way all
initiative. In politics the judge is recognized as being a "dead one."
After a few years on the bench only the exceptional man can fling off
the shackles of his profession and get back into real life. He ceases
from fighting, he is not energetic.

As a good judge he must be firm but restrained. He may not be too
emphatic. Every inducement is toward making him lazy, fat, and easy.
Before him everyone bows and waits for him to speak. He is the
absolute boss within the four walls of his court-room. The only
restraining influences are the reactions from the lawyers and
spectators who are before him. Their opinions can not be openly
expressed; they are reserved until afterwards. If a judge really has
any idea of the high esteem in which he is held, let him find out what
is being said of him after the case is over, as the clients and
lawyers are going down in the elevator, or what the rear benches have
been whispering.

He probably has a suspicion of this, but no matter how tolerant he
desires to be, there is the temptation to show that his authority is
supreme; that when the lawyers begin arguing a point on which he has
formed an opinion to cut them off; when the witness is trembling on
the stand as to whether the accident happened on a Thursday or a
Friday, to ask her, "Don't you know that Thursday was on the 16th of
April last year," which of course she does not. There is the
temptation to feel that he can never be wrong; that a question may be
reargued, but that he is not going to change his opinion.

The possibility is that the judge is a mild sort of bully. But it is
not always safe to go on the assumption that being a bully he is also
a coward. He may be, but on a trial the odds are too much in his
favor. If the lawyer wants to fight the judge, he has a great deal at
stake; he may awaken so strong a prejudice that the judge knowing the
rules of the game better than he does, may beat him on a technicality.
On the other hand it is a mistake for the lawyer to be subservient and
too cringing. Being a bully, the judge is apt to take advantage of his
position. The best policy is to appeal to his human instincts as a
man. He may be decent in spite of critics of the courts to the
contrary notwithstanding. If he is kindly treated he will respond.

In New York judges were appointed until about 1846, when there was a
popular upheaval and the constitution was changed, and they have ever
since been elective, with the e