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REFLECTION 15: Summum Jus Summa Injuria

To be admitted to the bar is to be admitted to that area in the courtroom that is closed to everyone save the judge, the attorneys, and the witnesses. In times past, those ambitious to become attorneys attended court in order to familiarize themselves with the law, sitting as near as possible in order to hear better. When they were believed to have learned enough to practice, they were allowed to pass the bar that prevented spectators from intruding upon the workings of the court.

I passed the bar long ago, and have appeared in court more than a thousand times; yet I am not permitted to have even a small penknife on my person. I might (as the law supposes) produce that fearsome weapon, mount to the bench in a dazzling leap, and employ it to slice open His Honor’s gizzard. This in a city in which ten thousand dojos teach their students how to kill with their bare hands.

The bailiff is armed by law and custom, and everyone knows it. What far fewer know is that most judges have guns concealed by their robes. The police, who do know it, and who know too that it is a violation of the law, wink at it. If in an instant I were to become violently insane, I might slaughter one or two persons with my deadly penknife. The judge (judges assure us) will not yield to insanity, since judges never do.

I have known judges who thought themselves God; it would seem that they were right. I was in court when another ridiculed a woman because she was pregnant. A judge once ruled that fleeing from the police gave the police reasonable cause to arrest, question, search, and lock up the terrified boy who fled. Who wouldn’t flee from the police, if he (or she) thought he could escape?

There’s a common thread running through all this, or so it seems to me. It is giving in to fear, the surrender that used to be named cowardice. The boy was afraid of the police for good reason; but the police were afraid of him, simply because he feared them. The judge who ridiculed the pregnant woman had at last found someone he felt certain could never harm him, a victim who could not strike back under any circumstances. The judge who thinks himself God has found a fantasy that makes him safe, God being beyond the range of human weapons.

The judges who bring their pistols to court fear even disarmed men and women, knowing in their hearts that some of their decisions should get them lynched.