A reader on my judge story:

“I don’t deny that the story could have taken place in England, but it’s told, firsthand, but Judge Learned Hand, the man ‘most often not nominated to the Supreme Court.’ He was a DC District Court Judge, and would share a carriage to work with Oliver Wendell Holmes, Hand getting off first, at the District Court, and Holmes continuing on to the Supreme Court. One day, Hand recounts, he got off the carriage and called out to Holmes- knowing it would get his goat, ‘Good day, sir! Do justice!’ Holmes called him back. ‘I know what you’re going to say,” Hand said, grinning. ‘That is not my job,’ Holmes said, sternly pointing his finger. ‘My job is to administer the law, nothing more.’
“Holmes also had a famous line about how ‘the people’ could ‘go to hell in a handbasket, if that’s what they want. I will just apply the laws they pass.’”

[Derb] That sounds right. It was a vague memory, and just sounded more British than American, somehow. Worth pointing out, too, that prosecutors can’t make excuses like this, as they often have to decide which bits of the law to prosecute on. Does anyone think Fitzgerald decided well? Or Sutton? (Yes, Andy, I’m baiting you, since the bread-throwing event didn’t come about.)