Thank you very much for hosting me at the Bucks County Justice Center last Wednesday. The opportunity to closely view the judicial process reaffirmed my conviction that judging is a discipline of and for good-hearted people who strive to fairly balance the scale of justice between legal stability and freedom, and it confirmed that the law is a direction in which I undoubtedly hope to travel.
Aside from gathering a more complete understanding of the lesser-known elements of judging—a worthwhile exercise in itself—I watched you bring a refreshing dose of human-to-human common sense to an otherwise strictly procedural (and thereby artificial) process. You reminded me that judging, like most careers, is, first and foremost, about people. Of course, the term “people” to which I refer includes plaintiffs and defendants, but “people” also includes attorneys, witnesses, court marshals, “minute clerks,” the public, law clerks, and, of course, judges.…