Court Opinion

ID: 9446457
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:54:29.211553+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:39.137821
License: Public Domain

BARNES, Circuit Judge (concurring, in whose concurring opinion Judges HEALY, FEE and CHAMBERS concur).
I agree with Judge CHAMBERS in his holding that the respondent’s conduct was grossly improper.
Unquestionably, this Court has jurisdiction in this cause where constitutional objections are raised as to a disbarment proceeding, because the question of according due process of law to the lawyer is always involved. Therefore, this Court has the authority to examine the proceedings. The panel which first heard the cause and now the whole court, with one dissenting judge, agree to this proposition.
Due process of law, both substantive and procedural, was accorded. As the opinion of Judge CHAMBERS shows, the Hawaii Bar Association filed with the Supreme Court of Hawaii a complaint against Harriet Bouslog Sawyer, which contained two charges of professional misconduct. Since Mrs. Sawyer was duly and regularly admitted by the Supreme Court, she was an officer of that court and responsible to it for alleged professional misconduct. In accordance with its own Rule 19, that tribunal referred the cause to its Committee on Legal Ethics and Unauthorized Practice for investigation, which required the Bar Association to furnish a bill of particulars. The Committee held several sessions of the hearing and filed a report containing findings sustaining the charges. The Supreme Court issued an order to show cause, which was directed to and served upon Mrs. Sawyer, who filed a return thereto. Thereupon, the Supreme Court held a hearing de novo. Mrs. Sawyer was accorded the right to and did appear at that hearing in person. She was given the opportunity to be heard, and took full advantage of the occasion. Mrs. Sawyer was given the right to be represented by counsel. Eminent and able counsel of unblemished reputation did in fact vigorously represent her.
The record as a whole, at a minimum, shows that there was not only adequate but substantial evidence to sustain a judgment cancelling her license. Furthermore, irrespective of the dissents, we believe the evidence clearly convincing and sufficient to sustain the judgment beyond a reasonable doubt.
The Supreme Court then suspended Mrs. Sawyer from the exercise of her office, which it had conferred upon her “during good behavior,” for professional misconduct, ascertained and declared upon adequate and convincing evidence by the judgment of that tribunal after she was afforded opportunity to be heard both personally and by counsel.
*212The Supreme Court of Hawaii is not a court organized under Article III of the Federal Constitution, but rather under Article IV, section 3, clause 2 of that instrument.1 The power of Congress to restrict or abrogate appellate review from such a tribunal is paramount.2 There is doubt whether appellate courts organized under Article III can be constitutionally burdened with review of administrative functions or housekeeping regulations or determination of a legislatively controlled tribunal.3
Even in cases where Congress has permitted review of the territorial Supreme Courts, the appellate courts of the judicial system proceed with extreme caution where local customs, practices or the subtle influences or nuances of customary local law may be present.4 The same caution should be employed in a parallel situation if local custom of a legislative tribunal dictated that its licentiate should not obstruct the course of justice in another court.
I read the original Matsuoka notes (not the newspaper story thereafter written) as a direct attack upon Judge Wiig’s conduct of the trial and his rulings therein; that Mrs. Sawyer charged that “this” was not a fair trial; that Judge Wiig’s rulings on evidentiary matters were unfair; that Judge Wiig, with the government prosecutors, “make up the rules as they go along;” that in this case all rules of evidence were “scrapped;” that the conduct of this Smith Act trial was a crime that had to be stopped. How such charges can be characterized as being “devoid of any attack upon Judge Wiig or his Court,” or to constitute “not even a scintilla of evidence” of an attack upon the integrity of Judge Wiig, as does my brother, Judge POPE, is beyond my powers of comprehension.
Whether such acts charged to Judge Wiig were “shocking and horrible” is beside the point. Mrs. Sawyer chose to characterize them as such.
To conclude that Mrs. Sawyer was referring to Smith Act cases generally, and to “all Smith Act cases,” but was not referring specifically to this one case then on trial, is to my mind nonsense. Her attorney at the trial clearly understood “that this was a talk about what was going on in the Smith Act trial here in Honolulu. Now let’s not fool ourselves about that. We’re lawyers here.” Mrs. *213Sawyer said: “Unless we stop the Smith [Act] trial in its tracks here there will be a new crime.” Mrs. Sawyer was then and there referring to but one Smith Act case; the Smith Act case then before Judge Wiig. Any other interpretation flies in the face of reality and renders the English language not understandable.
The point urged by Judge POPE that “Judge Wiig did not rule upon Crouch’s testimony until long after the speech,” seems to me to compound the offense rather than excuse it. If the court had not yet made its ruling on admissibility, even more reason existed why Mrs. Sawyer should not attempt to influence the court’s subsequent order by inflaming her audience outside the courtroom during the trial’s progress. This was a criminal trial by jury who were not impounded but were permitted to mingle with the community when the court was not in session. Even customary media of communication are restricted to “fair comment” in reporting the proceedings.
To me this case no more involves “freedom of speech” in its constitutional sense than do the rules of court which permit a judge to require an attorney (whether he represents Smith Act defendants or the government or any other litigant) to take his seat in a courtroom, and to refrain from further statement. An attorney, acting as such during the trial of a case, must be subject to certain restrictions upon what he may say or do. To that extent he has lost a certain freedom of speech, and a certain freedom of conduct. To that extent such loss of freedom is a necessary adjunct to the intelligent and orderly enforcement of all litigants’ constitutional rights, including those clients the disciplined attorney represents. The attorney need not give up his complete freedom if he prefers not to act as an officer of the court in the trial of a case. When he purports to so act, whether through preference or in response to duty, unless he is to be bound by the reasonable rules of the court governing all cases tried therein, he advocates that anarchy should rule.
I concur in the affirmance.

