I have talked about the CT Practice Book before, but you may not entirely understand the concept. It takes a while to understand the significance of the CT Practice Book.
What the CT Practice Book does is translate Connecticut Statutes passed by the State Legislature into rules and procedures that appear in the CT Practice Book and are used to direct the actions of judges, attorneys, and litigants when they go to court.
As you can understand, how the judicial system chooses to implement a CT statute, i.e. through the rules and procedures promulgated in the CT Practice Book, plays a crucial role in the manner that a CT statute is translated into action by the court, the attorneys and the litigants who appear before the court. This is where CGS 51-14 (b) comes into play.
According to a report written in 2009 by Jillian L. Redding. Legislative Fellow, "CGS § 51-14(b) directs that all statutes relating to pleading, practice, and procedure in existence on July 1, 1957 be deemed to be rules of court and remain in effect as rules only until modified, superseded, or suspended by rules adopted and promulgated by the judges of the Supreme Court or the Superior Court. The law requires the chief justice to report any such rules to the General Assembly for study at the beginning of each regular session. It directs that such rules be referred to the Judiciary Committee for its consideration. The law specifies that any rule or any portion of a rule disapproved by the General Assembly by resolution is void. It requires that a copy of such a resolution be published once in the Connecticut Law Journal."
The presumption is that if rule changes are brought before the Judicial Committee for consideration, citizens of the State of Connecticut could provide their feedback regarding these rule changes in public hearings. However, no such public hearings have ever taken place.
Furthermore, since the inception of CGS 51-14 (b) the General Assembly has never disapproved any of the changes in the rules. However, this may not be because the General Assembly approves the rule changes, but simply because the Chief Justice has obstructed the General Assembly's access to information regarding the changes.
Apparently, 103 court rules were in existence in the CT Practice Book of July 1, 1957. 44 of these rules have been amended or repealed since CGS 51-14 (b) was put into place. Many of these rules have been amended more than once. There are 67 instances of these rules being changed or repealed from 1963 up to 2009 when this report was published. This is where the obstruction comes in.
For ten of these years, even though changes were made, the letters the chief justice wrote to the CT State legislature did not specify what these changes were and just said changes were not subject to legislative review under the state constitution.
By doing so, the chief justice was simply flouting the law as dictated by CGS 51-14 (b) because it appears there had been no legal determination of this point in a court of law; the chief justice simply claimed that it was so and acted accordingly and the state legislature failed to challenge him, thus denying citizens of the State of Connecticut their right to full disclosure in regard to the manner in which the law is applied. Imagine, this went on for an entire decade!
For an additional 21 years, 1978 to 1999 the Chief Justice simply sent copies of the rule changes to the Judicial Committee.
Then for the remaining nine years covered by this report, the chief justice stated that none of the rule changes affected the 1957 statutes, even though it appears that they did.
Furthermore, it is troubling that additions to the Practice Book in response to statutes passed subsequent to 1957 were never required to be brought to the judicial committee for review and thereby presented to the public for consideration.
In essence, judges used the process instituted by CGS 51-14(b) which allowed them to modify, expand, or eliminate rules in the practice book as a means to to expand the jurisdiction of the court and deny litigants their constitutional rights. In particular, these actions expanded the areas of the law where judges can claim that they can provide rulings based upon judicial discretion. Such rulings cannot be brought to the appellate court for appeal, further limiting the constitutional rights of litigants.
So why am I bringing this issue up now? Mr. Michael J. Nowacki, a self represented party who has been subjected to judicial abuse is suing, among others, the Governor and several judges in United States District Court for wanton, neglectful, and malicious conduct for their violation of CGS 51-14 (b). Stay tuned for the outcome.
Also check out the new website featuring this issue located at: www.no-wackileaks.com
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