I started out as a reporter covering the criminal and civil courts in Ohio. I got to read every piece of paper filed with the clerk’s office, a bottomless source of stories. These were the days when people still trusted reporters and talked to us. I hung out with the prosecutors and cops, and wandered in and out of the judges’ chambers.
It horrifies English lawyers when I suggest there is merit in electing judges rather than allowing them to be appointed by the diversity-obsessed Judicial Appointments Commission
After the closing gavel, judges, prosecutors, defence lawyers and we reporters would assemble in chief judge Kessler’s chambers for a whiskey. He kept a spittoon by his desk, a cigar in his jaws and hens at his farm. They produced green eggs, which he would gift to his cronies.
In 39 American states, voters got to know the measure of those putting themselves forward for judicial office.
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