2014 January « Hercules and the umpire.

This blog started in February of 2013. It is now January 1, 2014. During this time, I have written 416 posts and there have been about 425,000 page views by readers. Roughly 3,700 comments have been made.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal published a very interesting article in which this blog was prominently mentioned. See Joe Palazzolo, Jurist Prudence? Candid Judges Speak Out, Wall Street Journal (December 31, 2013.) That in turn generated a thoughtful post by my friend, Pat Borchers, the former dean of Creighton Law School. See “Talking judges” on The Way I see it, posted by Patrick J. Borchers at 12:12 PM on December 31, 2013. This attention generated over 4,400 pages views of Hercules and the umpire just yesterday.

In short, Hercules and the umpire has exceeded my wildest expectations. And so–it is time to kill it. In this forum, I have written all that I want to write and then some. It is that simple. My decision is final.

Before I conclude this last post, I wish to make several points:

I am not quitting because of ethics concerns. Such problems are real, but vastly overblown. A thoughtful judge has about the same chance of violating the Code of Conduct when writing a book, giving a speech, authoring a law review article or writing a blog post.
Conspiracy buffs need not fret and anti-judge nuts need not cheer. No one has given me the slightest trouble about expressing myself here. I am quitting voluntarily and without a nudge from anyone.
Although I am truly worn out, I am OK. I am not quitting because of health reasons.
This is a powerful medium for, among other things, making federal trial judging transparent and for trying to wrap one’s arms around the conundrum of judicial role. I hope some other federal trial judge takes up that hard but enormously satisfying labor.
I look forward to commenting on other blogs now that I am out of the biz.
To my astonishment, I have made several, perhaps many, friends along the way. I will maintain the e-mail address for the site, and I welcome hearing from these kind, smart (Oxford comma coming but just for fun), and thoughtful people. But, I don’t promise to respond as quickly as before. The foregoing said, you and each of you have my sincere thanks. Readers have taught me many valuable lessons about how to become a better judge and human being.
I will keep the blog “alive” for archival purposes, but nothing more. I will shut down the comment section in a week or so.
The photo below is how I picture myself today. That is, I am one lucky, old dog.

All the best.

The end.