The Placer herald., 1856-03-29
What Constitutes a good Judge.

Hear what in the opinion of the Hon
Rufus Choate of Massachusetts, constitutes a
good Judge. Mr.. G. says:
"In the first place good Judge should be
profoundly learned in all the learning of the
law and he must know how to use that learn
ing. Will any one stand up here to deny
that? In this day, boastful, glorious for its
advancing, popular, professional, scientific,
and all education, will any disgrace himself
by doubling the necessity of deep and con-
tinued studies, and varied and through at
tainments to the bench! He is to know,
not merely the law which you make, and the
Legislature makes, not constitutional and
statute alone, but that other, ampler that
boundless jurisprudence the common law,
which the successive generations of the State
have silently built up that old code of free
dom, which we brought with us in the May
Flower and Arabella, but which in the pro-
gress of centuries we ameiorated and enrich
ed, and adapted wisely to the necessities of
a busy, prosperous, and wealthy community
that he must know. And where to find it
In volumes which you must count by hun
dreds-by thousands filing libraries exact
ing long labors the labors of a lifetime; !;
distracted from business-from politics but
resisted by taken part in an active judicial
administration; such abors as produced the
wisdom and won the fame Of Parsons and
Marshall, and Kent and Story, and Holt and
Mansfield. If your system of appointment
and tensures does not present motive, a
help for such labors and such learning, if it
dscourages, if it dsparages them, then is it
so far failure.
In the next place, he must be man, not
merely upright, not merely honest and well in
tentioned-this of course-but a man who
will not respect persons IN judgement And
does not every one here agree to this also
Dismissing, for a moment, all theories about
the mode of APPOINTING 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 contrvance of human wisdom can
attain to it, he shall not respect persons in
judgement 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. lfon
one side is the executive power and the
legislature, and the people-the sources Of
his honors the giver Of his daily bread
and on the other an individual nameless and
odious, his eye is to see neither, great nor
small, attending only TO the "trepidations of
the balance." If law is passed by unani-
NOUS legislature, clamored for by general
voice Of the public, and a cause is before him
on it. in which the whole community is on
one side and an individual nameess or odious
on the other and he believes it to be against
the constitution he must SO declare it-or
there is no Judge. If Athens comes there
TO demand that the cup Of hemlock be put
to the Ii ips of the wisest men; and he believes
that he has not corrupted the youth nor
omitted to worship the gods of the city, nor
introduced new divinities Of his own, he
must deliver him, although the thunder light
on the unterrified brow.