The robe, the gavel, the ego trip

The temptations must be great. You’ve got the robe, the gavel, the highest perch in the room. You look down on everyone. What you say goes.

You can see how a judge might feel omnipotent.

But if anybody should resist temptation, it’s our judges. They have way too much power to behave like the rest of us might.

“These are ordinary people, and they’re asked to do something extraordinary,” says David Rothman, a retired Los Angeles Superior Court judge. “In every aspect of being a judge, it’s an extraordinary thing.”

Last week, a state review commission publicly admonished its third Orange County Superior Court judge in 2006 for untoward behavior on the bench. Nobody’s perfect, but if someone has to be, shouldn’t it be a judge?

The public spanking from the state Commission on Judicial Performance is meant to act as its own punishment. It doesn’t cost them their jobs, or even a day’s pay.

Public embarrassment is no fun, but don’t you wish they’d also require the offending judge to say publicly “I’m sorry”? How about paying a fine? Doing a little roadside cleanup?

I ask too much, but if you’re on the receiving end of judicial error, your life can go into the dumpster. A public wrist-slap for the judge probably won’t make you feel much better.

The three O.C. judges -- John Watson, Pamela Iles and James Brooks -- were in a way all part of a pattern -- a judge acting more like a potentate.

Their offenses included using court resources on personal business, making inappropriate comments to defendants, and issuing an uncommonly bad ruling.

Rothman draws my attention to a New Yorker magazine cartoon in which a judge looks down from the bench on three lawyers and says, “First, understand that from up here, you all look like a bunch of ants.”

Rothman appreciates a good joke, but he’s serious on the subject of judicial conduct. He wrote the “California Judicial Conduct Handbook,” now in the midst of his third rewrite since its original publication in 1989.

A judge for 20 years, Rothman, 70, says California has a “pretty darn good judiciary” but doesn’t apologize for bad behavior. “I want to be fair,” he says. “When you talk about demeanor, no judge ever is perfect.”

I suggest that a part of Americana is the “colorful judge” and that we don’t want robots or clones on the bench. Rothman concurs heartily and says there’s plenty of room to be a character without losing your character.

“I use the metaphor of a highway,” he says. “It’s a very broad highway, but it has limits. There are edges.”

In that context, a judge’s demeanor is part of judicial ethics, he says. “It’s a question of knowing who you are and where you are,” Rothman says. “When you’re a judge, you have to think that whenever you speak, people listen to you quite differently than when a newspaper reporter speaks or a garage mechanic talks. Your words and actions are taken and looked upon a great deal differently from the way people look at other people.”

Mere mortals sitting all day in court might feel the need to be flip or snarky. I know I would. “A judge’s job is not to become impatient, bullying, showing off,” Rothman says. “You don’t use the courtroom as a place to do your act or to be entertaining people. You’re there to render justice.”

But as our trio of Orange County judges have amply demonstrated (along with others, no doubt, who may have gotten away with questionable but unreported behavior), people are people.

Rothman is perhaps too learned to mix a metaphor and a cliche, but I’m not: If you can’t stand the heat, stay off the bench.

Unlike appellate judges, a Superior Court judge rules his or her domain. There are no colleagues in court with you. When it’s just you, maybe people can look like ants. And, unless you’re careful, come to be seen as ants.

Because we can’t really expect voters to keep track of judges when they come up for retention every six years, it’s crucial that governors appoint rock-solid judges when openings occur.

The bench is no place for second-raters.

Another concurring opinion from Rothman: “If someone says ‘We’re asking an awful lot of them,’ I say, ‘You bet.’ ”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.