Transparency Must Never Be Abridged-(A Harsha Sankar Article)

Dear Citizen, June 1998

All events that transpire in a public court of law are public issues. Our First Amendment rights as citizens must not be abridged or discouraged in publicizing the actions of the judiciary. There was an article in the Virginian Review Opinions section which in effect read that Microsoft Corporation should not take its case to the people. (It was sued by the Justice Department for allegedly violating federal anti-trust laws.) I firmly disagree with this statement because no entity should be censored. As long as an entity is truthful in what it is advocating, any attempts for censorship would be extremely harmful to this Constitutional Republic.

Courts, as guardian of the United States Constitution, are supposed to provide rulings for the protection of citizens’ sovereign rights. People’s rights to self government and liberty must not be infringed. The United States was and should be a free and open nation. The cloak of secrecy taking place in this nation’s courts is an abomination and it must be eliminated. Judicial sessions and its transactions must never be closed to the public. All meetings between judges, prosecutors, attorneys and litigants must be made public record (The only exception to this are certain aspects in criminal cases involving a juvenile).

The judiciary is one of the three branches of government. All its actions and any pertinent discussion to any pending or potentially pending cases must be subject to public review.

Please allow me to be more specific. It is widely rumored that many judges engage in the onerous practices of:

1. Discussing cases with attorneys in private and otherwise inappropriate settings.

2. Using citizens’ chambers as a shield to have cases privately litigated and at times even excluding the litigants.

3. Tolerating discussions of facts of criminal cases by prosecutors and defense attorneys to cut deals in times and settings other than the scheduled court sessions.


The Constitutional founders devised the United States to be a democracy with a republican system of government. Checks and balances were to be processed in order for individuals to have a representative voice in government. These practices by judges contradict this and the underlying concept that legitimate government is government by the consent of the governed. These deeds symbolize judicial oligarchy and the police state. The judicial aristocracy are implicated as co-conspirators by converting the people’s court into a private arbitration center.


This represents the huge wave of judicial activism in America in which the number of attorneys has quadrupled since 1970. The more attorneys this nation has, the more the average American will be treated with contempt for his/her lack of “legal” education. Ironically, it will cost the average American more to have his/her basic rights treated with less respect by its judiciary. Lawyer judges have seemed to forgotten in this day that the court have the primary responsibility to provide justice as defined by the strict application of the law. The only responsibility any citizen litigant must possess is simple truthfulness and not education.


In a democratic republic, a person must not be allowed to attain authority over the people by birthright, by non-representative appointment, or by education. Yet we have over a million unelected attorneys and countless regulators implementing laws and regulations governing the people. This destroys self-government. Whether a system is called fascism, communism, clergyism, or lawyerism, anytime the collective will of the people is negated, for whatever reasons, only corruption and graft will result.

Thank you for reading this letter. Please remember Americans owe it to the next generation to keep its government limited, representative and humane.


Very Truly Yours,
Harsha Sankar
908 Valley Ridge Road
Covington,Virginia 24426