Judges seek civility in state, national courtrooms

SALT LAKE CITY — Judges in Utah and across the country are pressing for greater civility in their courtrooms.

From the 40 state courts dotting the Beehive State to the U.S. Supreme Court, civility among lawyers and judges is a hot topic of debate at all levels of litigation.

"In the legal profession, it is naturally a rough-and-tumble business," U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul M. Warner said during a recent interview. "Conflict, confrontation and contention are a natural part of it. You must learn to disagree without being disagreeable, to be professional and civil, because often the litigants aren't.

"If the lawyers and the judges who are central to the process cannot act in a civil manner, then it almost becomes unbearable."

Sometimes, the same court can simultaneously display aspects of civility and its antithesis. Such a diagnosis nicely sums up Justice Clarence Thomas's opinion about the U.S. Supreme Court on which he sits. Although Thomas describes the dynamic between the court's nine justices as "the most civil, the most engaging and warm place to work" where "the court actually is a family," he strongly objects to the court's lack of civility during oral arguments toward the attorneys presenting cases — a condition Thomas has been silently protesting for more than four years running by entirely abstaining from speaking during Supreme Court oral arguments.

"I think the ordeal we put advocates through (during oral arguments) is unnecessary," Thomas said to the Utah State Bar convention July 17. "I'm a Southerner, and I think when somebody's talking you should listen. And if somebody has an argument, somebody should hear the argument.

"We're not there to debate them; we're there to decide their case and perhaps their fate. I think you can be tough without being mean and without being impolite, and I don't think we are necessarily that way at the (Supreme) Court. … I think it's piling on, and again I think it's unnecessary."

Warner, who graduated in the charter class of BYU's J. Reuben Clark Law School and has been practicing law in Utah since 1982, estimates that over the past 28 years the level of civility among the state's attorneys has "deteriorated a little bit. It may be getting a little better now, because so much more emphasis (is being placed) on it."