Almost every losing plaintiff yearns for revenge. But what if he is poor, confined to a wheelchair and has no law degree? Despite those handicaps, a Chicago polio victim named Sherman Skolnick fought back so hard that last month two members of the Illinois Supreme Court resigned amid charges of conflict of interest brought by him. Moreover, the revelations about those judges —Chief Justice Roy Solfisburg and Associate Justice Ray Klingbiel—have inspired a committee of the state legislature to embark forthwith on a "top-to-bottom inquiry into the entire judiciary in Illinois."
When Skolnick was 34, his parents lost a lawsuit against a brokerage house that they had accused of frittering away a stock fund set up for their son. Skolnick, now 39, recalls: "I kept running into judges who seemed unfair, dishonest and politically motivated." He was so embittered that he set out to improve Illinois justice by investigating judges and reforming the system under which they are elected in the state. The son of an immigrant garment cutter from Russia, Skolnick dropped out of Roosevelt University, where he was an A student but required special transportation to the campus, which he could no longer afford. Later, he taught himself law at home and carved a full-time career as a sort of modern day Robin Hood for the law's many losers.
Among his early efforts, Skolnick brought suits to reapportion electoral districts for the Illinois Supreme Court and the state appellate court, the Cook County board of commissioners and the Chicago city council. In the process, he devised a strategy called "guerrilla law," which he defines as an "unorthodox but legal means of fighting judicial impropriety." His favorite tactic is to move that a judge disqualify himself from a case because of alleged bias. During a 1966 suit calling for reapportionment of city-council electoral districts, Skolnick discovered that Federal Judge William J. Campbell had once been a director of the Albert Parvin Foundation. He charged that the foundation had ties with Chicago gamblers and political bosses.* Whatever the truth of the accusation, Campbell named two prominent lawyers to hear the evidence for him. As a result of their report, he ordered the district boundaries redrawn by November 1970.
Skolnick lives in his parents' modest duplex home on Chicago's South Side, supported mainly by his father's union pension and social security benefits. He can move his wheelchair, but only with difficulty, and must be chauffeured to his press conferences and court appearances. Working with him are 30 or so volunteers whom Skolnick has organized into the Committee to Clean Up the Courts. Like him, most of them have grievances against the courts. Each week, they pore over stock records, title transfers and other documents for evidence of judicial mischief. The eyes and ears of Sherman's guerrilla army are a network of informers who range from lawyers and cops to federal agents.