Judging the Judges

A central theme in the legal scholarship of the late Judge John T. Noonan, Jr. was his insistence on the centrality of persons in the legal process. In understanding and teaching law, he famously argued, we must not lose sight of persons in the process: when the persons are "masked," the legal and moral responsibility of legal actors for other people that is critical to the justice and humanity of the legal system is forgotten. When Judge Noonan died, he left, almost complete, the manuscript of this book, based on actual cases in which he himself participated as a judge. Judging the Judges applies the person-centered approach of his earlier scholarship to examine the ways in which judges exercise responsibility for those whose lives they affect. The result is a uniquely informative and critical view into the role of the judge written by a judge uniquely qualified to provide that perspective.