cutting each other down and maybe you'll actually understand what people mean.
Whoops: I forgot to write [sic] after Joe McFaul's quote, and the 4th line from the bottom should read:
"So it seems Jones' use of the ACLU findings of fact would qualify under an academic's definition of plagiarism."
"The important question is whether the small group of public school parents who object to ID being taught can use the courts to prevent the rest from having their kids educated the way they prefer. "
I m personally all for setting up a class to "teach" (a very generous term but i ll let you have it for now) ID but ID is 100% philosophical and relies on no facts whatsoever and as such,does not belong in a biology class and thats the reason why it was challenged in courts. There is no biological groundwork for ID because IDist are incapable of answering a simple question such as "What differenciate an intelligently designed lifeform from a non Intelligently designed one" other then to take the faith based position that non-intelligently designed lifeforms dont exist. I am also curious about one thing...you IDist type are always harping on the demand that the arguments against evolutions be also taught in evolution courses. But are you also prepared to sipulate that classes teaching ID would also be required to review the arguments against ID? because i ve not seen that so far...
giggling wrote:
What you're missing is context. Would this be considered plagiarism in literature? Yes. The difference is that in a court case, both sides are asked to provide proposed findings of facts for the specific purpose of having them taken, either verbatim or slightly rephrased, and used in the ruling. They are written expressly for that purpose, and they're even worded in the voice of the judge. That's why the ID side's proposed findings included phrases like "This Court finds...", because that's exactly why they're writing them, so that if the court agrees with a particular statement of fact, it will then get transferred into the ruling. Yes, the context actually does matter here. What is plagiarism in literature is not plagiarism in the law because such briefs are written precisely to BE plagiarized.
You're looking to a commencement address for originality, Joe? Probably the only place you could find a higher level of unattributed "borrowing" is in the pulpit. In fact, I was taught in my homiletics classes in seminary not to give attributions as it seriously interrupts the flow of the sermon. We weren't to copy entire sermons but were encouraged to use quotes from others without stopping to give a verbal footnote. We were taught that we could always give the original sources to anyone who asked.
Today, however, it is fairly common practice for preachers to use entire sermons of others without attribution. Indeed, Rick Warren and others sell and send their sermons on tape, CD, or podcast (complete with fill-in-the-blank outlines) across the globe for preachers to use verbatim. Warren even tells them not to give him any credit.
My dad, also a preacher, tells a story of a church that decided to honor their beloved preacher by having a series of his sermons printed in book form. They surprised him at a service by announcing that they had printed 10,000 copies. The preacher was momentary speechless as he realized that someone would soon discover that they were actually Charles Swindoll's sermons. He quickly recovered and said, "I am so honored by your generosity. I don't feel it would be right to sell these for a profit, so I propose that they all be bundled up immediately and sent to Africa for use on the mission field." The congregation gave him a standing ovation.
Matthew Goggins,
I appreciate your thought comments at post number 19, especially the last paragraph.
It is not likely that I'll change anyone's deeply held viewpoints. I should learn to communicate better and listen more closely to opposing viewpoints. Myself, up until a few years ago, I always voted republican and supported republican politics. In fact, my best friend always reminds me that I initially supported the Iraq war and told him they were going to find all kinds of WMD's and Bush had to go to Iraq to protect our country. Anyways, my thinking has changed after doing a lot of reading from a variety of sources (including christian authors), and weighing the plausibility of what they said.
Anyhow, your comments gave me an idea I'd like to run past you. Perhaps you could suggest things for me to read that express your viewpoints on politics and faith and I could do the same? I have something in mind that expresses my viewpoints on those issues and it available on the internet.
Try googling: "evangelicals and the political gospel" "richard v. pierard". Pierard is a recently retired professor at Gordon College in Massachusetts. It's a 10 page article.
I would be interested in hearing your opinion on this article and if you suggest something for me to read, I'll be sure to read it and share my thoughts.
I was taught, Mr. Salmon, that the Bill of Rights and the courts exist to protect the rights of the minority (even if that minority is one person) against the will of the majority. The majority control the legislature and executive branches.
In this case, the rights of parents and children to have actual science taught in the science classroom outweighs the will of the majority to have religion taught as science. It is true, as Joe says, that "science is not decided by judicial decision." Thankfully, though, neither is science decided by majority vote.
