Continuing professional development: Difference between revisions

===CPD as punishment===

The tide may be ebbing on the era of continuing professional education, but activist courts are always open to finding novel uses for it.

None more creative than that found by District Judge Linda Parker, who ordered Republican Party attorneys to undergo it a sanction for “a historic and profound abuse of the judicial process” when their vexatious claims of electoral fraud during the 2020 presidential election came before her court.

It is interesting to contemplate the theory of justice that drove Judge Parker’s decision. It can hardly be regarded as restorative or distributive in nature, nor corrective — it axiomatic that one leaves a CPD session no wiser than when one entered it — so we conclude it was motivated by the desire to mete out ''punishment''.

But ''twelve hours'' of it? And it might be more even than that: there were multiple charges; the sanction applies to each; the judgment does not state whether they are to be served concurrently or consecutively. Either way, and whatever your view of the constitutional impact of the plaintiffs’ behaviour, this is surely cruel and unusual punishment.  

{{egg}}