. “ * * * the territorial courts are ‘legislative’ courts, created in virtue of the national sovereignty or under article 4, § 3, cl. 2, of the Constitution * * O’Donoghue v. United States, 1933, 289 U.S. 516, 535, 53 S.Ct. 740, 744, 77 L.Ed. 1356; Ex parte Bakelite Corporation, 1929, 279 U.S. 438, 449-450, 49 S.Ct. 411, 73 L.Ed. 789; Mookini v. United States, 1938, 303 U.S. 201, 205, 58 S.Ct. 543, 82 L.Ed. 748.

. Ex parte Wilder’s Steamship Company, 1902, 183 U.S. 545, 22 S.Ct. 225, 46 L.Ed. 321. Jurisdiction of this Court over certain final decisions of the Supreme Court of Hawaii is conferred by 28 U.S.C.A. § 1293.

. “ * * * this ‘Constitutional’ court * * * is empowered to act only in justiciable ‘eases’ or ‘controversies’ within the meaning of Article III of the Constitution, and so has no jurisdiction to review ‘administrative or legislative issues or controversies’.” Boggess v. Berry Corporation, 9 Cir., 1956, 233 F.2d 389, 392. See also Application of L. B. & W. 4217, 9 Cir., 1956, 238 F.2d 163.

. Waialua Agricultural Co. v. Christian, 1938, 305 U.S. 91, 108-109, 59 S.Ct. 21, 83 L.Ed. 60; De Castro v. Board of Commissioners, 1944, 322 U.S. 451, 456, 64 S.Ct. 1121, 88 L.Ed. 1384.
“Our power to reverse rulings of the territorial court on law or fact is limited to cases of manifest error.” Pioneer Mill Co. v. Victoria Ward, Limited, 9 Cir., 1946, 158 F.2d 122, 125, certiorari denied 330 U.S. 838, 67 S.Ct. 979, 91 L.Ed. 1285.
“We must note that our jurisdiction to review the action of the Hawaiian courts * * * is a narrow one. * * * the question is what standards of fundamental fairness * * * are required by the Fifth Amendment, and whether those standards were here complied with.” Palakiko v. Territory of Hawaii, 9 Cir., 1951, 188 F.2d 54, 60, certiorari denied sub nom. Palakiko v. Harper, 347 U.S. 956, 74 S.Ct. 683, 98 L.Ed. 1101; Alford v. Territory of Hawaii, 9 Cir., 1953, 205 F.2d 616, 617-618.