Xhieron

Would you respect a judge that quotes Harry Potter in official documents on a regular basis?

YES! If the judge used the Harry Potter quotes to advance sound legal reasoning, I’d consider it a potentially clever and humorous way to inject some levity into something that’s otherwise likely mundane and dry. Also I guarantee you a judge has quoted those books in opinions, along with every other popular piece of literature.

I’m sorry to remind everybody incensed here, but the professionals in the profession get to decide what is and is not professional, and the legal profession has a long history of quoting material that’s non-germane. You can be upset about it if you want, but we’re fortunate that judges explain their reasoning at all.

Quoting a book you don’t like doesn’t make a decision bad. A decision is bad if it’s wrong on the law, and as I think everybody in this thread knows, the Bible isn’t the law of the land! Quoting non-law in order to bolster a line of reasoning isn’t good, bad, harmful, or harmless by itself, because the reasoning is the important thing. The Bible has been used to stand for many bad positions–but if it hadn’t been, those positions would still have been bad!

While you lot are pulling out your pitchforks because a judge quoted the Bible for the billionth time in the last 200 years, did any of you even bother to find out what the decisions actually were?

Not what any of this is about, but okay.

Eh… this is kind of nothing. Jurists quote religious texts all the time. Judge Ho–the topic of the article–doesn’t quote the Bible in a particularly eloquent fashion, but he’s far from the first US judge to use a biblical quote to make a point.

And yes, they quote the Quran too–just not as much since not as many of them are familiar with it. Law is a reasoning profession, and people who practice it like finding analogies and drawing distinctions. If they see that a set of facts is like or unlike something from ancient history, they’re likely to bring it up. They’ll bring up song lyrics, mythology, popular proverbs, ancient legal texts, moral fables–anything with any reasoning or legal thinking in it.

Trump appointees are deserving of criticism for horrible jurisprudence, terrible judgment and insight, and piss-poor qualifications. There are plenty of things to hate about lots of them, but “they quote the Bible sometimes” isn’t one.

Have fun. If you have your way, it might be for the last time.

How much are you getting paid? I only wish I was as passionate about my job as you are about yours.

Yup. Appeal it, drag it out, mire it up. If it’s good for the goose, it’s good for the gander.

That’s nice.

Just to be on the safe side, better vote blue anyway.

Democrats all the way down the ticket, national, state, and local. The Democrats are the party of human rights. That means reproductive rights, the right to privacy, the right to free expression and bodily integrity, the right to be free from government interference in one’s person and home, the right to vote, the right to criticize the government, the right to be paid a day’s wage for a day’s work and the right to bargain collectively for it, and the right to believe and practice or not practice the faith of your choosing, even if it offends the fascists in your local church.

Vote blue and save the Republic, polls be damned.

AI = Absent Indians

Jail them, and jail their “volunteer campaign manager” for conspiracy.