Joe M QUOTE THE WHOLE DAMN sentence!
Although we strongly disagree on many issues, I think you are a honest and thoughtful guy, Joe. Dead wrong sometimes, but you are principled. So I encourage you to take a deep breath and take another long, careful look at the passages I cited.
Say what you will about the DI, they are savvy PR guys. For the past two days they’ve laid the groundwork, implying that Jones does not think for himself but merely cuts-and-paste from the work of others. Laymen like me get in a tizzy but the lawyers all shrug.
So then they just happen to come across a clear case of plagiarism by the judge? Coincidence? Uh, no. Part of their scheme to trap the people who’ve been defending Judge Jones in a conundrum.
They can admit that, yes, there is evidence that he has plagiarized in the past and then argue that it doesn’t cast doubt on the credibility of his judgment (a losing strategy). Or, since they are already carried along by the momentum, attempt to dismiss or deny this clear cut case of plagiarism (which makes them appear to condone dishonesty).
It’s a rope-a-dope tactic, Joe. Don’t fall for it.
He attributed it and did not claim it as his own thought.
Slow down and let’s take a closer look. The areas that are in bold are the sections where Jones speech matches Frank Lambert’s text verbatim:
As has been often written, our Founding Fathers were children of The Enlightenment. So influenced, they possessed a great confidence in an individual's ability to understand the world and its most fundamental laws through the exercise of his or her reason.
[snip]
The Founders believed that true religion was not something handed down by a church or contained in a Bible, but was to be found through free, rational inquiry. At bottom then, this core set of beliefs led the Founders, who constantly engaged and questioned things, to secure their idea of religious freedom by barring any alliance between church and state.
Let’s begin by noting that when I quote the “whole damn thing” that it just makes Jones look worse. The addition of “As has often been written” refers only to the commonly held belief that the “Founding Fathers were children of The Enlightenment.” It doesn’t refer to any of the other passages. Besides, if you are going to quote extensively from one author you don’t say “As has often been written.” I seriously doubt that those passages by Frank Lambert were “often written” verbatim by others.
Of course there is always the chance that Jones thought Lambert was a lawyer and had free reign to quote from him without giving credit. But I doubt it.
The fact is, Joe, that Jones got caught. Don’t make the mistake of trying to defend his actions.
Angela The legal profession has its own accepted standards. Everybody involved in litigation knows that judges do sometimes adopt entire sections of litigants' proposed findings of facts as their own.
Thanks, Angela. I see now that the legal profession does indeed have their own accepted standards and that Jones has not violated the accepted practice of his colleagues. What is disturbing, though, is that since this is common knowledge among lawyers, why did nobody mention it when Jones’s brilliant understanding of the complex arguments was being hailed? Why didn’t anyone say, “You know that he copied that from the ACLU’s documents, right?”
It’s a bit disconcerting to find out that a widely touted legal opinion is an extensive cut-and-paste job. But it’s downright depressing to hear that this is a standard practice within the legal community.
Ed Joe, this is really beneath your usual standards (and I mean that sincerely). You have swallowed whole a bunch of nonsense from Casey Luskin and his pals at the DI.
When I heard that the courts frowned upon cutting-and-pasting partisan party findings verbatim into a court’s ruling, I naively jumped to the conclusion, “Well, of course.” I admit that I am rather naïve sometimes and this is a prime example. I assumed that anything that would have got me kicked out of school for an ethics violation must surely be discouraged in the legal realm. I will concede that I appear to have been wrong. Mea culpa.
As for the rest of it, all you're really saying is that you don't think it should be normal and routine for judges to use proposed findings of fact without rewording them. But it is normal and routine.
Normal and routine. Okay, I accept that as a fact. It lowers my opinion of the bar, but if that’s the way the game is played then so be it. I still think it is unethical but I will no longer say that it is unusual.
ex-preacher You're looking to a commencement address for originality, Joe?
I have to admit, ex, that my head is about to explode. I just can’t keep track of when and where it’s okay to plagiarize and when it isn’t. For some reason I was under the impression that taking other peoples words and using them verbatim as if they were your original thoughts was dishonest. Who knew there were so many exceptions to ethics? ; )
Warren even tells them not to give him any credit.
