Wednesday, November 6, 2002

In its issue of Oct. 16, The Citizen had a front-page article which identified lawyers about to be considered for appointment to the {Fayette] Superior Court post to be vacated when Judge Ben Miller retires on Dec. 31.

The article created an impression that lawyers were lining up for a real plum appointment, a kind of "to die for" job. Please allow me to comment on that.

By normal standards, our judges are well paid. They do work indoors, in air conditioned buildings, with no heavy lifting, no dust and few loud noises. The people who work with them and around them are usually quite polite and respectful. So far, so good.

But there are other aspects of this job which are not so great. Judges are civil servants, on the state payroll, and they are exposed to all manner of rules and regulations, also known as red tape, which they have to put up with as much as our sometimes grumbling teachers put up with theirs. They quite often work for hours in windowless rooms which deprive them of all sensory contacts with the outside world, and some of what they have to listen to is, frankly, quite boring. There is also no pay for overtime, and no bonuses.

In superior courts, our judges are expected to handle a lot of so-called domestic relations cases, our euphemism for family-splitting divorces and battles over the custody of children. They also have to confront, day in day out, misfits who commit serious crimes, according them rights which they never accorded their victims, and then they have to decide what to do with them. That takes a lot of patience and self-restraint, and it is not cheery work. You don't go home at night bragging to your spouse, Honey, today I helped break up 20 families! Or, Sweetheart, today I handed out over 1,000 years of jail time!

I won't comment on how judges have to put up with lawyers. While some lawyers can be a joy and truly helpful to a judge, others can dawdle interminably and seek to trip the judge in various ways. Judges also have to put up with people who try to butter them up, and they need to resist flattery. A lawyer who is lively, witty, and full of initiative often has to curb all that so that, as a judge, he may stay anonymous in the background to protect not only his impartiality but even the appearance of it, as is expected of him.

When a lawyer expresses willingness to be considered for a judgeship, it is unfair to assume he is merely seeking a plum job. The job has both its good and its bad aspects. It requires dedication, patience, courtesy, wisdom, scholarship, and of course an innate sense of fairness. Efficiency in caseload management helps too, but because our judicial system seems to have built-in inefficiencies designed to protect people's rights, most of our judges end up overworked.

The lawyers who are aware of all this and yet still offer to do this work deserve some measure of respect. When a lawyer has a 5-year or 10-year office lease, a trained staff, regular clients, and outstanding cases some of which it may take three years to conclude, the thought of even trying to disentangle oneself from all that is obviously difficult. As soon as a lawyer lets it be known he might accept a judicial appointment, uncertainty over the lawyer's continuing availability can also mean new clients dry up for a while.

We should not make it more difficult for dedicated lawyers to offer their services as judges by describing the position in terms which make them look as mere office seekers looking for a plum job. Perhaps some of them are, but it'd be unfair to assume all of them are and to portray them that way.

Just as our American sense of fairness impels us to give criminal defendants the benefit of the doubt, we should be able to do the same for lawyers. Let's ease up a little bit on the negative feelings toward lawyers. The person who'll defend you against the oppressiveness of government when you get in the soup up to your ears will turn out to be a lawyer, and the person who'll force the government to respect your rights will be a judge who used to be a lawyer.

Personally, I'd say "Thanks" to the lawyers who expressed their willingness to serve us in the capacity of superior court judge. It takes guts to do it.

Claude Y. Paquin

Fayetteville

cypaquin@msn.com