Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 48).pdf/50

 are different in nature, and who are called upon to discharge such official duties, in the interest and to the benefit of the public.

Before judicial officers became such, they were lawyers, and their integrity as judicial officers will not likely be of any higher degree than that possessed by them while they were discharging the office of an attorney and counsel at law.

Man was created in the image and likeness of God, but when he becomes a judicial officer, he does not take on any additional attributes of Divinity. He is yet a mere man, so that it is possible for one invested with the powers of a judicial officer to depart from the paths of rectitude, righteousness, and integrity. If one invested with the high powers of a judicial officer should, in a moment of weakness, depart from the paths of integrity, in the discharge of his duty, to such an extent that his act becomes a venal one, and thus place a stain upon the robe of ermine with which the authority of the Constitution and the power of the people have draped his person, other judicial officers and tribunals will draw no nearer perfection, will become no stronger in the distribution of justice, if, by choice language, fine phrases, and subtle reasoning, they seek to excuse the weakness of their brother judicial officer.

It is to the credit of the judiciary, that actual venality is seldom charged, and perhaps this is by reason that the judiciary of past centuries have taken extra precaution never to exculpate any material venal infraction of judicial integrity. It may be that judicial officers cannot wholly shake off the effects of the environment with which they were surrounded prior to the time they were elevated to the high position of a judicial officer. If prior to their elevation, and during a professional career as attorneys, they were engaged in defending great corporate interests; or had been continually defending or participating in litigation that affected any other particular class of persons, and, professionally, they had always lived, moved, and acted in that environment; it is possible that when they assume to discharge the duties of a high judicial position, to which they may have been elevated, and however honestly and fairly they may endeavor to discharge their duties, that, perhaps, un- consciously, they may be influenced by the unseen power of their previous environment. But, in this, while there may be a weakness in the Judicial officer, there is no venality. In his heart, soul, and conscience, he is honest, as a man and a judicial officer, and an honest man is one of the noblest works of God.

The judicial officer, in enunciating decrees and rendering judgment,