A JUDGE'S ROLE
explained by Judge John Lloyd, Laity Sunday 2006 at the Osceola United Methodist Church.

Verses 20 and 21 in the New King James translation read slightly differently: 20And He said to them, "Whose image and inscription is this?" 21They said to Him, "Caesar's." And He said to them, "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."

This is laity Sunday. In the early days of our denomination, churches were often small and located in rural towns, not far from each other by today's standards, but pretty far away when transportation was on horseback. The minister did not have one service at 8 a.m., hop in his car and do a second service at 9:30 in another town. He hopped on his horse and did a service in the second town the next Sunday and maybe a third service in a third town on the Sunday after that. Meanwhile, in the church he had been in, it was the job of the lay leader to keep things going, to lead the service when the minister was away. We celebrate that tradition today with lay leadership of this worship service.

As most of you know, being lay leader does not pay very well, so I have a day job as an Iowa district court judge. Much like the ministers of the early Methodist church, I ride a circuit. I can be assigned to hold court on a regular basis in any one of 16 counties in central and south central Iowa. This congregation actually has two members who are district court judges, Gary Kimes being the other one.

In order to become a district court judge in Iowa, you have to be one of two people selected by a judicial nominating commission made up of both lawyers and non-lawyers. The governor then makes the final choice between the two people nominated by that commission.

Part of the process of convincing the governor to appoint you involves obtaining letters of support from other lawyers, community members, and friends. When I was nominated, a number of people who wrote letters on my behalf mentioned or included references to my involvement with this church. I know this, not because I saw the letters, but because the Governor said so when I interviewed with him. After making that comment, he went on to ask me what I would do if a case in my court in some way conflicted with my religious beliefs.

My answer to him was that I would do what I had always done as a lawyer. As a lawyer, my job was to explain to people what the law was, not preach to them about my religious beliefs. I told him that I expected to do the same as a judge, to follow the law, not inject my personal religious beliefs into my decisions.

My answer to him was what I believed then and it is what I continue to believe today. The legal system in this country is Caesar's system and as a judge I must and do render unto Caesar. That certainly does not mean that I cease to be a Christian when I walk into a courtroom. It does not mean that I can't or don't pray about difficult decisions. It does not mean that I do not use the principles of my religion to guide me in those areas where the law gives me discretion. It does mean that I must follow the law of this land and I swore an oath as a judge to uphold the law.

The legal system is, at its heart, and, when it is at its best, based on cold, hard logic. It starts with a law, be it an ordinance, statute or constitution, looks at a set of facts, and then through the study of history and the application of logic and reasoning, reaches a result.

The heart of my religion has nothing to do with logic. It is based on the emotion that we call faith. There is nothing logical about Jonah living in the belly of a great fish or about a few loaves and fishes feeding a multitude. These stories and the others like them are accepted on faith. I cannot prove the existence of God by logic nor can I reconcile Bible verses that appear to be in conflict by logic. I must pray and seek to resolve the conflict, with faith that God will provide me with an answer.

Some folks would argue that this is wrong, that religion should be front and center in the legal system. We should post the Ten Commandments in our court houses and elect judges that have the correct religious beliefs. I respectfully disagree.

I believe that we are called upon by Jesus to recognize the difference between civil authority and religious authority, that we are to render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. When I used to teach business law at Southwestern Community College, I explained the concept of ethics to my students this way: the law provides a minimum level of conduct that we all agree everyone must adhere to. As a matter of ethics, we are free to hold ourselves to a higher standard.

As a matter oflaw, people are entitled to have a divorce and as a judge I obey the law and grant them. As a Christian, I am free to say that I do not believe in divorce and nothing about the law requires me to alter my belief. Or as a Christian, I might adopt the Old Testament belief, expressed in Deuteronomy 24:1, that all I have to do is give my wife a certificate of divorce and throw her out. Either way, as a judge, I am required to follow the law and allow the divorce and provide an equitable division of property, regardless of what my personal religious beliefs might be.

As a juvenile judge, I must try to :find a solution that is in the best interests of the child, to order services that will help the child or the child's parents. As a Christian I might subscribe to Deuteronomy 21: 18-21, which says: "If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey his father and mother, who does not heed them when they discipline him, 19then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the gate of that place. 20They shall say to the elders of his town, "This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard." 21Then all the men of the town shall stone him to death. So you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel will hear, and be afraid." As tempting as that thought has been at times, as a parent and as a judge, it does not represent the minimum level of conduct prescribed by the legal system. As a judge, I must apply the law, not religious beliefs.

As a judge, I am called on to enforce contracts that include provisions for interest to be paid, even though Deuteronomy 23: 19 says: "You shall not charge interest on loans to another Israelite, interest on money, interest on provisions, interest on anything that is lent." As a judge, I must render unto Caesar and enforce that minimum level of conduct that our society as a whole has prescribed, even though as a Christian I am perfectly free not to charge interest if l loan money to someone.

