Robbins: Judge, Your Honor, or ‘Hey You?’
Traditionally, lawyers (who like to call themselves “counselors” or “attorneys”) have referred to judges as “Your Honor.” Why? I suppose that it’s because judges are presumed to be honorable.
But um … aren’t there other honorable people about? Why don’t we call them — doctors, lawyers, teachers, auto mechanics — honorable if in fact they are? Rather than the honorific being automatic, shouldn’t a person, regardless of his or her status, be considered honorable on the merits of their conduct rather than, owing to their status, be presumed to be so?
As you might guess, it is more complicated than that. How so?
The term “Your Honor” originated in feudal times and generally referenced the titled nobility. As I have written before, the reason that judges wear robes derives from the same origins. In olden times, the nobility wore robes to announce to the lessers in society, “Hey, I’m wearing a robe,” and they were therefore a big deal. Since judges were big deals and part of the aristocracy, they too wore robes.
In time, it became out of fashion for just any old bigwig to don a robe — can you imagine, for example, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates or Elon Musk berobed? — but robes on judges remained a vestige of older, perhaps moldier times.
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Similarly, the honorific of “Your Honor” for every, Tom, Dick and big poohbah Harry, fell away into the dustbin of disuse. Nonetheless, like spackle on a textured wall, it stuck with judges.
Unless you are more clever than I am, I doubt you can conjure up anyone — judges aside — who we refer to as “Your Honor.” I do note, however, that in formal proceedings, certain high-status people — senators, for example — are referred to as “The Honorable” so-and-so, but not “Your Honor.”
Why, then, do we keep this up?
I would venture that it’s mostly tradition. Just as we don’t snigger at a judge who surmounts the bench in what to all appearances is the near equivalent of an ermine-collared bathrobe, neither do we guffaw when the selfsame person is addressed as “Your Honor.”
As a quick aside that is only slightly off topic, who else are we commanded to stand for when he/she enters or leaves a room than a judge who’s either coming or going from the courtroom?
As Reptevia would declaim, perhaps in song, “Tradition!”
Surely there is that, but is also out of respect both for the judge and for our system of laws which — recent political upheaval and judicial shenanigans notwithstanding — is the most essential element of our system of government.
I do not believe it to be overreaching to hold that the rule of law is the very backbone of democracy.
It is interesting, to say the least, that as we fought a war of independence to be free from the monarchy and to rid ourselves of the trappings of hoity-toityiness, that this particular trace of nobility persists. Doesn’t the term, “Your Honor,” after all, adhere more to monarchic traditions than the freewheelingness of “We the People?”
Personally, I having been at this craft for nigh on 40 years. I suppose I have become sort of a traditionalist — at least in the courtroom anyway. That and, during my infancy in the law, it was how I was trained. Too, I sincerely believe the honorific is as much an expression of respect for the institution as for the particular conscientious individual occupying the bench.
It has, however, become quite common for lawyers to refer to judges as “Judge” rather than “Your Honor.” I suppose that is more modern and comports with other efforts to demystify judicial proceedings as eliminate such Latinisms as persist into intelligible, plain English.
Do judges seem to mind it when a lawyer calls them “Judge?” Not that I’ve particularly noticed. But it does, however, ring discordantly in my own ears. I suppose “Judge” or “Your Honor” are now equally acceptable.
But what about, “Hey you!” Or simply calling the judge by his or her own name.
Nah, not so much.
In another column, I may one day ponder with you why we call M.D.s, Psy.D.s, Ph.D.s and others “doctor” but that J.D.s we do not.
Hmmm.
Rohn K. Robbins is an attorney licensed before the Bars of Colorado and California who practices in the Vail Valley with the Law Firm of Caplan & Earnest, LLC. His practice areas include business and commercial transactions; real estate and development; family law, custody, and divorce; and civil litigation. Robbins may be reached at 970-926-4461 or Rrobbins@CELaw.com. His novels, “How to Raise a Shark (an apocryphal tale),” “The Stone Minder’s Daughter,” “Why I Walk so Slow” and “He Said They Came From Mars (stories from the edge of the legal universe)” are currently available at fine booksellers. And coming soon, “The Theory of Dancing Mice.”