Funny you should mention that because I found out about that just yesterday. A buddy at work and I were talking about that and I was (not surprisingly) surprised to find that sort of thing was condoned. (I’m starting to wonder how I made so long while being so naïve.)
Ex-preacher-
"In this case, the rights of parents and children to have actual science taught in the science classroom outweighs the will of the majority to have religion taught as science. It is true, as Joe says, that 'science is not decided by judicial decision.' Thankfully, though, neither is science decided by majority vote."
When you "sciencer taught as religion", I assume you mean ID, though the charge is at least as valid for Darwinism.
But to the point of contention at hand...if parents want to take their kids out of a class because ID is being taught, or compared with Darwinism, that's their right. Or if they don't want their kid to say the Pledge, that's their right.
But to say that the views of the infintesimal percentage of parents who believe as you do should prevent such a comparison from even being made, isn't protecting the rights of the minority, it's tyranny-effected by judicial fiat.
Joe Carter-I know your post was about plagairism, but is this really an important issue? I know this is a tool Dobson et al would like to beat up Jones over, but the question should be, why is Jones the arbiter in the first place? Better to have lined up the facts before having done the post in the first place, also.
This was sloppy work, in all honesty. You're now at the point of doing more harm than good on this issue, sad to say.
John Salmon Joe Carter-I know your post was about plagairism, but is this really an important issue?
Hmm, is honesty an "important issue?" I'd say yes. Do you disagree?
Better to have lined up the facts before having done the post in the first place, also.
The fact are rather clear: Jones copied extensively and verbatim from the ACLU's document. That's not in dispute.
This was sloppy work, in all honesty. You're now at the point of doing more harm than good on this issue, sad to say.
I'm not sure what you are referring to? What was sloppy? The fact that the lawyers don't see a problem with what everyone else in the world would consider plagiarism isn't really relevant to my point. I guess you could say it was "sloppy" of me to think that the judiciary would frown upon such an unethical practice, but I'd just call that naiveté.
After reading through the comments and going to various other sites looking through all the information (And not just what Joe wrote) Ive come to the conclusion that what Judge Jones did (And those who belong to the Darwin movement) was very dishonest and they ought to come clean with an apology.
The Discovery Institute points out that many people referred to Judge Jones after having read his ruling as a, "Clear thinker", that he wrote a "Masterful decision", that he is a, "Top notch thinker", "is deserving of the title great thinker", and on and on and on like this.
This to me is very dishonest and misleading. Let's turn the tables to illustrate my point as best I can.
Let's suppose for a moment that Judge Jones had ruled in favor of the Discovery Institute in a seperate case (The DI offered witnesses but wasn't a defendent in the case). And let's suppose for a moment that out of the 6000 word piece that Judge Jones wrote about ID, 5000 of those words were unattributed by still quoted from the fellows at the Discovery Institute. After Judge Jones wrote the piece, supporters of the Discovery Institute and the fellows that he cribbed from praised him as a great thinker, one of the greatest of our time, a brilliant man, and continued to heap praise on him without acknowledging that he merely stole their words.
Obviously these sorts of argument, by analogy, are the worst sort of arguments. Perhaps you see my point though? There are two opposing movements in this country, one i'll label Darwin and the other ID. Judge Jones ruled in favor of Darwin, using the words of those who belong to the Darwin movement, and then those who belong to the Darwin movement praised him without acknowledging that they are the ones who put the words into his mouth.
Call it whatever you want to call it. It's dishonest and meant to trick the uninformed. Goebbels couldn't have done better.
(Eric of Eric and Lisa)
Hello all,
I don't have time to respond to everyone right now.
But briefly,
JohnW,
Thank you very much for your response. I will get to your article as soon as I can, but probably not before Sunday. I'll post a comment with my reaction.
Joe Carter,
This has been a very interesting comment thread.
Like I said to Patrick, you have raised a very interesting point about judicial opinions. While I still feel you are very wrong to describe Judge Jones' decision as plagiarism, I find your "naive" position to be more appealing in its rigorous stand on honesty than the rather expedient standards of the bench. But it's not fair to judge the judge by your standards when adhering to your standards could very well interfere with a judge's ability to manage his caseload.
