Judges are not crazy, but the political context requires us to assert that truism on behalf of other judges regularly. Judicial ethics do not allow us to defend ourselves directly even in states like mine, where judges arrive by partisan election. This is why Donald Trump could claim that the judge who drew one of his fraud cases could not be fair because the judge was “a Mexican” — -and the assumption, unspoken or not, was that everybody knows the President of the United States hates Mexicans and therefore no Mexican judge could ever be fair to him.
I tire of being told that my dual citizenship in the Cherokee Nation disqualifies me from hearing a case between Cherokee tribal government and the United States. If that is so, then exactly how can the Cherokee Nation ever get a fair shake in federal court?
It is a fundamental requirement to hold judicial office that you be willing to bite the hand that feeds you. You take a government paycheck and every criminal case you hear involves the organization that pays you on one side. In a credible legal system, no kangaroos need apply. On the civil side as well, the acid test of a fair judicial system is whether a government can lose in its own courts.
The attack on the mental health of judges in my generation centered on Brown v. Board of Education. Chief Justice Earl Warren…
