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Time in Yerevan: 11:07,   29 March 2024

Wesley Hailed at Armenian Bar Association Dinner for Humility; Brazile, Tabaddor Also Feted

Wesley Hailed at Armenian Bar Association Dinner for Humility; Brazile, Tabaddor Also Feted

GLENDALE, NOVEMBER  4, ARMENPRESS/METROPOLITAN NEWS-ENTERPRISE: Los Angeles Superior Court Presiding Judge David Wesley has been described at a dinner meeting of the Armenian Bar Association as a man possessed of “dominating humility.”

Wesley was honored by the association on Wednesday, along with Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Kevin C. Brazile and Immigration Judge Ashley Tabaddor, with the U.S. Department of Justice Executive Office for Immigration Review. The occasion was the group’s third annual “Judge’s Night.”

More than 200 persons were seated at tables in the banquet room of a mid-eastern restaurant in Glendale, with the capacity of 180. They heard the association’s immediate past chair, Encino criminal defense attorney Garo B. Ghazarian, say of Wesley:

“What is decisive and impressive about his functioning on the court is his general attitude toward law, the habits of mind he has formed, the capacity for detachment, and his temperament, and training for putting his passion behind his judgment instead of in front of it.

“The attitudes and qualities which I am groping to characterize here, and describe Judge Wesley with, are ingredients in what compendiously might be called dominating humility.

“That’s right. Dominating humility.”

Earlier in the program, the Armenian Bar Association’s president, Armen K. Hovannisian, a Sherman Oaks attorney who had previously served as the group’s chief, remarked:

“We take our work very seriously at the Armenian American Bar Association because we are among the very few who are given the gift of life when so many members of our families were given the curse of death during the Armenian genocide.”

(Mass slayings of Armenians occurred in the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire, beginning in 1915. Between 1 to 1.5 million Armenians were put to death.)

Notwithstanding a background of terror, Hovannisian said, “We are a happy people,” adding:

“We are an optimistic people. And… some of you who have known us for more than a few days know that we can be a rambunctious lot.

“I have to say that when we Armenians get together, we seem to be animated, and proud, and opinionated—but as soon as we get into the larger, non-Armenian community…we take on your grandmothers’ quiet humility, their hushed expressions….

“But exercising a chairman’s prerogative today, I will tell you that at least for tonight, mixed company or not…we’ll be proud, we’ll be opinionated, we’ll be animated, and we’ll be happy.”

Long Beach Police Chief Jim McDonnell, a candidate in tomorrow’s election for sheriff, also addressed the association and alluded to the Armenian genocide. He made note that next April 24 will mark the centennial of the onset of the program to eradicate the Armenian populace, and said he will “work with all of you” in connection with observances of that occasion.

Tabaddor, who was born in Iran and is involved in Iranian American community activities, in August brought suit against the Department of Justice and others contesting her banishment from any case involving an Iranian national. She alleges in her complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, that the action “is facially discriminatory and sets Judge Tabaddor apart for adverse and unequal treatment, simply because of her race, national origin and/or religion.”

(It lists her race as “Near East Asian, Middle Eastern and Persian” and declares she is “culturally Muslim.”)

Tabaddor also avers that it impinges on her “First Amendment rights, in that it impermissibly chills her rights of free expression and association with Iranian-American groups, apart from her employment by the Federal Government.”




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