TABULA RASA

Sunday morning. Millions of Americans wake up, and after finishing their morning coffee or tea and ablutions, they log on to the web to see what Rumpole has to say about the upcoming football games. OK- maybe its just a few dozen or more bored attorneys in Dade, but the point is, all good things must come to an end, and thus has the 2006 football season begun to fade into memories of points scored, and over/under bets cashed.

“Hi. My Name is Horace.”

Group: “Hi Horace.”

“I’m addicted to football.”

Group: “One day at a time Horace.”

Anyway, it’s tough enough coming up with things to say 4-5 times a week, and without football to write about, the Sunday post may well go on vacation until pre-season in August- which is 167 days away, but who’s counting?

It occurs to us that there are other voices out there waiting to be heard. We were quoted in that Channel 6 hatchet job as being a “frustrated writer in a lawyer’s suit” and there must be others so similarly situated.

Indeed, one wonders if there isn’t a robed reader among us, who sits in court, pondering the arrant nonsense and wondering what to do about it.

Now if some Judge is so inclined to write about whatever crosses their judicial mind, there are two ways to go about it:

1) Remain a mystery. It’s tougher than it sounds, and not because mindless fools will go around all day and point at your colleagues and aver in a knowing manner they are indeed the offending party. No, the real problem is that you can’t write about the real juicy stuff. Say some lawyer comes prancing into court, and for some reason they (while practicing to ascend to the bench) say something really stupid. The minute you write about it, your identity is revealed.

You see, to remain anonymous, you must become a master of deception, always on guard against revealing some tidbit that will unmask your identity. So to remain anonymous means you forsake writing about the really good stuff, as well as the minutiae of your day. However, there is probably some cannon against a judge commenting on an on going matter, so any judge who rises to the occasion will be left to write about loftier subjects- perhaps about the awnings on the front of the REGJB, or the lack of any plan for state court to adopt an electronic filing system that the feds seem to have gotten right.

2) Write under your own name. Ah, to be free from the burden of suspicion. To be able to walk down the street a free man/woman, without your picture being in the equivalent of the Au Bon Pain’s wanted section of the post office. But of course, you will be mocked by the lawyers, criticized by people who can’t even write their own name without a grammatical error, and subject to the scrutiny of the press. But if you’re creative and have something to say, you have all week on the bench, during boring voire dire and such, to work on your column.

The welcome mat is out. The blog on Sundays is a Tabula Rasa (for our robed readers, that means “clean slate”.)

And for inspiration, we leave you with the words of one of our favourite presidents, speaking at the Sorbonne (again, for our robed readers, that’s in Paris. Sorry, but we just can’t resist baiting someone to take mouse and keyboard in hand, and rise to the challenge.) :


It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

Theodore Roosevelt.
"Citizenship in a Republic," April 23, 1910

See You In Court, wondering who wants to be the “writer in the arena”.