A blupete Essay

Objectivity, Part 8 to blupete's Essay
"On Judges"

The quality or character of being objective, viz., to be focused on external realities versus one's own unsupported internal views, is of fundamental importance to the judge. A judge is to maintain, and project at all times, a sense of objectivity. In an absolute sense, however, such objectivity is an impossibility! Judges, like all other humans, are obliged to operate from their own perspectives.

Cardozo:

"There is in each of us a stream of tendency, whether you choose to call it philosophy or not, which gives coherence and direction to thought and action. Judges cannot escape that current any more than other mortals. All their lives, forces which they do not recognize and cannot name, have been tugging at them - inherited instincts, traditional beliefs, acquired convictions; and the resultant is an outlook on life, a conception of social needs. ... In this mental background every problem finds it setting. We may try to see things as objectively as we please. None the less, we can never see them with any eyes except our own. ...
Deep below consciousness are other forces, the likes and the dislikes, the predilections and the prejudices, the complex of instincts and emotions and habits and convictions, which make the [person], whether [he or she] be litigant or judge."13
NEXT

Or, GO TO
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Found this material Helpful?


[Essays, First Series]
[Essays, Second Series]
[Essays, Third Series]
[Essays, Fourth Series]
[Subject Index]
[Home]
Peter Landry

2011 (2019)