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Washington NARAL PAC
Election Year 2000 Questionnaire to Judicial Candidates
Washington NARAL PAC appreciates the need of judicial candidates to conform to the Code of Judicial Conduct. This questionnaire was designed to enable you to answer completely without violating the Canons of the Code.
Name: Douglas A. "Doug" Schafer Position Sought: State Supreme Court
Campaign Address: [Election 2000 campaign information is deleted. DAS 7/26/02]
Campaign Phone Number: (253) 383-2167 Website: http://www.doug4justice.org
e-mail: doug@doug4justice.org Campaign Manager/Contact: Doug Schafer
1. What pro bono activities have you undertaken as an attorney?
Until the last five years, as a business, tax, and planning attorney my public interest professional activities consisted of assisting assorted non-profit groups in organizational and tax matters and participating on school district and utilities district citizens advisory committees. That changed considerably in 1995.
Since February 1995, in the public interest I have spent considerable time and expense, without pay or reimbursement, initially exposing serious problems in our judicial system's handling of guardianship cases and later in working on improvements to that system. My outspoken criticism led to two Pierce County Bar Association committees studying the problems in 1995 and validating my concerns. In 1996, I was a key promoter and contributor (along with AARP and other advocates for the elderly and the disabled) to the 1996 legislation that addressed some of those problems, and I participated on a subsequent committee that wrote a statewide training program for investigators in guardianship cases. I have remained active, but less visibly so, since then in various ways to promote and encourage many improvements in the guardianship system, including the adoption and implementation of a program for statewide licensing of professional guardians.
Since December 1995, in the public interest I have expended considerable time and expense investigating and attempting to fully expose misconduct by a corrupt Pierce County Superior Court judge, now former judge (since September 1999) Grant L. "Cadillac"Anderson, and his unethical colleagues. That project has evolved into my current efforts to expose and improve the ineffective disciplinary systems that should have promptly disrobed him as a judge and disbarred him as a lawyer. Details are on my website, "To Kill a Messenger - For Reporting a Corrupt Judge" at http://members.aa.net/~schafer.
I have contributed my time and attention to many, many cases and causes that were brought to my attention as a result of public recognition of my guardianship reform efforts and professional ethics crusades, including filing or assisting (for years in some cases) in disciplinary grievances against various legal professionals.
2. What have been your community, charitable, religious, educational, civic, professional, or political organizations you contributed to and/or are members of? For each, please list significant activities of participation.
I have belonged my entire 21-year legal career to the American Bar Association, the Washington State Bar Association, and the Tacoma-Pierce County Bar Association. I recently joined the ABA's Center for Professional Responsibility. I was a member for many years, and was president in the mid 1980s, of the Tacoma Estate Planning Council. I taught Estates and Trusts as an adjunct professor for University of Puget Sound Law School (now Seattle Univ. Law School) in the mid 1980s.
I have been active for most of my adult years on the Crystal Mountain Volunteer Ski Patrol (the last five as a snowboarding patroller), including serving at times in various local area and regional ski patrol leadership positions. I retired from the patrol two winters ago. Participation generally required alternating week-end on-the-hill duty from about November through early May each year, evening in-town meetings when in leadership positions, and training days in the off-season.
I served on the board and committees of the Tacoma-Pierce County Chapter of the American Red Cross for six years. I am a member, and served on the board, of the Downtown Tacoma Kiwanis Club, and for 10 years have presented Kiwanis Terrific Kids awards to students in monthly assemblies at McKinley Elementary School in Tacoma.
In addition to contributions to American Red Cross and Kiwanis fundraisers, my wife and I have contributed over the years to our children's public schools and youth athletics organizations, to food banks, to public broadcasting, to Planned Parenthood, to the March of Dimes, and to similar charitable organizations.
I am a 26-year member of The Mountaineers, and was active in its Tacoma chapter (including chapter president) in the mid-1980s. I was active for a time in the Rails-to-Trails Coalition. In recent years, I have been a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, and I am now participating in the re-establishment of a Tacoma chapter. I have participated in our neighborhood crime watch citizen patrol.
I am not a member or significant participant in any political or religious organization.
3. Have you ever cast a public vote relating to reproductive rights, as a legislator or member of a political or other community organization? If so, please provide pertinent details.
No.4. Have you participated in any public controversy in which abortion or access to abortion was an issue--either as an attorney, judge, party, witness, or supporter? If the controversy involved a lawsuit, state the name of the case, its resolution, and the nature of your participation. If there was no lawsuit, provide pertinent details.I have never participated in any such public controversy.
5. Have you ever sought endorsement for public office from any women's groups and/or political organizations which have a strongly held position on the question of abortion rights? When and which groups?
I recently completed a judicial candidate questionnaire sent to me by Women in Unity, a Seattle-based organization that apparently rates candidates and disseminates information on issues which affect the African American community. I do not know if that group has a strongly held position on the question of abortion rights, but it may. I have, as yet, sought no other endorsements.
