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Writing 125, Women and Law class during Fall 1997.
My father, David Lee, grew up in Hong Kong, but attended college in Canada at the University of Waterloo. Graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry, he pursued a career as a nuclear scientist. He never intended to seek a career in law until he moved to the United States ten years ago. Our family settled in California where my father attended part-time law school at the University of California at Los Angeles. He juggled work, law school, and family responsibilities until passing the California State Bar exam four years later. Afterwards my father obtained a patent license. Since then, my father has been a practicing attorney in a patent firm catering to clientele in Asia, which has been a cradle of new ideas and inventions since China adopted a market economy in the mid-eighties. In search of insight into the legal system, I interviewed my father for his candid views.
My first question addressed his personal experience in the law, hoping to reveal the profession's immorality. Instead of Hard Copy material, my father recounted his victory in Los Angeles Municipal Court over a traffic ticket. My father's strategy in arguing this case, emblematic of the system's capacity to accommodate everyone, including the "normal motorist" appealing a traffic citation, reflects the judicial system's flexibility and adaptability to a myriad of situations. When my father recounted the case, I did not think he would use a Constitutional Amendment to defend his position.
My father, heading eastbound on Rosemead Boulevard in the city of Rosemead, turned left into a bustling plaza parking lot on the north side of the street. Initially intending to enter the lot, he only pulled in partially because traffic congestion prevented him from entering any further. In order to avoid blocking main street traffic, he put the car into reverse and moments later, a San Gabriel police officer apprehended him for making an illegal U-turn.
Since my father merely responded to traffic conditions, he had reason to fight the legitimacy of the ticket. He argued that the police officer failed to consider the circumstances preceding his apparent U-turn and that the officer attempted to exercise his police power beyond his jurisdiction since my father's vehicle remained within Rosemead city limits during the incident. I thought that these two points would suffice to clinch his victory, but his main argument utilized the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Up until that point, I never thought that the Constitution could have significance in such a trivial case. I somehow expected all lawyers to zealously pursue their clients' best interest, often to the detriment of the law itself. I soon discovered the inaccuracy of that impression. He ordered me to look up the Fourteenth Amendment which extends the provisions of the Fifth Amendment to the states, but before I could even find my Barron's Law Dictionary, he recited: "No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." My father explained the significance of this clause to me, a novice at interpreting legal terms.
The San Gabriel police officer violated my father's right to due process of law in two important ways. First, the officer failed to recognize that my father's apparent U-turn was in fact a response to the traffic conditions; my father had not intended the U-turn and therefore, the police officer lacked legitimate cause to issue the ticket. Secondly, the San Gabriel police officer lacked jurisdiction to issue traffic tickets in the city of Rosemead. These two arguments sounded feasible, but my father's most interesting defense involved more than just a technical attack of the officer's failure to abide by due process.
My father emphasized the impact of traffic tickets on the mobility of Californians, particularly residents in the Los Angeles area. He argued that traffic tickets may actually deprive an individual of the liberty protected under the Fourteenth Amendment. That sounded like a serious claim to me and my father agreed, adding that that was what secured his victory.
My father argued to the judge that a traffic ticket carried a greater penalty than its face value. He asked me if receiving a moving violation constituted a felony. I answered that of course not, a traffic ticket acts as an infraction. He continued by explaining that judges share the same misconception. Usually reluctant to overturn decisions, especially traffic ticket cases which have notoriety for guilty defendants taking a gamble, a judge may allow a ticket to stand because he considers the penalty light. However, my father explained that circumstances in Los Angeles contradicted a driving ticket's casual penalty and that like a felony, a traffic ticket restricts an individual's liberty.
Unlike an infraction, a traffic citation has more serious consequences, hindering a person's mobility and consequently, his ability to go to work and earn a living. At first, I considered the connection between a driving ticket and the ability to obtain a livelihood remote, but through a series of explanations and extrapolations, I followed my father's logic.
