It is difficult to speak about the judges, for it behooves us all to
treat with the utmost respect the high office of judge; and our judges
as a whole are brave and upright men. But there is need that those who
go wrong should not be allowed to feel that there is no condemnation of
their wrongdoing. A judge who on the bench either truckles to the mob or
bows down before a corporation; or who, having left the bench to become
a corporation lawyer, seeks to aid his clients by denouncing as enemies
of property all those who seek to stop the abuses of the criminal rich;
such a man performs an even worse service to the body politic than the
Legislator or Executive who goes wrong. In no way can respect for the
courts be so quickly undermined as by teaching the public through the
action of a judge himself that there is reason for the loss of such
respect. The judge who by word or deed makes it plain that the corrupt
corporation, the law-defying corporation, the law-defying rich man,
has in him a sure and trustworthy ally, the judge who by misuse of the
process of injunction makes it plain that in him the wage-worker has a
determined and unscrupulous enemy, the judge who when he decides in an
employers' liability or a tenement house factory case shows that he has
neither sympathy for nor understanding of those fellow-citizens of his
who most need his sympathy and understanding; these judges work as much
evil as if they pandered to the mob, as if they shrank from sternly
repressing violence and disorder.
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