6. Within the canons of the Code of Judicial Conduct, and in view of the right of judges and judicial candidates to express their opinions--see In Re: the Matter of the Disciplinary Proceedings Against Richard B. Sanders, 135 Wn.2d 175, 955 P.2d 369 (1998)--what thoughts and/or opinions do you wish to share with Washington NARAL on reproductive rights both as to adults and as to juveniles?
I attended Justice Sanders' disciplinary hearing in February 1997 and closely followed his case because it interested me a great deal, both as to the abortion issue and the judicial ethics and discipline issues (for I had reported Judge "Cadillac" Anderson a full year earlier). In the month of Justice Sanders' disciplinary hearing, I vigorously and publicly opposed Senate Bill 5696 which had been sponsored by Justice Sanders' defenders in both the pro-life and the free speech camps to eviscerate the Commission on Judicial Conduct. Upon request, I will provide you my letter of February 12, 1997, to Senator Pam Roach vigorously opposing SB 5696.
I have carefully read many times the Supreme Court's unanimous opinion in the Sanders case, authored by pro tem Justice C. Kenneth Grosse, and I agree that it permits judicial candidates to express their personal views on disputed public issues, including the public issue of abortion. The Court's new rule stated on page 190 of its opinion--which recognized the First Amendment's supremacy over the state's Code of Judicial Conduct--is that a judicial candidate need only avoid statements or conduct that persons would construe "as an express or implied promise to decide particular issues in a particular way, or as an indication that he [or she] would be unwilling or unable to be impartial and follow the law if faced with a case in which abortion [or other disputed public] issues were presented."
I emphasize that nothing I express below should be construed as an express or implied promise to rule any particular way on any particular abortion-related or other issue. I will, if elected, fulfill my duty to be impartial and to follow the law regardless of my personal views. I pledge to do my best to remain open-minded and receptive to all arguments properly presented to me in any future case, and I reserve the right to depart from my past personal views whenever presented with persuasive arguments to do so.
That said, I will offer some history about myself. In August 1970, I attained age 21 (then the voting age) in the midst of Washington's statewide public debate over Referendum 20, which declared abortion a private matter between a woman and her doctor. As a commuting University of Washington senior, I placed in my car's back window a white bumper sticker imprinted with yellow daisies and the phrase "Every child deserves to be wanted," urging passage of Referendum 20. That measure passed in November of that year with a 57% statewide voter majority. In the intervening years, I have joined with the majority of Washington state voters in defeating anti-choice initiatives in 1984, 1991, and 1998. I have never forgotten that phrase from my 1970 bumper sticker--"Every child deserves to be wanted."
I have long felt that pregnancy-related decisions (including abortion and contraception) by an emancipated minor or adult woman are a private matter between her, her health care providers, and others with whom she chooses to confide. Similarly, I have long felt that government should respect the privacy of families, and not interfere with parents raising their own children (except in abusive situations). As a parent myself with three children, I believe that all caring parents wish to know if their child, particularly if still dependent on the parents, has any significant condition affecting their health in order to protect, guide, and support the child.
My view at this point is that the question of whether the parents of an unemancipated, sexually-active girl should participate with her and her health care providers in a pregnancy-related decision should be determined on a case-by-case basis taking into consideration the girl's maturity and her relationship with her parents. I would rather the determination of whether to involve the girl's parents be made, guided by the girl's best interests, by someone with appropriate training: a health care provider or counselor rather than a judge or lawyer. The final pregnancy-related decision should be made by the sexually-active girl if she can understand her options, not made for her by her parents or others. I assume that when attending to teenagers, health care providers regularly face the medical ethics issue of when to involve the patient's parents in the provider-patient relationship.
7. What life experiences have you had--that you wish to share with us--which would enable you to judge reproductive rights issues with empathy and compassion for all concerned?
I respect the privacy of those who have confided in me as to the most personal of matters. My wife and I have three sons, ages 16, 17, and 20. I have an older brother and three younger sisters, and my wife has an older brother and two younger sisters. My wife and I have passed through that stage in life when both we and many of our closest confidants were seeking to bear children, sometimes suffering the disappointment of miscarriages--which I came to learn are a common occurrence in the first trimester of pregnancy. We have friends who have adopted infants and have lovingly parented them. I delivered our two youngest sons (my wife doing the hard part), aided by a midwife in a hospital birthing room. My wife and I have shared the joys and the challenges of raising babies, toddlers, children, teenagers, and now young adults. I recognize how very much different it would have been if we were not ready and eager to become parents when we did.
I can understand when a woman recognizes that the time is not right for her to become a parent. I also understand that having financial means is not a prerequisite to lovingly raising a child. And I understand that bearing a child for eager adopting parents is a responsible, caring choice that a woman might make.
8. Please provide a list of endorsements being used by your campaign.
Aside from responding to this and the Women in Unity group's recent questionnaire, I have not sought any endorsements at this point in my campaign. I would welcome endorsements from any parties who read my websites and support my efforts to raise, and to improve the self-policing of, lawyer and judicial ethics and my other efforts to improve the administration of justice in this state.
Candidate's Signature: /s/ Doug Schafer Date: July 10, 2000
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