Democracy and the Rule of Law Part 3: "Two Autocrats Taking Control"

Welcome to our third special replay episode of Higher Callings.  

In our first two episodes in this series on Democracy and the Rule of Law, we heard from Elizabeth Andersen and Karen Green of the World Justice Project about the Rule of Law and its downward trend in a majority of countries, including the United States. 

In this third episode, we’ll hear from Robert Cordy, a former federal prosecutor and civil litigation attorney and a retired Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. In an interview recorded in March 2023, I spoke with Bob about his extraordinary work with judges from Russia, Turkey, and other countries who were eager to learn about the American system of justice and its two key pillars, an independent judiciary and a free press. As Bob learned from these experiences, constitutional democracies are fragile, and efforts to establish and maintain a democracy can be shut down overnight by a ruler who views the courts and the press as threats to his power. It’s a lesson that those of us in the United States might take to heart as we head for the polls to vote in this year’s elections.  

As with the first two episodes of this series, the full episode of my interview with retired Justice Cordy is available wherever you get this podcast.

Transcript

Excerpts from an Interview with Retired Massachusetts Justice Robert Cordy

Recorded March 2023

Don: So I want to move on to something else. And I think it started shortly after you became a judge on the SJC. And that is the work you've been doing overseas involving the rule of law and democracy and the courts, the independence of the judiciary. And you told me this story and I I knew some of it before but not much and I know when we talked before you told me it all started with a phone call you got from a clerk in the court who said there were some Russian judges who wanted to meet a Massachusetts judge. Can you sort of pick it up from there and tell us how you got started in this work that you're still continuing today in maybe a different form or capacity in Ukraine now? But it started out with work you were doing with Russian judges. 

Bob: Yes. The call was from a court officer. I was in the library. I think I was the only judge working that day. And, I met with the Russian judges. We spent all afternoon talking. 

I really was not fully aware of what was going on in Russia. I knew, after the Soviet Union collapsed, there were efforts to create a constitutional democracy, but I hadn't followed that at all. And they were actually on the constitutional court and they were going to, visit the U. S. Supreme Court to ask them how they got states to comply with their decisions.

Obviously, that could be a problem. But we spent all afternoon talking and I really began to ask most of the questions about what was going on in Russia. I was incredibly interested and inspired by it.

Don: And to put, to put it in time context again, I think this was in 2001? So it was during the period when I think Putin was President of Russia, but there was still an attempt for Russia to maintain ties with the West.

Bob: Oh, very much so. They made attempts to grow ties. And in order to do that, they had to establish that they had a judiciary that was independent and reliable and fair. And so this was one of the great challenges of the Russian judiciary, was to sort of recreate itself, move to an adversarial justice system, judicial independence, a whole variety of things.

Several months after my meeting, and this was in the summer of 2001, I helped Massachusetts, the judiciary, become a member of the Russian American Rule of Law Consortium, which was a group of 10 states, founded by a justice on the Supreme Court of Vermont. And we were funded by USAID, the State Department, to partner with different regions of Russia, to work with them on everything from judicial ethics, judicial independence, judicial training, and even jury trials, which is what they were trying to eventually evolve to.

We were partnered with Siberia. So I got my first introduction to Siberia and it was an interesting introduction. We worked very hard with them. I was there many, many times. I also got to Moscow and St. Petersburg and other places because we had national meetings all over the country and we brought many delegations here.

Our aim was to try to get lawyers, prosecutors and judges to realize that they were the three legs to the stool and they had to work together to create a better system. 

Don: They were trying to learn from the U. S. legal system and from the judicial system in particular, and trying to become an independent judiciary, which is not what they had been under communism, I gather.

Bob: Absolutely. 

Don: And I remember, I just have this recollection, and we don't need to spend time on this, but I just remember one day you called me and you decided to bring a group of Russian judges, I think, over to McDermott, and I and I don't know who else met with them and tried to answer some of their questions about our court system.

So that's the only exposure I ever had to it until talking with you now, but it was clear to me that a lot of what they were hearing about our judicial system was new to them. It was strange to them, but they very much wanted to learn about it. 

