I I I I I I I I I I I
You sound like a typical judge who thinks he is the people and the law rather than representing the people and the law. Contempt is contempt court not contempt of egotistical judge. That is contempt of the authority we people have TEMPORARILY given to you to represent us in enforcing the will of the majority as encoded in the law. You should be ashame to have ever thought:
“I always start my spiel at docket with “unless you really piss off the judge [me], nobody’s going to jail today”.”
no less typed it on a public forum.
You sir are the kind of tyrant our founders rebelled against.
JLS, I am in full concurrence EXCEPT:
1) I've read jagusafr's posts before and he hasn't sounded like an arrogant judge (in fact I did not know until now that he is a judge)
2) It's all about how he considers his responsibilities. Would it have been better if he had used "the court" instead of "the judge [me]"? More formal perhaps (and to jagusafr I might suggest this change -- speaking strictly as a layman), but no significant difference. It's really all about how he exercises the authority we entrust in him, though the statement sounds bad to both you and me.
I prefer to judge a judge on his decisions and rulings, rather than on prefatory comments meant to keep order in a court that has presumably experienced enough disorder to require such warnings.