This whole accusation that Judge Jones plagiarized his commencement speech is rather unfair. It's like you're throwing mud against the wall and seeing what will stick.
It's true the Discovery folks have caught the judge red-handed, but at worst, this is nothing more than a relatively small misdemeanor. It's not Christian to try to besmirch the judge like this, especially when he's not in a position to defend himself. When push comes to shove, even if the plagiarism in the commencement speech is unjustified, it doesn't actually speak to the appropriateness of the judge's verbatim usage in the court decision.
But in my view, extremism in defense of honesty is probably the best kind of extremism to pick if you feel you have to be an extremist. But it's just very sad, if not unfair, to condemn a man for lifting a brief passage in a commencement speech.
Cheers,
Matthew
Joe Carter-My phrasing above was a little harsh, and for that I apologize. But if this practice, (ethically dubious as it is) is commonplace among judges, I'm not sure what's gained by the whole discussion.
I'm far more concerned, myself, with what, say, John Paul Stevens puts in a published opinion, than whether he wrote it all himself. Now, his clerks might feel otherwise!
I thought I had seen a headline recently about the extent of sermon plagiarizing. I found it. It was originally in the Wall Street Journal.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06319/738514-96.stm
It even includes a quote from Rick Warren where he encourages his subscribers to not give an attribution.
BTW, I'm not at all condoning this. I just find the criticism of Jones' unattributed use of a quote in a single paragraph of a commencement address ironic in view of the vast plagiarism every Sunday (and probably some Wednesdays!) in the evangelical church.
Giggling makes this fair observation:
"So it seems Jones' use of the ACLU findings of fact would quality under an academic's definition of plagiarism.
I take it you are saying that not citing verbatim is legitimate in the legal field with respect to (at least) complex findings of fact (and I believe you).
To which Joe Carter would say he thinks it's still plagiarism, even if the legal field doesn't think so, which is a completely reasonable opinion to have.
Stop cutting each other down and maybe you'll actually understand what people mean."
Here's where Joe C is morally wrong. Let's take it as a given that "Jones' use of the ACLU findings of fact would quality under an academic's definition of plagiarism."
But his opinion wasn't in academia--it was in a differnet circumstnace with differnet rules of conduct. Joe Carter might not have known that there was a different circumstance--where the originator is begging to be borrowed from (vicotry may ride on it)--dramatically unlike academia-where the originator craves attribution (tenure may ride on it). That whole circumstance changes the morality.
For the last three days, there's been a couch in very good condition sitting in our neighbor's side yard. I could take it but that would be stealing. Today, there's a sign on it: "free counch." Now I can take it without stealing it. But Joe C saw me take it and told everybody I stole it. Soembody filled Joe C in and told him there was a "free couch" sign on it. Joe first denied that there was a sign and still called me a thief. Later, faced with a number of people assuring him there was in fact a sign, he still obstinately insists I am still a thief because people just don't give away couches like that where he comes from.
That position is morally wrong. It is OK to say,"hey I don;t comprehend that--it doesn't make sense to me. It is not OK to accuse someone of dishonesty where he clearly wasn't by the applcable standards of that situation.
Joe, did you talk to Hugh Hewitt on this?
If you haven't I change my advice. It's too late. See your pastor. You are bearing false witness.
Oh, should I have attributed the source of that last sentence? Is it standard practice to attribute bibical quotes in sppech among Christians? That's quite a telling exception to your "always attribute" requirement.
John Salmon:
"I'm far more concerned, myself, with what, say, John Paul Stevens puts in a published opinion, than whether he wrote it all himself."
You have your eye on the target--well done.
Eric as ususal is wrong.
he offers this analogy [I shortened it for dramatic effect]:
"Assume Judge Jones rules in favor of ID. His opinion is a verbatim duplicate of the ID proposed findings. After Judge Jones wrote the piece, supporters of the Discovery Institute praised him as a great thinker, one of the greatest of our time, a brilliant man, and continued to heap praise on him." Any objections from evolutionists?"
Nope. The DI won. If I object to the ruling then I can appeal and write artilces criticizing its analysis. I have no gripe that the Judge signed the other guy's order verbatim.
