Honorable Major B. Harding
Chief Justice
Supreme Court of Florida
500 South Duval Street?
Tallahassee, Florida 32399-1925

Dear Justice Harding:

I am in receipt of The Florida Bar News - March 1, 2000. In your annual brief address to the Board of Governors at its February meeting, you spoke on a wide range of topics. You closed your speech "with an exhortation to remember the legal system is to serve the people." You went onto say "you and I as judges and lawyers have the opportunity to help in the resolution of individual cases. We have the opportunity to help clients. We have the opportunity to help the system. It is becoming increasingly clear to me that you and I are at a crossroads, and we have more than at any other time the opportunity to preserve a way of life - a way of life that we have lived with a reasonable degree of success in the past 200-years-plus under our constitution. This system of equal justice under the law does not belong to me as a judge or to you as a lawyer, but it belongs to the people, and it is a system that ensures to the people their rights and liberties and the ability to resolve disputes in a peaceable manner."

I also understand that The American Bar Association has designated the week between April 30th and May 6th as Law Week. Although Law Day is not a "lawyers day", but an occasion for emphasizing the role of law in American life, Bar associations across the country will be celebrating the promotion of lawyers, their services and the public support of their profession. The American Bar Association’s motto for this year is "Celebrate Freedom. Speak Up For Democracy, Speak Up For Diversity." The American Bar Association’s motto has been adopted by The Florida Supreme Court.

Justice Harding, you first state that judges and lawyers have the opportunity to help in the resolution of individual cases and that the legal system is to serve the people. I am one of those "people". Justice Harding, I have always celebrated my freedom and I specifically, over the past two years, have been speaking up for democracy, and my rights, in my communications to The Florida Bar and over the past several months, particularly to you. Justice Harding, you ask the public to speak up for democracy and diversity and yet you have been remiss in speaking back to them, specifically me.

How can the Chief Justice of the highest court in the State sit back and ignore the facts and evidence that I have brought to your attention, numerous times, with regard to The Florida Bar’s dereliction of duties, and the monopolization of that association, and then promote the American Bar Association’s motto? Justice Harding, how can you also preach to the Board of Governors what their duties encompass and then be remiss in your responsibility with regard to those same duties? Although I have stated my position to the Executive Director, staff members, President and President-elect of The Florida Bar, they have continued to ignore communicating with me in a "peaceable manner." If this system of equal justice under the law, as you state, does not belong to the judges and to the lawyers but belongs to the people then why have I not been afforded my proper opportunity of equal justice under the law? Justice Harding, my civil rights have been violated. I am entitled to due process under the law. I again implore you to make sure that I am properly heard and that my rights and the rights of the public at large are protected.

Respectfully submitted,

Meryl M. Lanson