Bob: They did. And my approach has always been, I'm not there to dictate anything. I'm there to share. It's been our experience. Some of it's worked, some of it hasn't. What are the challenges you face? How can we be helpful? I'm not there to tell them what to do. And that's always been my approach and it's worked very well. 

Don: So now you continued making these trips and working with this group for a number of years, but at some point it came to a halt. Can you talk about that a little bit? 

Bob: Right. I was able to bring lots of judges and lawyers to Siberia and obviously to engage them with the delegations that came to Boston, of which there were many. We always insisted that lawyers, judges and prosecutors come as part of the same group because we kept trying to emphasize that they had to work together, this was all of them.

In any event, after about eight years, things began to surface about corruption in the highest levels of government, and particularly with Mr. Putin, and he literally shut it down. He basically prohibited American judges from going to Russia, prohibited Russian judges from going to America. He really decided that he did not need an independent judiciary, thank you very much. Russia was doing very well. The price of oil was high. They didn't really need Western capital anymore. I believe that's what he thought. And it shut down. And free press. There had been a rising of an independent media. That was all put to bed. And that's where we are. It happened just like that, just in a heartbeat.

Don: What happened to the judges that you had met? 

Bob: I've had virtually no contact with them at all. 

Don: Okay. But then around the same time that that ended, or maybe it was a year later or so? You got another call, this time involving Turkey. 

Bob: Right. Well, in the interim, while I was still working with Russia, I was asked to go to Kosovo to work with the judiciary there. They were about to declare their independence, and they really wanted to make sure they had a judiciary that understood what their function was. And then I was also asked to go to the Gambia, which is in Western Africa, by the embassy there to also work on issues of judicial independence and free press.

So I had these other little experiences along the way. And, in 2010, I get a call, as you suggested, that there were some Turkish judges that were visiting Boston and wanted to speak to an American judge. And I said, of course, that would be great. And I learned that they had been sending, they had just begun to send literally 10 judges and their families to the US for 10 months to learn English and also to sort of learn a little bit more about the American system of justice. But they had not coordinated with anybody. So, they were just leaving but wanted to see if I could help coordinate more interaction with the judiciary for the next group that was coming in. And I said, "absolutely."

And so that began a great relationship. 

Don: And that began another project of yours that went on for a few years, right? 

Bob: Big project. I brought lots of judges. We were invited to go to the Turkish Judicial Academy in Ankara. And I brought Judge Wolf, Judge Stearns. I brought all kinds of state and federal judges.

We were there in 2012. Spent a week there. Had a great time. Really learned a lot. They created this academy because Turkey, of course, wanted to be a member of the EU and they needed to have an independent judiciary, a reliable judiciary, and they needed to demonstrate that. So this was really an important moment in time.

They asked me to come back and focus on free speech, which was interesting, under the Turkish constitution and the American constitution. So we had another big go around, another week in 2013 as well. And it was pretty spectacular. 

Don: And then what happened with that? 

Bob: Well, as had happened in Russia, information began to circulate about corruption in Mr. Erdogan's family and cabinet and the like. Erdogan began to try to shut down Twitter, tried to shut down YouTube. And the Constitutional Court of Turkey said, "No. That violates the free speech clause of our Constitution. You can't do that." 

He was furious. He then took control of the High Council of Justice, which ran the judiciary. Had legislation changed so he could take control, and then began to have the High Council of Justice move all the judges all around. Judges that were not viewed as cooperative with him got transferred, transferred, transferred. And things got really, really bad. He was clearly trying to get control of the judiciary. 

And, ultimately, I went back in 2015. I was asked to speak at the 70th anniversary of one of their Supreme Courts, and actually brought the Dean of BC Law School with me and a few others. And we were told what was going on there. 

And in 2016, the next year, of course, there was an alleged coup, and Erdogan had over 3,000 judges arrested and imprisoned, seized all of their assets, shut down the Justice Academy in Ankara, and basically jailed reporters. I mean, exactly the same thing. He went after the free press and the independent judiciary. 

Don: And that was the end of your work there. 

Bob: Oh, that was the end of my work there. I can't even go back there. 

Don: Okay. That had to be tremendously disappointing, but it did seem to follow a very similar pattern to what had happened in Russia as well.

Bob: It did. Two autocrats taking control.