Este Kozinski

Jewish-American One:

Vi "The Social Network" anoche.

La historia de un tipito que fue a Harvard y tenía un sueño: inventó un website que dicen es bastante famoso. Se hizo billonario.

6 puntos. (Ando generoso)

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Jewish-American Two:

Les cuento de Alex Kozinski, uno de mis juristas favoritos de todos los tiempos y todos los lugares.

Nació en Rumania, de padre y madre sobrevivientes del holocausto. A los 12 llegó a Los Angeles, donde su padre abrió un almacén. El no quería ser Manolito. Fue entonces un alumno brillante. A los 32 años fue nombrado juez. A los 35, Ronald Reagan lo nominó para la Corte de Apelaciones más Líberal del país: "The [Ill-famed] Ninth Circuit".

Leer un fallo de Kozinski es un deleite como pocos he encontrado en esta vida. Su estilo es tan simple –simple como en "no floreado", no como en "no sofisticado"... sofisticación debería ser su segundo nombre– como genial. Su sentido del humor es único.

Su carrera judicial está plagada de coloridas anécdotas. Acá dos para la tribuna:

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I) El día que el disenso le ganó a la mayoría

(United States v. Ramirez-Lopez, 315 F. 3d 1143 - Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit 2003)

Juan Ramirez-Lopez cruzó la frontera que separa California de Mexico ilegalmente el 6 de marzo del 2000 junto a otros 16 inmigrantes ilegales. Uno de los aventureros murió de frío en la montaña. Los otros 15 fueron descubiertos y arrestados inmediatamente. Dos miembros del grupo acusaron al buen Juan de ser el "coyote". Otros 12 dijeron que no, que Juan no era el líder del grupo. Lopez fue detenido para ser investigado por el delito de contrabando de personas. Estuvo detenido dos días mientras la policía lo interrogaba junto a los otros miembros del grupo. Luego, 9 de los testigos fueron deportados. Al buen Juan el estado le nombró su abogado cuando los 9 aventureros estaban ya comiendo tacos en México.

Juan fue declarado culpable.

Juan apeló, atacando la sentencia en varios frentes, pero fundamentalmente por: 1) detención ilegal, 2) exclusión de testigos claves. El caso llegó al Ninth Circuit. La corte de apelaciones afirmó la sentencia de primera instancia.

Básicamente, la mayoría estableció que el tiempo de detención fue razonable en luz de la cantidad de detenidos ese día, y que efectivamente negarle a Juan la posibilidad de interrogar a los otros testigos ese día en razón de una sumaria deportación tampoco fue irrazonable. Respecto de la negativa de la corte a usar los testimonios a traves de las notas que tomaron los oficiales de inmigración, a pesar que Juan presentó “argumentos muy convincentes” para probar la autenticidad del testimonio, no es ello suficiente para echar por tierra la regla general sobre "hearsay".

Kozinski no estuvo de acuerdo. Y escribió su disenso. Así empieza:

"One can only imagine the conversation between Ramirez-Lopez and his lawyer after this opinion is filed:

Lawyer: Juan, I have good news and bad
news.

Ramirez-Lopez: OK, I’m ready. Give me the bad
news first.

Lawyer: The bad news is that the Ninth
Circuit affirmed your conviction
and you’re going to spend many
years in federal prison.

Ramirez-Lopez: Oh, man, that’s terrible. I’m so
disappointed. But you said there’s
good news too, right?

Lawyer: Yes, excellent news! I’m very
excited.

Ramirez-Lopez: OK, I’m ready for some good
news, let me have it.

Lawyer: Well, here it goes: You’ll be
happy to know that you had a
perfect trial. They got you fair
and square!

Ramirez-Lopez: How can that be? Didn’t they
keep me in jail for two days without letting me see a judge or a
lawyer? Weren’t they supposed to
take me before a judge right
away?

Lawyer: Yes, they sure were. But it’s OK
because you didn’t show that it
harmed you. We have a saying
here in America: No harm, no
foul.

Ramirez-Lopez: What do you mean no harm?
There were twelve guys in my
party who said I wasn’t the guide,
and they sent nine of them back
to Mexico.

Lawyer: Yeah, but so what? Seeing the
judge sooner wouldn’t have
helped you.

Ramirez-Lopez: The judge could have given me a
lawyer and my lawyer could have
talked to those guys before the
Migra sent them back.

Lawyer: What difference would that have
made?

Ramirez-Lopez: My lawyer could have taken
notes, figured out which guys to
keep here and which ones to send
back.

Lawyer: Hey, not to worry, dude. The
government did it all for you.
They talked to everyone, they
took notes and they kept the witnesses that would best help your
case. Making sure you had a fair
trial was their number one priority.

Ramirez-Lopez: No kidding, man. They did all
that for me?

Lawyer: They sure did. Is this a great
country or what?

Ramirez-Lopez: OK, I see it now, but there’s one
thing that still confuses me.

Lawyer: What’s that, Juan?

