Monmouth weekly herald. [volume] (Freehold, N.J.) 1854-1860, 1855-04-18
What Constitutes a Good Judge.

In the first place, the good Judge should
be profoundly learned in all the learning
of the law, and he must know how to use
that learning. Will any one stand up
here to deny that? In this day, boastful,
glorious for its advancing popular, profess
sional, scientific, and all education, will
any one disgrace himself by doubling the
necessity Of deep and continued studies,
and various and thorough attachments to
the bench ? He is to know not only the
law which you make and the Legislature
makes, not constitutional and statute law
alone, but that other, ampler, boundless
Jurisprudence, the common law, which the
successive generations of the State have
silently built up; that old code of freedom
which we brought with US in the May
flower and Arabella, but which in the pro
gress of centuries we have ameliorated
and enriched, adopted wisely to the neces-
sites of busy, prosperous and wealthy
community-that he must know. And
where to find it? In volumes which you
must count by hundreds, by thousands;
filling libraries; exacting long labors; the
labors of lifetime, distracted from bust
ness, from politics; but assisted by taking
part in an active judicial administration;
such labors as produced the wisdom and
won the fame of Parsons and Marshall,
and Kent, and Story, and Holt, and Mans
field. If your system disappointment and
tenure does not present motive, help
for such labors and such learning: if it
discourages, if it disparages them, in so
far it is failure.
In the next place, he must be a man,
not merely upright; not merely honest
and we'll intentioned-th of course-but
a man who will not respect persons in
Judgment. And does not every one here
agree to this also? Diminishing, for mo-
ment, all theories about the mode Of APP
pointing him or the time for which he shall
hold office, sure am, we all demand, that
as far as human virtue, assisted by the
best contrivances of human wisdom, can
attain to it, he shall not respect persons
in Judgment. He shall know nothing
about the parties; everything about the
case. He shall do everything for justice;
nothing for himself; nothing for his friend !;
nothing for his patron; nothing for his
sovereign. If, On the one side is the ex-
ecutive power, and the legislature, and
the people-the sources of his honors, the
givers of his daily bread-and on the 9TH
er an individual nameless and odius, his
eye is to see neither, great or small; at
tending only to the trepidations of the
balance" If a law is passed by unani-
nous legislature, clamored for by the gen.
eral voice of the public. and a cause is be-
fore him on it, in which the whole commu-
nifty is on one side and an individual
nameless or odious on the other, and he
believes it to be against the Constitution
he must so declare tor there is no
Judge. If Athens comes there to demand
that the cup of hemlock be put to the lips
of the wisest of men; and he belives that
he has not corrupted the youth, nor omitted
to soorship the gods of the city, nor introduce
nepo divinities Of his oaons, he must deliver
him, although the thunder light on the I'M
terrified brow.-Rutils Choate.