Introduction

Bitten by the Judge Bug

We’ll probably never save our souls—but hell, at least we’ll get our hair sorted.

—SIDDHARTH DHANVANT SHANGHVI, THE LAST SONG OF DUSK

It was after I received a phone call from a stranger in the summer of 1980 that I began to think about becoming a judge. I was working at Stanford Law School as an assistant dean and practicing law, part-time, in my private law practice in East Palo Alto. Judging was nowhere on my radar and for good reason. The only judges that I had ever appeared before were White males—no women, no people of color. There was certainly not today’s plethora of Black judges, so many of whom now populate court shows on television. Nothing of the sort existed back then, so my image of a judge excluded anyone who looked like me.

The caller introduced himself as municipal court judge Mark Thomas. He asked if I would consider volunteering as a judge pro tem, meaning presiding as a judge for a day in small-claims court where people sue each other for monetary damages up to $5,000. (Today, the monetary limit has been raised to $10,000. Corporations, however, are limited to $5,000.) The most wonderful feature about small-claims trials is that no lawyers are allowed—no lawyers, no jury, just the litigants going at one another, leaving it to a judge to sort it all out. I later learned that Judge Thomas’s call to me was motivated by his desire to bring at least a hint of diversity to a bench with no African Americans and only a handful of women. I was flattered and happily accepted his invitation. I didn’t think much more about it until several weeks later when I received my assignment to preside over a small-claims case. One case and no lawyers—how hard could it be? It was a Friday afternoon when I eagerly drove to the Sunnyvale courthouse, a few miles to the south of Stanford.

Upon my arrival, I went to the clerk’s office, where a friendly female staffer handed me a black robe and the court file in a thin manila folder. Then she directed me to a small courtroom. My private law practice had taken me into lots of courtrooms—some large, some small, some cavernous; I knew where everyone was supposed to sit, and I knew that the judge’s seat was at the center and on high. I mean, who of us hasn’t seen a courtroom in a movie or on television?

I stood in the hallway and took a quick peek into the courtroom. Upon seeing the judge’s bench, I was a little excited and a little scared. With no judicial experience or training, the closest I’d come to the judge world was in courtrooms, appearing in front of judges when litigating my own cases. Since my college major had been drama and speech, I went into acting mode, telling myself: that’s your seat; you’re the judge; you can do this. I slipped on the robe, closed it with the snaps that ran down the front, clutched the file folder, straightened my posture, assumed an actor’s air of confidence, and stepped into the courtroom, determined to sit down and get through the hearing without looking like a complete fraud.

When I walked in and took my seat at the bench, two Black women in their late twenties were sitting at the pair of counsel tables facing the bench. I looked around and saw that there was no one else in the courtroom but us—three Black women.

Sunnyvale is a city in Santa Clara County—the sixth-largest of California’s fifty-eight counties. During the time that I was on the bench, Black folks constituted only about 5 percent of the county’s population, so the odds of both litigants and the judge being Black were slim to none. The women appeared as stunned as I. I’m sure that we were all thinking, Can you believe this? We cautiously nodded at one another.

I had observed enough judges to have some notion of what to say; the judicial script is not terribly difficult to recite: “All rise. Please stand and be sworn in. Be seated. State your names.” We’ve all heard these phrases spoken by the bailiff followed by the courtroom clerk who administers the oath to witnesses. But none of that happened in this case. There was no bailiff or clerk, and there were no spectators. I understood why. This was, after all, a run-of-the-mill small-claims case with no jury and no witnesses other than the two litigants.

After telling the women to stand and raise their right hands, I asked, “Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” They answered yes. So far, so good. I told them that they could sit, and then I opened the file folder. Inside was just one thin piece of paper with the names of the two women, a case number, and nothing else. I panicked. Now what do I do? I asked the plaintiff, the woman who had filed the complaint, what the case was about.

“Well, Your Honor, I’m a hairdresser and I’m really good at what I do. I braided her hair”—she nodded at the other woman—“and she won’t pay me. That’s not right. I spent hours doing her hair. I can’t do this work for free, you know.” I couldn’t believe it. My first case as a judge, albeit a pro tem judge, not only had two Black women as plaintiff and defendant, but was also about hair, our hair, a subject I knew from the roots on up.

Hair for Black folks, especially Black women, is as important as the air we breathe. It is critical to our very existence. It is what we talk about endlessly and on which we spend inordinate amounts of money. When my sisters and I were in elementary school, we wore two long braids, one on either side of the parts down the center of our heads. There was an unspoken competition among us for who had the longest braids. (I won!) My hair was the thickest and kinkiest of the three of us. My siblings’ hair was of a finer texture, something of which I was quietly jealous. Once a week my mother washed our hair at the kitchen sink and then straightened it with a hot comb. God help us if we fidgeted when she wielded that hot comb.

My shoulders relaxed. I turned to the defendant and asked, “Why didn’t you pay her?” “Judge, I did not get what I asked for.” She removed a colorful scarf from her head and continued, “These cornrows, as you can see, are a mess. I can’t be wearing my hair like this. She rushed, and it seemed like she was in a hurry to go somewhere. Anyway, I’m not going to pay for a bad hair job.” Got it. The issue is the quality of the cornrows that she braided. If they were done well, the plaintiff wins. If they weren’t, verdict for the defendant. So, I needed to examine the evidence; I needed to see her hair up close.

When we were kids, my sisters and I lined up awaiting our turns to get our hair braided before going off to school. At the appointed hour, we would sit down in front of our mother, wedged securely between her knees. After rubbing some oil (usually Alberto VO5) on our hair and scalps, she’d brush our hair and then comb through the tangles (the worst part) to get it as straight as possible. Next, she’d grab a section of our hair and twist it hard—tear-generating hard—to fit into tiny barrettes. Our mother had the grip from hell. And she could braid at the speed of light. Next, she tied freshly washed and ironed ribbons, with colors matching our outfits, on the ends of our braids. When she finished, our hair was pulled so tight that we looked as if we had undergone face-lifts. My mother was determined that her daughters would always look good. We did.

I asked the defendant to approach the bench. She walked up, put her hands on the bench, and leaned forward, bending her head in my direction. I leaned over and peered at her hair. Now I needed to touch the evidence to get a better view.

“Is it okay if I touch your hair?”


Copyright © 2021 by LaDoris Hazzard Cordell