Proof? I've told you I'm a lawyer. This exact situation happened to me in September. I was on the losing side of a case. If you ask, I'll send you the other side's proposed judgment, the judges verbatim opinion, and my objections to the final judgment. I object not that the judge signed the proposed judgment verbatim, but that it was the wrong order to sign. The judge denied my motion, signed the other side's proposed judgment with no changes anyway, and the case is over. I have no grounds to appeal. Certainly, no court would give me the time of day if I appealed becasue the other side's proposed judgment was signed with no changes. I lost. Finito.
There are two sides to most cases. Half of all litigants lose. They get over it. Life goes on.
Intelligent Design lost. The judge did nothing wrong. The Thomas More Law Center (defending ID) has not ever accused the judge of any impropriety in this case, because they know what the judge did was expected. He was very likely to sign one or the other side's proposed judgment. That side would be the winner and would praise the judge's wisdom. There would have been no change if ID had won.
We all know that he sided with Darwin's proponents on this one and there is nothing wrong with that.
Here is the problem, and it is a mighty big problem.
Writing for Real Climate.org, Ray Pierre writes;
Judge Jones (a George W. Bush appointee, by the way)
Notice how he points out that Judge Jones is a George W. Bush appointee? The point of this is to say, "Hey look, Judge Jones is a totally neutral third party in this dispute. Let's see what he has to say". It continues...
His decision that teaching ID in public school science classes would be an unconstitutional establishment of religion, is a masterpiece of wit, scholarship and clear thinking.
He also writes;
These make fascinating reading, and show Judge Jones' wide ranging intellect, but they are not of concern to me here. What's relevant to the point at hand is the rather extensive part of the decision devoted to the question "How do we know whether something is science?" This question wasn't entirely central to the basis of the Judge's decision, but he devoted a lot of attention to it because, in his words,
Anyone reading this is lead to believe that A: Judge Jones is a neutral party here and B: The opinion is in his words and that is why the guy is such a brilliant man!
And yet all of that is misleading at best, a lie at worst.
One of the main witnesses for the defense and probably the loudest critic of Intelligent Design was Barbara Forrest. She writes about Judge Jones;
If they were hoping Judge Jones would see and be influenced by this silliness, it was just another sign of the disrespect for his intelligence and integrity that began before the trial and continues today
and in another part writes
On December 20, 2005, Judge Jones delivered a powerful opinion —a marvel of clarity and forthrightness— giving no quarter to either the school board or ID.
A marvel of clarity and forthrightness! She's basically praising herself here and not even acknowledging it, but instead pretending that a neutral third party, and a brilliant one at that, just so happens to agree with her, instead of playing for her team. So deceptive and disengenious.
This is how Time Magazine covers the story
Judge John Jones must have seemed like the answer to creationists' prayers: a Bush-appointed Republican federal judge, and a Lutheran to boot,
This is the very first sentence. Get it? Here's a guy who will probably side with those creationist. Only overwhelming evidence to the contrary could sway such a man to the other side. And then, the article goes on to imput to Judge Jones, without mentioning that it is the words of the ACLU copied and pasted into an opinion, words like
In a rebuke to the proponents of intelligent design, Jones called the phrase "a mere relabeling of creationism," intended to get around the 1987 judicial ban on teaching creationism as science in public schools, and a "breathtaking inanity" that fails the test as science. He castigated its proponents and said Dover's students, parents and teachers "deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom."
Yes, let's mention that Judge Jones is a Bush appointee, but let's not mention that the words of his opinion were written by Darwinists.
Again, at the very best this is misguided, at the worst it is an out and out attempt at deception.
Finally, this is what Time has to say...
Had Jones been a Democrat or an atheist, his judgment might have had less impact. He displayed not only a quick wit in the courtroom but also an easy grasp of complex arguments about such things as the molecular motor that drives the bacterial flagellum—which the creationists believe has "irreducible complexity" and therefore could not have been designed except by a designer.
How can we know about his grasp of these things if he didn't write the words of his own opinion? We can't, but since we are on his team, let's pretend like he's brilliant.
The Panda's thumb Andrew McClure was the worst of these, writing stuff like
Jones came into the case with (apparently) only superficial knowledge of the issues at hand, and was able to
absorb and assess them all very well. that makes him seem like a top-notch thinker to me.
