In praise of naked judges

Like everybody else in the legal community I'm following with prurient interest the trials and tribulations of embattled associate chief justice of Manitoba, Lori Douglas, who was ousted by a disgruntled client of her husband's law firm. Nude photographs of her were posted, apparently without her knowledge, on a racy website devoted to casual inter-racial relationships. The inescapable inference is that she leads a liberated and sexually adventurous private life.

I say, leave her and her husband to it. It is, after all, their private life. I think it most unfortunate that she has been forced to step aside, since, by all accounts, she is an excellent judge.

I do not subscribe to the theory that judges should only be selected from the ranks of the bland, the colourless and the sexless. There used to be an old adage, which I haven't heard repeated often in these days of political correctness, that "no person should be appointed to be a judge unless they have been thrown out of a bar at least once in their life".

The point of the adage being that we want men and women who are possessed of a rich life experience to be our judges. It is not enough merely to have a superior intellect and a good legal mind to be a good judge. The wisdom which we expect of our judges can only really be acquired through a life lived robustly and with passion. How else can we expect them to understand the motives and the foibles of the litigants appearing before them, and where else can they develop the experience needed to ferret the truth out of the testimony of witnesses?

Unlike the United States, which thrives on salacious news about its best and brightest, Canada typically has allowed those in public life to have a modicum of privacy in their private lives, and I am saddened to see that tradition slipping. If courthouse gossip is a reliable indicator, Judge Douglas is only the latest in a long line of oversexed judges. Unfortunately she is being pilloried in the press, whereas her sexy brethren of years gone by endured only courthouse gossip and went on to serve the nation, and the law, admirably in their public lives.