A state supreme court justice openly treated the bench as personal fiat

Evidence

A justice said to Balter, “Mr. Balter, if it were up to you a lot of companies would lose their permits.” To which Balter replied, “I don’t take any permits away. That’s the DEP’s job.” The justice did not relent: “Yes, but you start those cases, don’t you?” Balter responded, “Well, that’s right. I would think, your Honor, that you’d be interested in having the law defended and applied properly.” The justice had the final word: “Mr. Balter, around here I am the law.” — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 259

Categorization

• BMF: “Around here I am the law” recalls the raw jurisdiction-wielding sovereigns in Zamyatin’s We and Vidal’s Eighteen Seventy, where power owns the rules it administers rather than serving them.
• XREF: Cross-course Legal Systems: judicial hostility read by litigants as living proof that narrow procedural doctrine hides substantive power — the reader’s bridge-theme of how courts work/fail as an EJ tool. — connects to: Ambiguous law is filtered through the judge’s personal lens — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 427

Broader Connections

• Ambiguous law is filtered through the judge’s personal lens #exemplifies (0.85) — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law, 427