Rocky Mountain News - December 4, 2007

CARROLL: Scolding the public
 

By Vincent Carroll

he Colorado Bar Association is not often aroused, but if there's one thing it dislikes, it's the spectacle of ordinary Coloradans taking issue with a judge.

When a court issues a ruling, we are expected to treat it as a set of tablets engraved on high. The bar association has been clear about this civic duty for as long as I can remember, patiently repeating it on occasions when a judge comes under attack.

It was probably inevitable, in other words, that bar association president Wm. David Lytle would weigh in regarding public furor over a recent court ruling in Boulder. In that case, a couple was awarded a third of a neighbor's lot on which they'd trespassed - flagrantly and deliberately - for more than 18 years. The legal doctrine known as "adverse possession" was used, or abused, to allow them to appropriate the land.

In Friday's Denver Post, Lytle dutifully took his paddle to the brazen rabble who declared sympathy for the lawsuit's losers - and who sometimes got carried away, it must be admitted, with a choice word or two for the judge in the case.

"We have a proven process in Colorado and the United States based on the rule of law, not on popular opinion," he solemnly intoned, apparently under the impression that distressed critics might be organizing a coup d'etat. In fact, most were merely voicing their belief that the decision involved a transparent miscarriage of justice, whether it was technically plausible or not.

"The defendants have a right to appeal the decision to the Court of Appeals," Lytle informed us with the patient air of a tutor saddled with decidedly subpar students.

Oh, so that's what people do when they lose a lawsuit, is it? Why, now that critics know, they'll be sure to take the broadsides back.

The family factor

With Denver pushing high-density development on multiple neighborhood fronts, it's well to consider the long-term effects of a policy concentrated so heavily on housing that appeals mostly to singles, the retired and other childless households.

Joel Kotkin, author of The City: A Global Perspective, spelled out those effects the other day in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed. In recent years, he notes, the cities with the strongest economic growth were not those that most catered to the coveted young urban single professional - San Francisco and Chicago, for example, have lost population since 2000 - but those communities "with the largest net in-migration of young, educated families ranging from their mid-20s to mid-40s."

As Kotkin explains, "Married people with children tend to be both successful and motivated, precisely the people who make economies go. They are twice as likely to be in the top 20 percent of income earners, according to the Census, and their incomes have been rising considerably faster than the national average."

Just something to keep in mind as we merrily pursue our slow makeover into San Francisco Lite.

DCTA lapses

In the November issue of its newsletter, The Denver Classroom Teachers Association decries the "negative depictions of our candidates mysteriously making the headlines daily" during the recent election.

If you guessed the union candidates lost, you'd be right. And no wonder: The history of one included a shoplifting conviction, a civil judgment for failing to pay medical bills and an outstanding arrest warrant for failing to appear in court on allegations of running a red light.

Another union candidate was a 22-year-old Safeway checker who dropped out of high school before going on to earn a GED.

What is mysterious is not that such biographical facts were reported, but that union leaders would have vetted their endorsements so casually before showering them with money - or, worse, would have considered such facts of little interest to voters.

Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages.

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