In our modem political debates, when the courts are criticized, that criticism often arises because we forget that the courts in this country are not ecclesiastical courts, they are not religious courts, they are secular courts. Judges must follow the logic of the law, not the emotion of faith. If. as Christians, we do not like that result, we are free to change the law, but as a judge I am not free to reach that result until the law is changed.

Let me give you an example of the conflict that can arise between logic and emotion. We all know that the First Amendment to our Constitution recognizes the freedom of speech. We understand that this amendment guarantees us the right to speak our minds, no matter how upsetting our words may be to someone else, and the government cannot pass laws that restrict that freedom.

What is speech? The answer to that is easy. It's what comes out of our mouths. That's simple enough. But let's suppose that we are not within ear shot of the person we wish to tell our opinion to, so we write that person a letter. Is that writing protected by the first amendment? Few of us would have any problem saying yes, that written letter is protected as speech, even though it does not come out of our mouths. In fact the word "writing" is defined as the use of characters to record words or sounds in visible form. Those characters stand for the words we would have used if the person had been closer to us.

Well, then, what about gestures? Are they protected? When our Sunday school or bible school children sing a song and proclaim their love for God and accompany those words with gestures, are the gestures protected speech? When a mute person speaks with American Sign Language, are those gestures subject to government regulation because they are not speech? I doubt that anyone here would argue that. Those gestures, just like writing, stand for words and sounds. They are the same thing as speech. They are symbols representing speech but they are speech.

Now what if the gesture is the burning of an American flag to express someone's disagreement with a policy of our government? The courts of this country, applying cold, hard logic, have said that gesture, too, is protected by the first amendment. It is a gesture or action that is intended to express thoughts and ideas and is protected. But now, all of a sudden, judges are being activists, they are making laws. Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama asked a question of then Judge, now Chief Justice John Roberts, at his confirmation hearing, "Judge, are the words symbolic speech in the Constitution anywhere?" to which Judge Roberts dutifully said no, they are not. At this point, the cold, hard logic of the law that I, as a judge, must apply runs smack into the emotional reaction to seeing the flag, one of the symbols of our country, burned.

Let's look at another example. Please hold up your hand if you have heard of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, the abortion decision. Please leave your hand up if you have an opinion about that decision, either for it or against it. Now leave your hand in the air if you have read that decision. How can we criticize, or support, a judge for not doing his or her job if we have not even read and considered the judge's logic and analysis? How - because we are not criticizing the judge for doing his job, for using logic, reasoning, or analysis of history, we are criticizing the judge for reaching a result our emotions tell us is wrong.

But if, as a judge, I am free to forget the logic of the law when my gut gets all churned up with emotion, what can you as a citizen of this country expect when you appear in my court room a reasoned, predictable, logical result based on laws and precedents or a decision that represents my personal beliefs, not enacted into law anywhere or even written down for you to know in advance? Should Jim Schipper have to wonder whether the judge he appears in front of has a Biblically based belief that no Christian should charge another Christian interest, or should he expect a decision based on the law? Should the battered spouse who appears in my courtroom be granted protection or should she be told that the Bible permits a husband to chastise his wife with a rod no larger around than his thumb and that she should go home and submit to him?

There is a play and a movie entitled "A Man for All Seasons." It is about the life and death of Sir Thomas More. More was the Lord Chancellor of England under Henry VIII. As Lord Chancellor, he was the highest judicial official in England. In 1535, More was beheaded by Henry for refusing to support Henry's efforts to divorce Catherine of Aragon in order to marry Anne Bolyn. In the play, More has just refused to hire a man seeking a job with him. This man later helped betray More and contributed to his death. A young lawyer named Roper, More's wife, Alice, and his daughter, Margaret, urge More to take action against the job seeker:

One of these days, if you haven't already, you will hear about a decision I have made as a judge that you do not agree with. Or you will run into someone who disagrees with a decision that I have made. Before you decide whether I have done my job as a judge or just flipped my wig, I ask you to read that decision.

Then, if you still disagree with the decision, I would ask you to decide whether you are disagreeing with the logic I used in analyzing the facts and the law, or if you are just disagreeing with the result. I suspect that, much like flag burning, most of you will understand the logic and reasoning that I use, even if you don't like or agree with the result.

And after you have done those two things, please remember. My job as a judge is to follow the law, even if, as Thomas More said, I am giving the Devil the benefit of the law. Understand that I may not like the result any better than you do but I am bound as a judge to follow the law, not to mow the law down and substitute what I think is right or wrong. Our government is a government of laws, not of men.

Also remember that I am, in my imperfect human way, trying to follow the teaching of Jesus, as I understand it, that there is a difference between that which is Caesar's and that which is God's; that I am trying to render under Caesar while also rendering unto God; and that I, like all of us, struggle daily to understand the differences and how to reconcile them.

Return to main page for Recipes for Living 2007 by Fern Underwood

Last Revised November 3, 2013