James M. Redwine

Rural Court Judges

Judicial Isolation

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This week starts the seven-week online course for Special & Ethical Considerations for the Rural Court Judge sponsored by the National Judicial College (six weeks online meetings with one week break in the middle). As a member of the NJC faculty, I have helped teach this course for fifteen years. The other faculty members are judges from Nevada, Mississippi, Tennessee and California. The student judges preside in rural trial courts in several states. We meet via Zoom. Our first week’s session will concentrate on the topic of Judicial Isolation involving rural court judges. The lead faculty member is Judge Pat Lenzi from Nevada.

Judges who serve in smaller jurisdictions often find themselves with the warmth of law books as their main colleagues. Due to the ethical restrictions on judges to not discuss legal matters, judges who serve in sparse areas with few other judges often find themselves with no one to help them test many important decisions before peoples’ lives are dramatically affected.

As a judge for more than forty years in a rural court environment that had only two judges, I know the need for unbiased, informed, non-partisan input in many vital decisions. Of course, it is not just judges who can benefit from sage, well intentioned consultation. Many of the techniques for dealing with judicial isolation can be applied to help non-judges make better choices in life. As most couples come to realize, when their relationships hit rough spots, it is often because the parties do not make the effort to communicate; they isolate themselves and their partners. What often follows are misunderstandings that can lead to unintended bad consequences.

So the first suggestion to deal with isolation that may lead to bad decisions is for us to set aside our pride and reach out to others, especially to others who have our best interests at heart. With Rural Court Judges that might be a fellow rural court judge in our own or a nearby jurisdiction. With non-judges it might be a neighbor, a clergyman or work acquaintance.

Another help can be involvement in judicial associations or continuing judicial education meetings, for example, participation in NJC courses or civic clubs, such as Rotary, the Elks, BPW and numerous other service groups. Such work helps us break out of our isolation and, also, can do a lot of good for our local society without requiring the exchange of intimacy or the discomfort of too much closeness. We can set our own limits and honor those of others while forging lines of open communication when desired.

Society needs its Rural Court Judges to maintain independence so that a judge’s decisions are respected. It also needs judges who are integrated into their rural jurisdictions. This delicate balance may be difficult to achieve. But rural court judges do have practices and procedures they can implement and follow. The same is true for all non-judges.

We often fail to maintain that perfect balance between isolation and involvement. However, just as all other legal education, with study and practice, our Rural Court Judges will be able to have their decisions respected while they positively participate in their communities.

The Harder Right

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Gentle Reader do not despair. We have reached the final week of our discussion of the Internet course for Rural Court Judges. You will no doubt recall our previous sessions on the scintillating topics of Rural Court Case and Court Management. Well, the best is yet to come. I only wish we could hear from the student judges from Alaska to Maryland who attended the seven week National Judicial College course that I helped teach. Surely they were filled with the same excitement I felt as an Indiana University freshman law student during Contracts classes, perhaps much as you have been while reading Gavel Gamut the past few weeks. But, all good things must come to an end so let us summarize what we have studied.

We started with the proposition that the most essential criterion for being a Rural Court judge, or any judge, is good character. Intelligence and industry are fine attributes but ring hollow if a judge cannot choose the harder right over the easier wrong. As Socrates told his Athenian judges who tried to have it both ways, “Your job is to do justice, not make a present of it.”

You may remember the prescient observation made by Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) when he wrote of his impressions of America in Democracy in America: “In America practically every political question eventually becomes a judicial one.” Of course, for those questions to be answered properly the judiciary must be fair and impartial and the public must have confidence they are; politics must not enter into a judge’s decisions.

That astute one-time Hoosier Abraham Lincoln who knew a little bit about politics and a lot about judging saw the legal profession’s role as to first be peacekeepers. To keep the peace judges must enjoy the public’s confidence in the absolute impartiality of judicial decisions. Character is the cloak that must robe a judge.

And when a judge is faced with those difficult cases where he or she is tempted to slip off the blindfold and tip the scales of justice, the only refuge a judge has is his or her character. That is what judges heard during our Internet course and what Bobby Kennedy meant when he said, “Some see things as they are and ask, why? I dream what things could be and ask, why not?”

Of course, society often rewards those of weak character and severely punishes those who choose the harder right. But that pressure is what judges must withstand. So where we start and end our course on Rural Court judges is the same proposition: judges must keep the blindfold on and their thumbs off the scale.