I. Francis B. Palmer and the Ethical Limits of Textualism

Francis B. Palmer was an elderly man who had done what the law encourages: he executed a valid will and relied on the courts to honor it. As his health declined, however, the legal framework meant to safeguard his autonomy became a vulnerability. His grandson, Elmer Palmer, understood that as long as Francis lived, the will could still be revised. Acting on that calculation, Elmer poisoned his grandfather, causing his death and thereby accelerating the transfer of property. The resulting litigation posed a fundamental question of judicial ethics: whether courts would permit a legal instrument to be used as a mechanism of injustice simply because statutory text, read literally, failed to anticipate deliberate wrongdoing.

That question remains urgent today, not only in inheritance law, but in civil regimes that authorize the deprivation of fundamental rights through ostensibly protective procedures.

II. Riggs v. Palmer and Judicial Accountability

In Riggs v. Palmer, 115 N.Y. 506 (1889), the New York Court of Appeals confronted a statute governing wills that was silent on whether a beneficiary who murdered the testator could inherit. On its face, the statute offered no textual barrier to Elmer Palmer’s claim. Yet the court refused to treat statutory silence as judicial license. Instead, it held that laws must be interpreted in light of “general principles of justice,” including the maxim that no person should profit from their own wrong.¹

The significance of Riggs lies not merely in its equitable result, but in its articulation of the judicial role. The court rejected a model of judging in which fidelity to text excuses moral abdication. It recognized that courts become complicit in injustice when they enforce statutes in ways that defeat the law’s foundational commitments. In this sense, Riggs is less about inheritance than about judicial accountability: it establishes that when adjudication enables exploitation, the failure is institutional, not accidental.²

III. Guardianship as the Inversion of Riggs

Adult guardianship law presents a contemporary inversion of Riggs. Rather than preventing wrongdoers from exploiting legal mechanisms, guardianship proceedings routinely authorize exploitation under color of law. Through civil orders entered after abbreviated hearings, courts transfer sweeping authority over an individual’s body, property, associations, and access to courts — often on the basis of untested expert submissions and conclusory findings.³

These proceedings are commonly shielded from scrutiny. Records are sealed. Communications are restricted, often through ex parte proceedings and court-imposed gag orders. Family members are marginalized. The individual subject to guardianship frequently lacks independent, zealous representation. Fees and commissions accrue to court-appointed actors, paid directly from the estate of the person whose rights have been extinguished.⁴

Where Riggs stands for the proposition that courts must not permit law to reward wrongdoing, guardianship practice too often does the opposite: it empowers actors whose financial and professional incentives are aligned with continued control rather than restoration of rights.⁵

IV. Standards of Review and the Collapse of Appellate Oversight

From a doctrinal perspective, guardianship reveals a profound mismatch between the gravity of the interests at stake and the standards of review applied. Orders that extinguish fundamental rights ordinarily trigger heightened scrutiny and require clear and convincing evidence.⁶

In guardianship, however, appellate courts frequently apply deferential abuse-of-discretion review — even where trial courts have failed to articulate meaningful findings of fact or law — despite Mathews v. Eldridge’s directive that procedures affecting fundamental liberty and property interests must be structured to minimize the risk of erroneous deprivation.⁷

This deference is not benign. Appellate correction depends on a record capable of review. When proceedings are sealed, findings are conclusory, and evidentiary standards are ill-defined, appellate courts are structurally disabled from enforcing constitutional norms. Judicial discipline, in turn, becomes attenuated. A system that tolerates non-reviewable rights deprivations is one in which accountability is aspirational rather than operational.⁸

V. Fourteenth Amendment Constraints: Due Process and Equal Protection

The Fourteenth Amendment supplies a constitutional baseline that guardianship practice routinely strains. Substantive due process protects core liberty interests, including bodily autonomy, property control, family association, and access to courts.⁹ Procedural due process requires notice, a meaningful opportunity to be heard, impartial adjudication, and decisions grounded in reliable evidence.10

Guardianship proceedings often dilute each of these requirements. Rights are removed not as punishment for wrongdoing, but based on predictions of incapacity. This raises acute equal-protection concerns. Guardianship operates by assigning diminished procedural protections to older adults and persons with disabilities precisely because they belong to historically disfavored groups.¹¹

Courts that apply reduced scrutiny in this context invert constitutional logic. Where vulnerability increases the risk of error and abuse, judicial vigilance should increase, not recede.¹²