And
when Judge Jones demonstrated clear thinking in abundance in his writing of a decision that seems to have
put the ID movement on the run, much as Gen. Jackson’s forces did to the British at the Battle of New Orleans, it
qualifies him as an outstanding thinker.
These are meant to leave the reader thinking that Judge Jones wrote his opinion, was the mind behind his opinion, and should be honored for his ability to think clearly on these weighty subjects.
Come to find out, we really don't know at all if Judge Jones is a brilliant thinker or not. Who can say? All he did was copy someone elses words and then those people who wrote those words decided to praise him for the words they wrote, pretending he wrote them.
This really is a scandal and i'm surprised by some of the folks here who don't agree.
My guess is that Judge Jones did not willing participate in this sort of propaganda. If indeed it is normal for Judges to simply copy and paste arguments from one side or the other into their opinion and then to write a few words of their own to top it off. However, all of those after the fact who pretended like Judge Jones Opinion was anything other than a copy/paste job were attempting to deceive.
This goes back to something Joe has said before, I think. Darwinists cannot win on the merits, so they have to resort to these sorts of tactics.
Also, contrary to what Joe M. has written, here is what some other lawyers have had to say,
“Discovery Institute is on solid ground in pointing out Judge Jones’ highly questionable practice in this case," said Bruce Green, an attorney with the Center for Law and Policy. “While having no legal bearing at this stage, it is highly frowned upon by the federal judiciary for a judge to adopt wholesale the findings and conclusions of a party without making a case for independent investigation demonstrated in the record.”
And this is what the third circuit wrote in Bright v Westmoreland
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.
Also
“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'4 and noted the findings of fact had been ‘mechanically adopted’5 by the district court.”
And yet, as shown above, we keep hearing praise for the mind of Judge Jones. Finally...
According to the Associated Press, a legal scholar at the Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics at Fordham Law School acknowledged that it is “not typical for judges to adopt one side's proposed findings verbatim.”
I'm not sure what Judge Jones did here was ethical for a Judge to do. I'd be interested to hear what other judges think about what Judge Jones did. Hopefully the media will pick up on this story and we'll find out.
This thread -- as CH noted -- is ever so predictable.
Baggi has brought attention back to the key point, but did not sufficiently emphasise the key point: Judge Jones did not simply take a solid finding of fact and use it -- he took up essentially verbatim [the DI 34 pp document has devastating parallel columns, folks, this is not a matter of dispute] a set of findings full of misrepresentations, distortions and objectively false claims regarding design theory and the facts in the case. [Cf my discussion here -- and the reactions of Boonton and ilk from a year ago track right on target today.]
For instance the ACLU-supplied "definition" of Design Theory and "evaluation" of its scientific status is plainly wrong. For, we routinely infer to intelligence as a cause in many pure and applied scientific endeavours: communication theory, SETI, pharmacology, archaeology, cryptanalysis etc. We need a field that studies "[empirical] signs of intelligence" and gives us useful statistical/probabilistic constructs for moving beyond intuition in deciding what PLATO trichotomised as nature, art and chance in Book 10 of his The Laws, some 2500 years ago.
Similarly, it is simply blatantly false and misleading to claim that there does not exist a peer-reviewed ID-supportive scientific literature in the relevant fields. To go with the ACLU deception on this one, Judge Jones ignored accurate testimony in open court and submitted lists of actual published peer-reviewed ID-supportive literature in biologically-linked areas. [The ID supportive, peer-reviewed literature in Cosmology is much more established than that, too.]
In short, not only was this a case of copying wholesale, but the copying was of misrepresentations and falsehoods, in the teeth of open testimony and objective evidence submitted that showed otherwise.
Finally, I think that the actual statement struck down is itself highly revealing as to the agenda at work:
_______________
The Pennsylvania Academic Standards require students to learn about Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and eventually to take a standardized test of which evolution is a part.
Because Darwin’s Theory is a theory, it continues to be tested as new evidence is discovered. The Theory is not a fact. Gaps in the Theory exist for which there is no evidence. A theory is defined as a well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations.
Intelligent Design is an explanation of the origin of life that differs from Darwin’s view. The reference book, Of Pandas and People, is available for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what Intelligent Design actually involves.
