Judge, Jury, and Executioner

It was entirely fitting that the City Council of Yonkers, N.Y., screamed uncle to a federal judge the same day his bankrupting fines forced it to lay off the city’s thirty school crossing guards just as the school year began. After all, the school-desegregation program that the same judge, Leonard Sand, had ordered, ending the assignment of students to neighborhood schools, was already being blamed for a steep rise in traffic accidents injuring children as they crossed busy streets.

Judge Sand managed to coerce compliance with his court order that this suburb of New York City build public housing in middle-class neighborhoods, to the cheers of those who demand that the current residents of Yonkers must suffer for alleged sins of the past. This may be a Pyrrhic victory. For one thing, Judge Sand’s frenetic judicial activism is a timely reminder in an election year that it matters who appoints the nation’s judges. Judge Sand was appointed by Jimmy Carter.

LC

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L. Gordon Crovitz

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It was entirely fitting that the City Council of Yonkers, N.Y., screamed uncle to a federal judge the same day his bankrupting fines forced it to lay off the city’s thirty school crossing guards just as the school year began. After all, the school-desegregation program that the same judge, Leonard Sand, had ordered, ending the assignment of students to neighborhood schools, was already being blamed for a steep rise in traffic accidents injuring children as they crossed busy streets.

Judge Sand managed to coerce compliance with his court order that this suburb of New York City build public housing in middle-class neighborhoods, to the cheers of those who demand that the current residents of Yonkers must suffer for alleged sins of the past. This may be a Pyrrhic victory. For one thing, Judge Sand’s frenetic judicial activism is a timely reminder in an election year that it matters who appoints the nation’s judges. Judge Sand was appointed by Jimmy Carter.