I neither have nor seek a gaggle of co-signers to this unsolicited, sua-sponte-initiated BRAVO letter. Mine is a voice alone out of the wilderness—one only of an erstwhile academic from two excellent law schools; a former CPL Practice Commentator for 10 years; and a retired worker in the judicial vineyard at Court of Appeals Hall for almost the entire span of the last quarter of the last Century (1975-2000). If all that Ancient Mariner baggage (sans albatross) dates my views, so be it, as I stand ready to match my aged perspective up against the vacuity of hundreds of agenda-driven naysayers.

My perspective happens to be based on actual field service, not like those whose heads instantiate academic ethers. I served under and with four estimable, yet quite different Chief Judges, so, I know whereof I speak from that lived experience about the high requirements of a very tough job. I witnessed the rigors of the judicial process in action, not in theory. Instead, open-minded analysis was used to resolve cases by principles of law and humbling limitations of invested judicial authority. Those are the pre-eminent sine qua nons, not attitudes of mind skewed to personally preferred policy outcomes.