Singing Loudly

Being a member of the local bar association has given me all sorts of benefits which include the recent surge of Judicial election letters. Typically I treat them like any of the credit card application letters I receive: rip them into many pieces and throw them away. However, I decided to open one the other day and found an amusing letter. The methods the writer uses to sway the voters is entirely too obvious.

First it starts by saying, "You won't find Joe Somebody's portrait in Court Number 5000, where he presides." This is strange to me because all the Judge's have their portraits in their courtroom. The irony is that right beside this sentence is a rather large photo of the Judge in his robe at his bench. I guess the same "humility" that he carries to his courtroom doesn't apply to reelection literature.

Second sentence, "No special Judicial license plates hang on his 1996 Dodge pickup truck." He hits the humility nail here twice and shows that he's just another good old boy. I am not really getting what this has to do with how good of a judge he has been.

Third sentence, "Neither will you see Judge Somebody walk into a courtroom without a coat and tie." What Judge wouldn't be dressed professionally? "And he never takes the bench without a robe or his well-worn copy of the constitution." This must be a conjunctive disjunctive? I'm really curious how often he has to flip through the constitution during a criminal proceeding, because I have never seen a district court judge take time to check the constitution. If there is a matter that requires a serious look at the constitution the court would undoubtedly recess so that research could be done.

Then there are a lot of endorsements by lawyers about how good he is as a judge. And the mention of how important his faith is in making decisions on the bench. Actually, after going through credentials the writers says, "But Judge Somebody relies on more than his own experience to form his decisions. A man of deep faith, the son of a minister routinely prays, asking that the Almighty guide his steps." This part gets me the most. I'm not atheist, but I still want to vote for a Judge who bases his judicial decisions on the law of our country not on his faith in "the Almighty." The funny thing is this letter is probably enough to sway a lot of voters to reelect him even though it says nothing of substance about what he does on the Bench.