CREED FOR A JUDGE
Ford, John
Creed for a Judge An Editorial By JOHN FORD Judge of the New York Supreme Court {Ccpyr ght, 1916, by the Newspaper Enterprise Association) WHEN I was elected to the bench ot the supreme court, I...
...Yet it is the CHEAPEST OF HUMAN QUALITIES...
...Let them and all others understand once for all that the ordinary citizen is going to more and more insistently demand and more and more discriminated exercise the right to select his own public servants, judicial as well as legislative and executive, and hold them more and more directly accountable to himself alone...
...It is that attitude toward the public which in large measure has brought about the nation-wide hostility to courts and judges...
...Those duties call for no higher mental or moral equipment than do those devolving upon executive or legislative officials...
...Merely one department of our popular government entrusted with the performance of certain public duties...
...Another mistaken view held by certain more or less distinguished members of the bar is that the election of judges should be committed to them and that the sovereign people should have no more to do with the making of judges than to elect the candidates 0. K.'ed by these self-appointed guardians of the bench...
...There is and has l;en altogether too much of a tendency on the part of the American judiciary to consider itself a sort of esoteric cult...
...What is the judiciary...
...Dignity is commonly regarded as the one indispensable earmark of a judge...
...In other words, 1 determined that I should not cease to be an ordinary American citizen through the fortuitous circumstances of my election to an important public office...
...That conception of the judicial office is one irreconcilable with our democracy, in which EVERY CITIZEN IS HIMSELF A KING...
...Under the English system, JUDGES WERE ROYAL, AGENTS, commissioned by the monarch to exercise kingly prerogatives, and they were naturally regarded as an exalted class of beings, enshrouded by the same divinity which "doth hedge a king...
...The imported English butler and the colored head waiter possess it to a degree...
...With a little practice the meanest of men can acquire all the characteristics of dignity, but they are a sorry substitute for those other qualifications which combine to make a competent and just judge...
...The feeling that judges are made of superior clay we inherited along with the common law from England...
...I have no objection to wearing my ramrod on the bench, but I do claim the right to lay it aside with my gown and .to go forth to mingle with my fellow-mortals exactly as I did before I became a judge...
...Creed for a Judge An Editorial By JOHN FORD Judge of the New York Supreme Court {Ccpyr ght, 1916, by the Newspaper Enterprise Association) WHEN I was elected to the bench ot the supreme court, I laid down two rules of conduct for myself which were: that I should not cease to be a human being and that the ramrod of judicial dignity should not be strapped to my spinal column, but merely sewed into the back of my official robe, so that I might be rid of it immediately whenever I doffed that flowing garment...
...It is easy to assume a solemn mien, to adopt a stiff and stately carriage and to TALK FROM THE BOTTOM OF ONE'S CHEST...
Vol. 8 • December 1916 • No. 12