With respect to any theory, students are encouraged to keep an open mind. The school leaves the discussion of the Origins of Life to individual students and their families. As a Standards-driven district, class instruction focuses upon preparing students to achieve proficiency on Standards-based assessments.
_____________
I think it is objectively obvious that:
a] Darwinism is theory, not fact; that that means that is is an open-ended exercise, and that it seeks to summarise a vast body of empirical data, in which effort there are indeed key, persistent explanatory gaps.
b] Design Theory is an emerging challenger as an explanation -- and BTW, Pandas and People as published [which is what is material to the intent of authors and publishers -- the game of looking at pre-publication drafts and rejected phrases too was plainly an appeal to prejudice] specifically notes that "Today we recognize that appeals to intelligent design may be considered in science, as illustrated by current NASA search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Archaeology has pioneered the development of methods for distinguishing the effects of natural and intelligent causes. We should recognize, however, that if we go further, and conclude that the intelligence responsible for biological origins is outside the universe (supernatural) or within it, we do so without the help of science." (1993, pg. 126-127)
c] The call to an OPEN [but critically aware] mind in light of knowing the dominant theory and its gaps and that alternatives exist [note that ID was not to be expounded int he classroom!] is not a closing off of options but an opening of minds. (Notice how actual censor ship is being praised when it serves the agenda of the secularist elites here.)
d] Given the persistent absence of a credible, robust account of the origin of the functionally specific, complex information [FSCI] and associated tightly integrated information systems at the heart of the molecular technology of life, the origin of life is the first gap in the broader evolutionary materialist account of origins. Further to this, the issue Loennig raises in his peer reviewed article on the challenge of viable macro-level spontaneous ["chance"] changes in DNA that express themselves embryologically early bring this gap issue not only to chemical evolution, but to the macro-evolution that NDT is supposed to explain, but does not -- starting with the Cambrian life explosion as Meyer noted in another peer-reviewed article. [Both of these were of course brought to Judge Jones' attention, and both were obviously ignored. No prizes for guessing why.]
e] So, while as DI argues, ID is too pioneering to be a part of the classroom exposition, the cluster of persistent issues that NDT and wider evolutionary materialism cannot account for, definitely should be. The ongoing censorship of this scientific, philosophical, and cultural controversy is therefore telling.
+++++++
Okay, back to lurking . . .
Grace, open our eyes
Gordon
Regarding widespread plagiarism in the pulpit:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06319/738514-96.stm
The article originally appeared on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
Money quote from Rick Warren: "They are preaching a sermon, not footnoting a term paper."
It's a little ironic that evangelicals criticize Jones for the unattributed use of a quote in a commencement address, while thousands of evangelical preachers plagiarize entire sermons every Sunday. Log, speck, eye.
Gordon wrote:
IOW, he has a subjective view about what is objective.
So what?
What is everyone who happens to have more information, chopped liver?
Hi all and thanks for this interesting discussion. I am not going to have time for more than one post, so here go a few responses:
Response to Ed Brayton:
It’s saddening that Ed Brayton had to descend to so much namecalling against me in his post in order to make his points. I’m not going to respond back to Ed by calling him names, but I think it’s legitimate for me to defend my arguments.
I think Ed has misunderstood our point. We do NOT cite cases like Bright v. Westmoreland or In re: Community Bank of Northern Virginia in order to claim that Judge Jones ruling perfectly and identically fits the facts from those cases identically and should therefore should be overturned. But much dicta from those cases do establish a principle: courts disapprove of copying a party’s brief verbatim. That’s our point: what Judge Jones did is not generally approved of by courts.
Thus, regarding the case Bright v. Westmoreland, Ed is correct that the case dealt with a proposed opinion rather than findings of fact and that the judge in that case made other errors. That does not make it irrelevant to our point. Like I said, we’re not arguing that Kitzmiller should be overruled like the Bright court did to a different judge. We’re simply establishing the principle that courts generally disapprove of judges who copy party's documents in a verbatim or near-verbatim fashion into their rulings. The cases I cited are useful for establishing this point.
