Judges

SIGNIFICANCE: Judges play a critical role in the criminal justice system, both as authoritative managers of courtroom proceedings and often as the impartial arbiters of facts, guilt, and sentences. Judges are therefore expected to possess a number of valuable qualities that equip them to meet the high standards and demanding tasks of their office.

The United States tends to employ what is known as an adversary system in courtrooms, which means that the parties in legal disputes are expected to present their cases in their own best interests. In such settings, judges are not expected to assist either side to make its case or even to seek out evidence and facts. Instead, it is expected that such evidence will be made available by the parties either through deliberately presenting pertinent facts or through cross-examination. The judge’s role thus becomes one of enforcing the rules and ensuring that a fair trial takes place. Some describe this role as akin to that of a referee enforcing the rules of a game. However, the judge’s role typically goes beyond the tasks implied by this analogy.

The complexities of US law, coupled with the sometimes tense emotions and deliberate deceptions in the courtroom, can conspire to make the judge’s task of ensuring a fair trial extremely difficult. The judge can be expected to exercise an almost superhuman combination of wisdom, compassion, logic, circumspection, integrity, and objectivity. While they may fall short of this ideal, judges typically are better trained and more disciplined than the general population. Almost all federal and state judges have law degrees and extensive courtroom experience, often as attorneys. Standards for municipal judges are usually less demanding. However, the respect accorded to the profession overall is valuable to judges in maintaining authority in the courtroom.

Deciding Verdicts and Imposing Sentences

In addition to managing courtroom proceedings, judges frequently must pass judgment at the conclusion of a trial. This function is sometimes served partly or wholly by juries. Judges can be called upon to determine guilt or innocence, to pass sentences in criminal trials, and to ascertain damages in civil trials.

In determining guilt or assigning blame, judges often must choose between two well-presented and plausible arguments. Sometimes, however, they are faced with two problematic and poorly presented arguments. Either way, they are frequently forced to make a definitive decision based on conflicting and incomplete information. In doing this, they must draw on a thorough knowledge of the law and a keen understanding of human nature while being familiar with the facts of a case.

Once guilt is determined, sentencing remains a difficult and complex task faced by judges. Most crimes can warrant a range of penalties, depending on the particular circumstances. Judges are expected to weigh such matters as the violence or damage caused by the crime, personal information about the defendant (such as age, criminal record, and evident contrition), and the conclusiveness of the conviction. This last point is especially relevant when a jury, rather than the judge, decides the matter of guilt.

Judges are usually constrained in their sentencing decisions by statutes that limit the types and lengths of sentences. In some cases their sentencing discretion is broad. In others the range of permissible sentences is quite narrow. For example, judges are often bound by guidelines on mandatory sentencing for certain crimes. Many of these guidelines were enacted in the 1970s and 1980s by legislative bodies that were frustrated by the wide divergence of sentences for essentially the same crimes handed down by different judges. Some judges lost their jobs because of their alleged unwillingness to mete out suitably harsh penalties. During the 1980s, for example, several California supreme court justices lost their reelection bids in the wake of public anger that they repeatedly overturned death-penalty convictions. During the late 1990s the federal government and many state governments passed “three-strikes” laws , which required that persons convicted of three felonies be sentenced to life imprisonment. Thus, judges are subjected to legal and political constraints in their sentencing duties that can limit judicial independence.

Judicial Independence

Of all the qualities judges must have, impartiality is perhaps the most important. If a judge possesses personal interests linked to the outcome of a trial or if a judge is subject to political pressure, then the entire criminal justice system can be undermined. Different jurisdictions promote judicial independence in a variety of ways: by establishing lifetime (or at least long-term) judicial appointments, by requiring that judges recuse themselves from cases in which they have a personal interest, by paying them generous salaries to reduce their susceptibility to bribes, or by prohibiting them from practicing law while in office.

Federal judges in the United States are appointed by the president of the United States and confirmed by the US Senate. Similarly, judges in many state systems are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state legislature, although in many other states judges are elected or periodically reaffirmed through a popular vote. In a small number of states judges are nominated by a special nominating commission appointed by a state officer, serve for a fixed “probationary” period, and are then subjected to a popular confirmation vote to earn a full term. In each system of judicial appointment, there is some effort to balance the competing needs of independence and accountability.

The legitimacy of the judiciary relies not only on judicial objectivity and independence but also on the public perception of these qualities. Governments therefore make deliberate efforts to symbolically illustrate judicial independence: courts and judicial chambers are usually separated from executive and legislative buildings; judges wear somber, ecclesiastical-looking black robes; judicial elections are studiously nonpartisan; and courtrooms are frequently adorned with images of scales, swords, and other symbols of justice.

As either a supplement or alternative to the principle of impartiality, the notion of judicial balance is sometimes put forward as an important factor in ensuring justice. That is, multimember courts (such as supreme courts and many appeals courts) are sometimes composed of judges with a range of ideological backgrounds. The idea is that both “liberal” and “conservative” views should be represented on the bench. During the early twenty-first century more controversial efforts were undertaken to ensure that the judges of a given jurisdiction reflect the ethnic, racial, and gender diversity of the populations they serve. These and other efforts to achieve balance among judges challenge the notion of justice as an absolute quality to be sought in each judge’s actions and decisions.

Bibliography

"About Federal Judges." United States Courts, www.uscourts.gov/judges-judgeships/about-federal-judges. Accessed 5 July 2024.

Coffin, Frank M. On Appeal: Courts, Lawyering, and Judging. New York: Norton, 1994. Print.

Gunther, Gerhard. Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge, 2nd ed. Oxford University Press, 2010. Print.

Kelly, Zachary A. Judges and Lawyers. Vero Beach: Rourke, 1999. Print.

McIntosh, Wayne V., and Cynthia L. Cates. Judicial Entrepreneurship: The Role of the Judge in the Marketplace of Ideas. Westport: Greenwood, 1997. Print.

O’Brien, David M., ed. Judges on Judging: Views from the Bench. 2nd ed. Washington, DC: CQ, 2004. Print.

Philips, Susan U. Ideology in the Language of Judges: How Judges Practice Law, Politics, and Courtroom Control. New York: Oxford UP, 1998. Print.

Vile, John R., ed. Great American Judges: An Encyclopedia. 2 vols. Santa Barbara: ABC, 2003. Print.