There's a little more useful detail in the follow-up article here.
Bottom line: to the extent that there was deliberate intolerance at work here, it appears to have come not from the judge himself but from support staff. The social-services agency that reviewed the case gave an errant recommendation (see the original coverage of the first ruling), and the judge relied on some combination of that recommendation and his own staff's assessment of it; the new article isn't completely clear on that point.
In a court system as busy as ours is, it isn't greatly surprising that a judge relies on these kinds of reports to make rulings in many seemingly everyday cases. It's to this judge's credit that he looked more deeply into the record after the fireworks started and is now willing to admit that he goofed. As I argued the first time around, the target for reform here ought to be the social-service agency, which should not have made the recommendation it did.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2005-08-18 03:57 pm (UTC)Bottom line: to the extent that there was deliberate intolerance at work here, it appears to have come not from the judge himself but from support staff. The social-services agency that reviewed the case gave an errant recommendation (see the original coverage of the first ruling), and the judge relied on some combination of that recommendation and his own staff's assessment of it; the new article isn't completely clear on that point.
In a court system as busy as ours is, it isn't greatly surprising that a judge relies on these kinds of reports to make rulings in many seemingly everyday cases. It's to this judge's credit that he looked more deeply into the record after the fireworks started and is now willing to admit that he goofed. As I argued the first time around, the target for reform here ought to be the social-service agency, which should not have made the recommendation it did.