Moreover, in In re: Community Bank of Northern Virginia--a case dealing with (among other things) copying of findings of fact--the Third Circuit itself cited Bright v. Westmoreland to bolster their claim that such a practice was inappropriate, even though Bright clearly dealt with a party's proposed opinion. So apparently the difference in the type of document doesn't necessarily distinguish things. Here's what the Third Circuit says in a case where it lamented that it could not overrule a judge simply because he copied the findings of fact:
2 points I make here:
(a) If the Third Circuit Court of Appeals can cite to Bright v. Westmoreland when discussing the inappropriateness of copying a party's "proposed findings" in a verbatim or near verbatim fashion without showing independent judgment, then so can I.
(b) The point of this passage goes much deeper: here the Third Circuit said it is “highly disapproved of” (even according to the Supreme Court) for a party to adopt “a party’s proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law” in a “verbatim” fashion. Given that they cite Bright here on this issue, it’s clear that precise type of brief, motion, proposed opinion, or other party-produced document is immaterial to the clear point from the Third Circuit’s dicta that verbatim or near-verbatim copying is “highly disapproved of.” That’s my point, and it’s legitimate.
Brayton tries to overstate my argument as if I am claiming that the Kitzmiller ruling perfectly fits the facts of Bright such that it should be overturned. That is NOT what I am arguing, but Bright and In re: Community Bank of Northern Virginia both contain relevant dicta which establish the principle that the practice of blanket copying a party’s brief—while not always prohibited—is clearly disapproved of by courts. That’s my point, and I think it’s legitimate.
The passage which Joe Carter cites is entirely relevant--as dicta--to the central point that the practice of verbatim copying briefs is not favored by courts (even if it is sometimes allowed).
Response to Joe McFaul:
Joe notes that in Judge Jones speech, he says, "As has been often written" in connection with the phrase, "our Founding Fathers were children of The Enlightenment." That latter phrase does not appear in the Lambert book (http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i7500.html) so it's not clear that Judge Jones is referring specifically to that book when he's talking about something that has been written elsewhere. Moreover, Judge Jones says it has been “often written” implying he’s talking about more than one author-not citing to one author. What's Judge Jones doing here then? He’s clearly not just talking about one author (i.e. Lambert). Most likely, he's talking about the fact that innumerable scholars have recognized that the founding fathers were highly influenced by enlightenment thought. That's it. Given that other sections of Judge Jones' speech which come later, where there's no reference to Lambert or any other writing, are identical to passages of the Lambert book, I think Joe's explanation of the situation here is weak. There’s a verbatim similarity between many of Judge Jones’s statements and the Lambert book throughout the speech—I think readers should decide for themselves but Joe McFaul’s defense does not adequately explain the data.
Response to Reed Cartwright:
Of course Reed is correct that other portions of the Kitzmiller ruling were not taken essentially entirely from the Plaintiffs Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law. That might make Reed feel better about this, but it doesn't negate the fact that 90.9% of the most celebrated and expansive portion of the ruling on whether ID is science--which Judge Jones hoped would have an impact upon other courts--was taken verbatim or near-verbatim from the ACLU's brief. Our report looks at that section, and it is obvious that the entire section precisely fits the criteria of the "verbatim or near verbatim" criteria which is "highly disapproved of" by the Third Circuit. Perhaps Judge Jones copied to a lesser degree in other portions (I don't actually know, as I haven't done a quantitative analysis on those sections). But when the ‘copying is disapproved of’ principle is applied to the most celebrated portion of the ruling, our argument sticks. Again, keep in mind that we're not arguing that the ruling should be overruled, but making the much more modest and justifiableclaim that that what Judge Jones did is not generally looked upon favorably by courts. I think our argument sticks just fine.
Thanks all for reading and take care.
Sincerely,
Casey Luskin
cluskin@discovery.org
I think a similar situation is to look at business. Let's say my boss tells me to write a memo to him about the reasons to purchase product X. I put five reasons in my memo. My boss takes my memo, uses my five points virtually verbatim with some additional discussion in his memo to his boss. He doesn't provide attribution to my five points and I don't assume that he would. Now, if one of the five points is patently false, then it shows up on my boss as being somewhat incompetent.
Joe wrote: Thanks, Angela. I see now that the legal profession does indeed have their own accepted standards and that Jones has not violated the accepted practice of his colleagues. What is disturbing, though, is that since this is common knowledge among lawyers, why did nobody mention it when Jones’s brillia