In politics the judge is recognized as being a "dead one."
After a few years on the bench only the exceptional man can fling off
the shackles of his profession and get back into real life. He ceases
from fighting, he is not energetic.
As a good judge he must be firm but restrained. He may not be too
emphatic. Every inducement is toward making him lazy, fat, and easy.
Before him everyone bows and waits for him to speak. He is the
absolute boss within the four walls of his court-room. The only
restraining influences are the reactions from the lawyers and
spectators who are before him. Their opinions can not be openly
expressed; they are reserved until afterwards. If a judge really has
any idea of the high esteem in which he is held, let him find out what
is being said of him after the case is over, as the clients and
lawyers are going down in the elevator, or what the rear benches have
been whispering.
He probably has a suspicion of this, but no matter how tolerant he
desires to be, there is the temptation to show that his authority is
supreme; that when the lawyers begin arguing a point on which he has
formed an opinion to cut them off; when the witness is trembling on
the stand as to whether the accident happened on a Thursday or a
Friday, to ask her, "Don't you know that Thursday was on the 16th of
April last year," which of course she does not.
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