Most Los Angeles residents rely on vehicles because our public transportation serves a limited area and many people, including my father, must commute long distances to work in downtown Los Angeles from suburban communities. The high number of motorists explains the high cost of mandatory automobile insurance in California. The insurance premium often exceeds the value of the car, so maintaining a clean driving record becomes essential to relieving exorbitant costs. With each traffic ticket, the insurance payments rise. One ticket or accident incur "bad points" on the driver's record and more than two points will result in expulsion from an insurance company. He illustrated the effects of tickets and accidents on one's insurance by referring to the result of my own car accident in my junior year of high school.
I had coverage under my parent's insurance plan as a minor but after causing an automobile accident, in which I rear-ended another motorist with monetary damages amounting to six thousand dollars, the insurance company refused to renew our plan. My parents found no insurance company that would accept them because my "bad point" stigmatized me as an at-risk teenager; the insurance companies considered me a liability. I finally had to resort to a state insurance plan that allowed me to claim myself independent of my parents, but for a premium twice the cost of a conventional insurance company plus special restrictions on car mileage. In the two-month interim between insurance plans, I had to rely on generous friends for rides. After this poignant example, I understood the connection my father conveyed to the judge. A traffic ticket indirectly affects an individual's livelihood.
Without car insurance, one loses his ability to drive and simultaneously looses his freedom. After all, I experienced firsthand the restriction of freedom as a result of losing my automobile insurance. My father expressed to the judge that a traffic ticket implies losing the liberty to drive. Driving in Los Angeles serves more as a necessity than a privilege in contrast to other cities with effective public transportation. My father added that the loss he would suffer as a result of the ticket outweighs the governmental interest in issuing it. Besides, he undermined the governmental interest by pointing out the errors of the police officer and managed to present his interest in avoiding the consequences of the traffic ticket as one that is serious enough to sanction its nullification.
My father's effective application of the Constitution's Amendments astonished me; the Constitution has significance in every facet of our lives and no trial is too small for the application of its principles. My father exulted, "See, even a normal person can win!" By this, I think he meant that the average US citizen with adequate knowledge of the Constitution and its Amendments has power against governmental abuses. I expected my father to express my own cynicism about the judicial system. However, he gave our judicial system a positive assessment, surprising me with his optimism, "Because we are human, there will always be defects <in the judicial system>. Those inevitable flaws will not change the fairness of the general system." Since we had wandered onto the topic of the legal system's justness, I popped the OJ Simpson question--was justice served in the 1995 "Trial of the Century"?
This nationally publicized case tried OJ Simpson, a former NFL star, for murdering his wife, Nicole Brown and her companion at the crime scene, Ron Goldman. In the federal case, the jury acquitted Simpson of first-degree murder contrary to popular opinion's belief in Simpson's guilt. When I asked my father how a court could find a guilty defendant "not guilty" because the state had not proven their case beyond a reasonable doubt, my father chuckled that, "In Hong Kong, OJ Simpson wouldn't even get a trial anyway." Our judicial system's assumption that people are innocent before proven guilty keeps the government honest, unlike in other countries where the burden of proof rests on the accused.
He made comparisons to his native country, expressing gratitude for the existence of a jury system I had taken for granted. Jurors in Hong Kong are officially appointed to their position by the ruling class, facilitating abuses of power by the government. My father insisted that with all its imperfections, our jury system holds the court accountable to the people; the whole system protects the people rather than the government. His comments reminded me of the sentiment that it is better for ten guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be convicted, as expressed by attorney Judith Lindahl in her class presentation on 12/05/97. Practicing law in the United States after spending his childhood in a totalitarian society has influenced his perspective of our legal system. I had never compared our legal system in comparison to those of other countries, but my father aroused me to a new appreciation of our judicial system. That appreciation has replaced some of my pessimism about the judicial system. In addition, I can at least claim that I know one person who successfully overturned his traffic ticket in court.