All judges are lawyers but not all lawyers are judges.
When you go to court, you appear before judges, not lawyers.
Being a judge is a much higher calling.
Whereas a lawyer can fluff, huff and puff, and deliberately distort facts during their submissions, a good judge has no such luxury.
One distinct feature (and there are others, in addition to being a lawyer) that MUST define a judge is WISDOM. A judge must not only have a firm grasp of the law, but has to, of necessity, be WISE. This quality fits in well with the two aspects of law, namely, LETTER and SPIRIT (of the law).
You see, the ‘letter’ is all about the plain written text and how one understands it. The ‘spirit’, on the other hand, is about the wholesomeness of the law, i.e. both the written text and intent/motive (usually not written) that the maker of the law may have had in mind while writing it. Only a wise and ‘learned’ person (read judge) has (is presumed to have) capacity to decipher the spirit of the law.
An unwise judge wouldn’t possibly make head or tail of all this; which is.why, for instance, this writer isn’t a judge 😎.
Echoing and paraphrasing one Chinua Achebe, WISDOM is the palm oil with which court cases are eaten.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer.
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