Remarks on the Judge's Role and Moral Certainty

Abstract

First, I am a trial judge on D.C. Superior Court—a court of general jurisdiction. Thus, my personal experiences and approach are grounded in the intense and heart-rending world of live testimony and real human beings—not the rarefied appellate atmosphere of cold transcripts and brilliant analytical arguments.To put some of my remarks in context, and to present a totally atypical situation which raises all the analytical issues of Cruzan, I would like to describe a real case—one that I actually tried—about 10 years ago, involving a committed patient at St. Elizabeths Hospital—a large local hospital for the mentally ill. I will call him Vladimir—he was a real person, not a faceless mental patient. Vladimir had escaped from the repressiveness and brutality of pre-Glastnost Russia—to the freedom of the West. Sometime after locating in America and working here, he became mentally ill and was hospitalized.