To make a decision entails a kind of travel — thought travel — with stopping points and progression. To live with a decision is to feel the sensation of firm ground, of arrival. The talk mostly concerns legal procedures and conventions, hypotheticals and propositions — all squarely in the domain of orthodox academic research. At the edge of our conversations linger the more shadowy workings of blame, forgiveness, truth, hunch, intuition.
And of wisdom: what wisdom is, does, and should do. What I want to know, but have never found a way to ask, is how judges live with the decisions they make, with the condemnations they deliver, the mercies they may bestow. Judges make big ones every day.
A person accused of a crime pleads guilty or is found guilty, and the judge arrives at a sentence, a penalty, on behalf of the state. Years ago, I used to chat with judges in their chambers. Nowadays we speak on the phone. Recently I have been speaking with a particular judge every three weeks.
He tells me that judges seldom speak publicly about the practice of forming judgment, and that this reserve has not served them well. I use a studio on my university campus to record the phone conversations between the judge and me. I am making an audio documentary as part of my research. The judge and I speak on the phone because he is in Melbourne and I am in Sydney and travel is not permitted.
With things the way they are, no-one knows when trips will be allowed. It separates us. The radio executive to whom I have promised the documentary is troubled by my reliance on phone calls with the judge. He is an old acquaintance of mine and is blunt in his warning: this is not how interviews should be conducted.
