Does this count?
That guy doesn’t sound bad at all. There is one big problem with him though, and any “true American” would see it right away…
He’s dirty no good stinking filthy Democrat 
There are a dozen Oxfords in the US. There was a big vogue for naming university towns after the sites of other great universities back in the 1700s. Hence Cambridge, Massachussetts, where Harvard is, and Oxford, Ohio, where Miami University is, and Oxford, Mississippi, where the University of Mississippi is.
No, although you do need to be a lawful permanent resident or the local bar won’t admit you.
This is the third time a moderator has posted in this thread instructing people to leave this hijack alone. It is, however, the first time that it comes accompanied by an official warning.
Well, there’s a difference between an order which one is not legally empowered to give, and an order to do an illegal act. It’s not like the people who DID recite the Pledge on command can be charged with anything.
Cowardice in the face of crazy? 
I’ve read this entire thread but still may have missed someone saying that Lampley and Littlejohn had a run-in back in June over this same issue, wherein Lampley went ahead and said the pledge.
Perhaps (obviously), he felt it was time to take a stand and good on him for doing so.
Not really. As a practical matter, pissing off a judge–particularly a judge likely to hear a substantial proportion of the cases you handle over the next several years, is something a wise lawyer avoids at all costs. This thing with the pledge is nothing new. This judge…and another judge in the same district, have been starting court with the Pledge for years. Most people don’t really mind it. Some actually like it.
While Lampley is correct that the law does not require him to recite the pledge on command, this is a fight that really didn’t have to happen. Dozens of lawyers have been in front of this judge. They just recite the pledge, perhaps while rolling their eyes discretely, and then get along with the handling the cases on the docket. The downside to taking the kind of stand Lampley did outweighs the benefit from a purely practical point of view.
Hell, the pledge is not even the most outrageous thing I’ve seen judges do. When I first started practicing years ago, I practiced before a judge that would routinely invite a local minister in to lead a prayer on the first day of the term. Did that in every county where he sat–think his district was four counties. I could have raised a fuss, possibly made the national news, and corrected this heinous injustice…or I could have just accepted his quirk, and gone on about my business. I chose the latter course of action, and I don’t regret it. Why risk upsetting a judge over nothing…again, especially when you know the same judge is going to be hearing a lot of your future cases? If you become known as “that lawyer the judge hates”, and you’re in private practice (which thankfully, I’m not), you’ll go broke quickly.
You are much nicer than I am. I hope he does need a lawyer, and the only one available decides to let him rot in jail instead.
Oddly enough, I don’t have a particular problem with the Pledge of Alliegance, so I’d go ahead and say it if I was in a courtroom and the judge said “Time to say the Pledge”. I don’t think that makes me a coward.
Now time to go home and make my daughters say the Pledge, with dessert and TV privileges at stake…
But that begs the very question at the heart of the issue here: whether this judge should, in fact, be hearing any cases at all over the next several years.
It’s pretty sad when someone’s reaction to a case like this is, “You should avoid confronting the judge who is directly violating your constitutional rights because that judge might cause hassle for you down the road.” It seems to me that our emphasis should be on removing from the bench the sort of assholes who make a habit of specifically abrogating their sworn duty for their own personal aggrandizement. And also making clear to the mouthbreathing douchebags who keep electing or appointing (depending on the particular jurisdiction) such assholes that it’s not acceptable to retain judges who can’t even follow the very laws they’re supposed to be upholding.
And then, when you wind up before this judge with a client who is an atheist or other non-Protestant-Christian, and the judge proceeds to do whatever he can to righteously put his thumb on the scales of justice and your client loses and is carted off to prison, loses custody of her kids, or whatever the case may be, you just shrug your shoulders and say “Oh well, can’t win 'em all, right?”
Maybe it’s just me, but I find the whole Pledge culture in the U.S. one of the most offensive things we do. I doubt I’ve said it since about 6th Grade. Take “God” out of it, and I might re-evaluate. Probably not. Patriotism under threat is not patriotism at all.
No, that’s when you file an appeal. Of course, in much of the rural South, finding an admitted atheist is about as likely as finding a unicorn. There just ain’t many. The reality of elected judges is…not always pleasant. Barring blatant misconduct–which this case may qualify as, depending on what the Judicial Performance people do with it–an elected judge is damn near Almighty God Himself in his own courtroom. You have to pick your battles very carefully. This particular battle is one most lawyers in that area would not have chosen, for the reasons I’ve explained.
*To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds. We can have intellectual individualism and the rich cultural diversities that we owe to exceptional minds only at the price of occasional eccentricity and abnormal attitudes. When they are so harmless to others or to the State as those we deal with here, the price is not too great. But freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order. If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.
*
Justice Jackson, writing the majority opinion in West Virginia SBoE v Barnette
Quisling.
I’m waiting for somene to call Jackson a traitor… just waiting.
Easy for you to say. You aren’t a lawyer, and you don’t have to make a living by practicing in front of a judge like this.
Sure. And he has no client, so he doesn’t have to explain to his client’s wife, “OK, good news and bad news. The good news is: I have taken a courageous stand against a truly unconstitutional practice, and I epxect it will really make a change around here; no more forcing anyone to say the Pledge of Allegience. Bad news: instead of getting probation, your husband got six months, 'cause the judge hates me now. With time served, he’ll be out in three. What’s that? No, no, I can’t pay your rent for those three months, or force his employer to give him his job back. But didn’t you hear me about the unconstitutional pledge thing? C’mon, that’s gotta take some of the sting out of it! Eh? Eh?”
I hear what you, Bricker and Oakminster are saying.
So, how do they get rid of the guy? File with the county? File in some federal system?