VI. The ADA and the Judicial Duty to Preserve Legal Capacity

The Americans with Disabilities Act reinforces these constitutional constraints. Title II of the ADA applies to courts as public entities and requires that services be administered in the most integrated setting appropriate to the needs of the individual.¹³ It also obligates courts to make reasonable modifications to avoid discrimination on the basis of disability.¹⁴

Plenary (full) guardianship — particularly when imposed without serious consideration of supported decision-making or other less restrictive alternatives — conflicts with these mandates. Judicial failure to engage this analysis is not merely a policy lapse; it raises statutory compliance concerns. Courts that substitute decision-making authority wholesale, rather than tailoring interventions to demonstrated necessity, risk violating federal civil-rights law.¹⁵

VII. CRPD Parity and Evolving Standards of Judicial Legitimacy

International human-rights law further illuminates these obligations. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) recognizes equal legal capacity as a universal right and calls for the replacement of substituted decision-making with supported decision-making regimes.¹⁶ Although the United States has not ratified the CRPD, its principles increasingly inform comparative constitutional analysis and judicial-ethics discourse.¹⁷

CRPD parity does not impose binding obligations on U.S. courts, but it sharpens the evaluative standard by which judicial conduct is measured. Persistent reliance on broad, indefinite guardianship — where domestic law permits rights-preserving alternatives — places courts out of step with evolving norms of legitimacy and proportionality.

VIII. Judicial Discipline as the Missing Safeguard

Taken together, these doctrines converge on a conclusion that has been insufficiently acknowledged: guardianship abuse is not solely the product of rogue actors. It persists through judicial practices that elevate efficiency over rigor, insulation from review over accountability, and procedural formalism over the protection of substantive rights.¹⁸

Riggs v. Palmer teaches that judges have an ethical obligation to refuse participation in legal outcomes that contradict the law’s foundational commitments. When guardianship courts authorize sweeping rights deprivations without rigorous findings, insulate proceedings from review, and ignore constitutional and statutory constraints, the failure is not merely doctrinal. It is an ethical failure.¹⁹

Guardianship thus functions as a constitutional stress test. Whether courts meet that test depends on whether Riggs is treated as an historical curiosity — or as an enduring standard of judicial accountability.

Endnotes

1. Riggs v. Palmer, 115 N.Y. 506, 511–12 (1889), available at: https://www.nycourts.gov/reporter/archives/riggs_palmer.htm

2. See Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 143 U.S. 457, 459–60 (1892), available at: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/143/457/

3. See In re Guardianship of Hedin, 528 N.W.2d 567, 575–76 (Iowa 1995), available at: https://law.justia.com/cases/iowa/supreme-court/1995/93-1460-0.html

4. U.S. Senate Special Comm. on Aging, Ensuring Trust: Strengthening State Efforts to Overhaul the Guardianship Process and Protect Older Americans 7–12 (2018), available at: https://www.aging.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/guardianship_report.pdf

5. See In re Conservatorship of Groves, 109 P.3d 1230, 1236–37 (Kan. 2005), available at: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/tn-court-of-appeals/1353555.html

6. Addington v. Texas, 441 U.S. 418, 425–33 (1979), available at: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/441/418/

7. Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319, 335 (1976), available at: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/424/319/

8. SEC v. Chenery Corp., 318 U.S. 80, 87 (1943), available at: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/318/80/

9. Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702, 720–21 (1997) ), available at: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/521/702/

10. Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254, 267–71 (1970), available at: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/397/254/

11. City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Ctr., 473 U.S. 432, 446–47 (1985), available at: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/473/432/

12. Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U.S. 745, 758–70 (1982), available at: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/455/745/

13. 42 U.S.C. § 12132, available at: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/12132

14. 28 C.F.R. § 35.130(b)(7), available at: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-28/chapter-I/part-35/subpart-B/section-35.130

15. Olmstead v. L.C., 527 U.S. 581, 597–603 (1999), available at: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/527/581/; Tennessee v. Lane, 541 U.S. 509, 531–34 (2004), available at: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/541/509/

16. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities art. 12, Dec. 13, 2006, 2515 U.N.T.S. 3, available at: https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-on-the-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities.html

17. Comm. on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, General Comment №1, ¶¶ 25–29, U.N. Doc. CRPD/C/GC/1 (May 19, 2014), https://www.ohchr.org/en/documents/general-comments-and-recommendations/general-comment-no-1-article-12

18. See ABA Model Code of Judicial Conduct r. 1.1, r. 2.2 (Am. Bar Ass’n 2020), https://www.americanbar.org/groups/judicial/publications/model_code_of_judicial_conduct/

19. See Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., 556 U.S. 868, 876–84 (2009), available at: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/556/868/