When lawyers draft motions alleging “loss of the ability to enjoy life,” they usually mean something visible — a spinal injury, a brain trauma, a permanent physical limitation. The law recognizes that beyond medical bills and lost wages, there is something deeper: the diminished ability to live freely and fully.
We rarely imagine that loss beginning in a courtroom.
My daughter entered federal court believing in something simple and foundational — that whatever the outcome, the process would be fair. That a life-tenured judge, insulated from politics and pressure, would embody neutrality. That the courtroom was the one place where power was disciplined by rules.
In the courtroom of Victor Bolden, that belief began to erode.
Litigation is adversarial. Losing motions is not injustice. Judges interrupt, press counsel, and make difficult calls. None of that is improper by itself. But atmosphere matters. Tone matters. The distribution of patience and skepticism matters.
From the gallery, you notice patterns.
You notice when one side is permitted to expand while the other is cut short.
You notice when factual claims from one table are absorbed while the other’s are dissected.
You notice when a litigant begins to feel less like a participant in justice and more like an obstacle to docket efficiency.
Then came the moment that changed everything.
In a civil proceeding — not a criminal case — my daughter was ordered to turn over passwords to her personal electronic devices. When she did not comply to the court’s satisfaction, the consequence was not a fine. It was not a stern warning.
It was jail.
Federal courts possess civil contempt power. Judges must be able to enforce their lawful orders. That authority is longstanding and essential to the rule of law. But authority and proportionality are not identical.
Watching your daughter taken into custody in a civil dispute over access to personal devices is not an abstract lesson in jurisprudence. It is immediate. It is humiliating. It is destabilizing.
In that instant, federal court no longer felt like neutral ground. It felt like the full weight of government pressing down in a dispute that was not criminal in nature.
The sleepless nights intensified. The anxiety sharpened. The dread before hearings became physical. And something else quietly disappeared: the unguarded trust that the institution itself would feel level, even in defeat.
Loss of enjoyment of life is often framed in terms of recreation — the inability to ski, to travel, to play with a child. But there is another kind of loss: the erosion of institutional trust. The loss of civic ease. The altered way a young person walks into any room where authority resides.
Appeals exist. Standards of review exist. Judicial conduct mechanisms exist. The system contains safeguards.
But those remedies operate on transcripts and citations. They do not restore the internal shift that occurs when a young woman leaves federal court having experienced incarceration inside a civil case.
Judicial independence is indispensable. Courts must be free from political pressure. But independence does not mean insulation from scrutiny. Public confidence is the judiciary’s oxygen. And confidence depends not only on legal correctness, but on visible restraint and proportionality.
When enforcement feels overwhelming relative to the dispute, the human cost can outlast the litigation itself.
The law measures broken bones with charts and actuarial tables.
It has yet to find a reliable metric for broken trust.
The day my daughter was taken into custody in a civil proceeding, something fundamental changed. Not just about the case. About how she sees institutions. About how she experiences authority. About the quiet assumption that the courtroom is the place where imbalance is corrected.
If we are serious about the concept of “loss of the ability to enjoy life,” we should recognize that it is not limited to physical injury. It can begin in the very institutions designed to protect fairness.
And once that trust is shaken inside a federal courtroom, rebuilding it is far more difficult than drafting a motion.
The Valley Viewpoint 