33rd / 424th District Courts

At http://www.jdbliss.com/ is a site worth visiting. It's about the personal side of lawyering -- about the 'take care of yourself' side which most of us leave until we hit a personal crisis of some sort.

I really don't want this venue to become politically charged, but the following has some awful truths with a tad bit of humor.

About Physicians
A) The number of physicians in the U.S. is 700,000.

The House passed legislation that would prevent federal courts, including the Supreme Court, from hearing cases challenging the words "under God," a part of the pledge for the past 50 years. See House Blocks Court on Pledge Case Rulings By JIM ABRAMS Associated Press Writer (Source: http://news.findlaw.com/ap/a/w/1153/9-24-2004/20040924000017_29.html).

This could make a huge change on the Court. At our recent annual judicial conference we had a wonderful analysis of this by Professor Erwin Chemerinsky, noted constitutional law scholar and media commentator on legal issues who is the Alston & Bird Professor of Law at Duke Law School. He does an awesome talk on current constitutional issues and is able to talk about every case one ever heard of and not only analyze the decision but explain precisely why each justice voted as they did and trace backward through other cases that predicted how the justice would vote. It was an amazing hour and a half with no notes at all!

We normally hear that in the perjorative, don't we? Perhaps along with a joke about lawyers, or judges? Do we try to defend or refute those comments or do we offer rejoinder with yet another attempt at what some would call humor.

Being the only district judge in an area can make for a lonely existence in terms of relationships. At best, no relationship is perfect whether it's with your spouse, your best friend or a casual or business acquaintance. But almost every relationship the judge had before election, or would like to cultivate afterwards, is problematical.

The judge is required to not only be fair and impartial but always to also appear to be so. And if he is seen at lunch too often with one attorney, or never with another, then at least some number of people begin to perceive bias for or against an attorney. And when the judge has come from the community, as all judges in rural districts do (at least for the county of the judge's residence), then all of the relationships that were built up over the years often suffer.

As the "days in the life of a country judge" go by, a number of things shape the judicial character of that person. One such item crossed my path today.

I recently ran across a quote by Judge William Young sentencing the terrorist Richard Reid (the "shoe bomber") and the statements by the judge really struck me.

It struck me that this statement by the judge is as good an explanation of the freedom that we enjoy in this country, and of the role of the judiciary within that context, as I've ever seen. I would hope to always keep this in mind as I carry out my role as the caretaker of the 33rd Judicial District Court of Texas.