Recall Backers Misguided

The recent account in your newspaper and other news media of the threatened recall of Judge Nancy Wieben Stock focuses upon the misconception of the function of the judge in our society and the broad use of the recall petition.

We ask our judges that they provide the stability of our society in applying the laws. We cannot ask for more because we have assigned to the legislature and to the people the function of passing the laws, and have restricted the judiciary to the rules to be used in interpreting and applying these laws.

Neither the people nor the legislature can foresee with certainty and precision particular and individual problems which are created by broad statements of policy which we tell the judge to apply in the cases which are presented to him or her. We can only ask that within these rules the judge act fairly, impartially and with the wisdom that came with the person.

As a result the court is faced constantly with problems neither the legislature, the electors nor the parties to a case can solve themselves. The judge’s role is to choose between the alternatives and not to make broad social policy. In many instances, the result is unpopular and sometimes ends in unforeseen tragedy, which certainly is not wished for by the judge.

We can only fault performance of the judge when he or she refuses to apply the law or perform their duties with honesty and impartially. To lay blame on a judicial act performed within the law by using the qualities we ask of a judge is an unreasoning and emotional response to a result which in the first instance should have been corrected by perhaps the parties or a wiser set of publicly adopted rules. To require a judge to respond to public opinion, clamor and indignation is to require the judge to ignore the law and to act only in response to public clamor and pressure. This requirement would destroy the function of the judiciary that our system of government has for over 200 years required of the courts.

The sole motive of the circulators of the recall petition against Judge Nancy Wieben Stock is to pressure her and other judges to respond to the noisiest and loudest of public voices in order for the judge to keep his or her office. Recall should be reserved for judges who are corrupt and do respond to public clamor and not to the law.

The measure of judicial performance is not the result even if extremely unpopular but the performance of the judge in arriving at the decision. This is a lesson we all learned as schoolchildren but forget when an unpopular judicial decision is made by the very rules we have created. I do hope that before signing a petition for any judicial recall, we inquire of the motives of the petition circulator.

PAUL EGLY

Retired Judge

Laguna Beach