Ramirez-Lopez: You see, the government took all
those great notes to help me, just
so we’d know what all those guys
said.

Lawyer: Right, I saw them, and they were
very good notes. Clear, specific,
detailed. Good grammar and syntax. All told, I’d say those were
some great notes.

Ramirez-Lopez: And twelve of those guys all said
I wasn’t the guide.

Lawyer: Absolutely! Our government
never hides the ball. The government of Iraq or Afghanistan or
one of those places might do this,
but not ours. If twelve guys said
you weren’t the guide, everybody
knows about it.

Ramirez-Lopez: Except the jury. I was there at the
trial, and I remember the jury
never saw the notes. And the officers who testified never told the
jury that twelve of the fourteen
guys that were with me said I
wasn’t the guide.

Lawyer: Right.

Ramirez-Lopez: Isn’t the jury supposed to have all
the facts?

Lawyer: Not all the facts. Some facts are
cumulative, others are hearsay.
Some facts are both cumulative
and hearsay.

Ramirez-Lopez: Can you say that in plain
English?

Lawyer: No.

Ramirez-Lopez: The jury was supposed to decide
whether I was the guide or not,
right? Don’t you think they might
have had a reasonable doubt if
they’d heard that twelve of the
fourteen guys in my party said it
wasn’t me?

Lawyer: He-he-he! You’d think that only
if you didn’t go to law school.
Lawyers and judges know better.
It makes no difference at all to
the jury whether one witness says
it or a dozen witnesses say it. In
fact, if you put on too many witnesses, they might get mad at you
and send you to prison just for
wasting their time. So the government did you a big favor by
removing those nine witnesses
before they could screw up your
case.

Ramirez-Lopez: I see what you mean. But how
about the notes? Surely the jury
would have gotten a different picture if they had just seen the notes
of nine guys saying I wasn’t the
guide. That wouldn’t have taken
too long.

Lawyer: Wrong again, Juan! Those notes
were hearsay and in this country
we don’t admit hearsay.

Ramirez-Lopez: How come?

Lawyer: The guys writing down what the
witnesses said could have made a
mistake.

Ramirez-Lopez: You mean, like maybe one of
those twelve guys said, “Juan was
the guide,” and the guy from
Immigration made a mistake and
wrote down, “Juan was not the
guide”?

Lawyer: Exactly.

Ramirez-Lopez: You’re right again, it probably
happened just that way. I bet
those guys from Immigration
wrote down, “Juan wasn’t the
guide,” even when the witnesses
said loud and clear I was the
guide—just to be extra fair to me.

Lawyer: Absolutely, that’s the kind of
guys they are.

Ramirez-Lopez: You’re very lucky to be working
with guys like that.

Lawyer: Amen to that. I thank my lucky
stars every Sunday in church.

Ramirez-Lopez: I feel a lot better now that you’ve
explained it to me. This is really
a pretty good system you have
here. What do you call it?

Lawyer: Due process. We’re very proud of
it.

Un disenso es normalmente escrito por un juez que tiene serias convicciones. Sabe que es una pérdida de tiempo, ya que no tiene efecto en la sentencia, pero quiere dejar sentado bien claro para la posteridad el "yo no fui, and here's why".

Salvo que uno sea Kozinski. Luego de leer el disenso, el gobierno, con sentencia firme a su favor, retiró los cargos y lo mandó a Juan a Mexico, quien al momento en que estas líneas son escritas está comiendo tacos junto a sus amigos.

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II) Caso Barbie

(Mattel, Inc. v. MCA Records, Inc., 296 F. 3d 894 - 2002)

Se acuerdan la canción "Barbie Girl" de Aqua? Mattel, la empresa creadora de la Barbie, demandó a MCA Records por violación de trademark. MCA a su vez le hizo juicio a Mattel por difamación. Cientos de miles de páginas en diferentes cortes. Kozinski fue el encargado de escribir la sentencia, cuya lectura completa es recomendada. Acá los dos párrafos finales:

After Mattel filed suit, Mattel and MCA employees traded barbs in the press. When an MCA spokeswoman noted that each album included a disclaimer saying that Barbie Girl was a "social commentary [that was] not created or approved by the makers of the doll," a Mattel representative responded by saying, "That's unacceptable.... It's akin to a bank robber handing a note of apology to a teller during a heist. [It n]either diminishes the severity of the crime, nor does it make it legal." He later characterized the song as a "theft" of "another company's property."

MCA filed a counterclaim for defamation based on the Mattel representative's use of the words "bank robber," "heist," "crime" and "theft." But all of these are variants of the invective most often hurled at accused infringers, namely "piracy." No one hearing this accusation understands intellectual property owners to be saying that infringers are nautical cutthroats with eyepatches and peg legs who board galleons to plunder cargo. In context, all these terms are nonactionable "rhetorical hyperbole," Gilbrook v. City of Westminster, 177 F.3d 839, 863 (9th Cir.1999). The parties are advised to chill.

Ahora les cuento el sueño de un no-judío-tucumano: alguna vez argumentar frente a Kozinski.