Dierker, Robert H., Jr. 1949-

PERSONAL:

Born February 24, 1949, in St. Louis, MO; married Dorothy Dreyer, July 3, 1982; children: three. Education: St. Louis University, A.B., 1971; University of Missouri at Kansas City, J.D.; Harvard University, LL.M. Religion: Catholic.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Civil Courts Bldg., 10 N. Tucker Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63101-2097.

CAREER:

Judge and author. Admitted to the Bar of Missouri, 1974, the Bar of the U.S. District Court Eastern District of Missouri, 1975, the Bar of the U.S. Court of Appeals 8th Circuit, 1976, and the Bar of the U.S. Supreme Court, 1979; clerked for the Missouri Court of Appeals, 1973 and 1974; worked as an attorney in private practice, 1975-78; assistant and associate city counselor, St. Louis, MO, 1979-86; Twenty-second Judicial Circuit of Missouri, St. Louis, MO, circuit judge, 1986—. Candidate for Missouri House of Representatives, 1978; campaign treasurer for Paul Kiel, Missouri Senate Republican candidate, 1978.

WRITINGS:

(With Richard J. Mehan) Missouri Causes of Action, Torts: A Manual for the General Practitioner, Butterworth Legal Publishers (Clearwater, FL), 1993.

Missouri Criminal Practice Handbook, West Publishing (St. Paul, MN), 1995.

(With Richard J. Mehan) Personal Injury and Torts, Lawyers Cooperative Publishing (Rochester, NY), 1996.

(With Richard J. Mehan) Contracts Litigation, Lawyers Cooperative Publishing (Rochester, NY), 1996.

Missouri Criminal Law, West Group (St. Paul, MN), 1998, 2nd edition, Thomson/West (St. Paul, MN), 2004.

Personal Injury and Torts Handbook, West Group (St. Paul, MN), 2000.

Contracts, Equity, and Statutory Actions Handbook, West Group (St. Paul, MN), 2001.

The Tyranny of Tolerance: A Sitting Judge Breaks the Code of Silence to Expose the Liberal Judicial Assault, Crown Forum (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Robert H. Dierker, Jr., a circuit judge of the Twenty-second Judicial Circuit of Missouri, is the author of the controversial work The Tyranny of Tolerance: A Sitting Judge Breaks the Code of Silence to Expose the Liberal Judicial Assault. In the book, Dierker critiques federal court decisions on affirmative action, capital punishment, and gun control, among other matters, claiming that left-leaning judges have undermined the intentions of the U.S. Constitution.

In one chapter, "The Cloud Cuckooland of Radical Feminism," Dierker rails against "femifascists" and "illiberal liberals," raising questions about his ability to judge cases impartially. Lynn Ricci, president of the Women Lawyers' Association of Greater St. Louis, told St. Louis Post-Dispatch contributor Robert Patrick, "It appears that he's cloaking his own personal preferences against women in alleged legal research and a partial examination of the law." Formal complaints about the book, however, were rejected by the Missouri Judicial Discipline Commission. "I think all judges have views about the law," Dierker told Donna Walter in the St. Louis Daily Record. "I don't think any judge on the bench would support or subscribe to—or do anything other than condemn—the views of radicals of many calibers, the KKK on the one side to anarchists on the other. You can reject their ideas and yet still be fair in cases as long as you are consciously applying neutral principles in a neutral way. That's what judges have to do."

Though a contributor in the Missouri Lawyers Weekly noted that the author "has done a great deal of work on this book, with each chapter fortified by numerous endnotes," he also stated that The Tyranny of Tolerance "is not a work of scholarship." The critic concluded: "Judge Dierker has removed a load from his chest. His views will be pleasing to a segment of our society. It is unfortunate that he has used his considerable talents for scholarship and writing to produce an uncritical, polarized tirade."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, January 1, 2007, Vanessa Bush, review of The Tyranny of Tolerance: A Sitting Judge Breaks the Code of Silence to Expose the Liberal Judicial Assault, p. 30.

Daily Record (St. Louis, MO), December 29, 2006, Donna Walter, "Does a Sitting Judge Have a Right to Write?"

Missouri Lawyers Weekly, January 8, 2007, review of The Tyranny of Tolerance; January 8, 2007, Donna Walter, "St. Louis Circuit Judge Robert H. Dierker Releases Book."

St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 25, 2006, Robert Patrick, "Stinging New Book May Cost Judge Job, Some Say."

ONLINE

Your Missouri Courts,http://www.courts.mo.gov/ (August 10, 2007), "Robert H. Dierker, Jr."