Visiting judge

In the United States of America, the term, "Visiting Judge" is also used for Judges in the lower courts such as Juvenile Court and Domestic Relations Courts [1] aka; 'family courts'. A "Visiting Judge" is a Judge who has retired from their position as a Judge and at the time of the judges retirement, had a record that was in good standing. Visiting Judges are appointed by the various State Supreme Courts .[2] and never again have to face the election process, stripping the ability away from the individual citizen to their right to vote for or against a particular jurist. "Visiting Judges" in the lower court schedules are on a limited time frame of days per month which often causes the citizens from their legal right to due process [3] for numerous reason's. Example; When emergency motions in custody cases are filed and abuse is alleged, due process rights [4] are often violated as a direct result of the minimal scheduling. By the time the opposing parent / guardian is served notice that a motion has been filed, the visiting judges 'days' in that particular county have passed and do not return to that court for at least a month. To air on the side of caution ex-parte court orders are signed granting the emergency motion's for temporary custody and or restraining orders. One example in Cuyahoga County, Ohio "visiting judge" was prevented from any additional cases after the denial of due process to many litigant's had been exposed, [5]. Prior to this position in the Domestic Relations Court [6] , was appointed as a "visiting judge" in the Juvenile Court of Cuyahoga County [7] and never set a trial date to litigant's for their case that began in 2000 and was never scheduled for trial until after the "visiting judge" was removed from their case in 2006 when she was promoted to the aforementioned, Domestic Relations [8] Due to the light schedules of "visiting judges" they rely on their court appointed guardian-ad-litem who have absolute access to police investigations, Children's and Family Services investigations, psychologist's, doctor's, school and all records of the child(ren) and even regularly have ex-parte communication with the judge(s) (aka; direct communication with the judges) without the attorney's or litigant's in attendance. Appointed guardian fee's are alleged to be about five hundred dollars per case but have recently been as high as "One Hundred and Twenty Nine Thousand Dollars" for one child in one case, to be paid by the parents. Guardian fees cannot claim bankruptcy against these fee's. There is no incentive to end a case for attorney or a guardian and the "visiting judges" lack of attendance to learn facts of cases by hearings and trials that would afford litigants to place evidence in the court record allows their cases to be adjudicated by recommendation of guardian to the "visiting judges". Both "visiting judges" and guardian-ad-litem's are nearly impossible to have removed from cases and can not be voted out of their positions. [[9]]

A visiting judge is a judge appointed to hear a case as a member of a court to which he or she does not ordinarily belong (cf. pro hac vice for attorneys). In many United States Courts of Appeals it is not uncommon for a district judge to sit on a panel as a visiting judge; less frequently a judge from another circuit (in active service or, more commonly, in senior status). Retired Supreme Court justices have done the same (most recently Justice O'Connor), and very unusually, sitting Justices (in 1984, for example, then-Justice William Rehnquist served as a visiting judge for a jury trial in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.[http://www.time.com/tim[ http://juvenile.cuyahogacounty.us/e/printout/0,8816,961645,00.html]). This is sometimes done to ease caseload pressures, and sometimes (as in Rehnquist's case) for experience.[10]