How he would work
Judicial Philosophy: Firm on the Law, Fair to the People
A judge's job is not complicated to state and is difficult to do well. This page will not tell you how Michael would rule. It will tell you how he would work.
A judge’s job is not complicated to state and is difficult to do well: apply the law as written, move cases efficiently, and treat every person in the courtroom with respect and dignity. Those three things are the whole of it. Michael Marsiglia’s campaign for First Parish Court, Division A is built on the claim that he has already been doing them, in this court, for years.
First
What a judicial candidate may not say
Before any candidate tells you what kind of judge they would be, they owe you an explanation of the rules.
Louisiana’s Code of Judicial Conduct, Canon 7, prohibits a candidate for judicial office from making pledges, promises, or commitments that are inconsistent with the impartial performance of judicial duties on cases or issues likely to come before the court. It also prohibits knowingly making a false statement about a candidate’s own qualifications or an opponent’s, and prohibits a judicial candidate from publicly endorsing or opposing another candidate.
This is not a technicality. It is the point. A judge who has promised a constituency an outcome has, by the time the case arrives, already decided it. The litigant on the other side never had a chance.
So this page will not tell you how Michael would rule. It will tell you how he would work.
Apply the law as written
Read it, apply it, and be able to explain the result in terms the parties can follow.
The law that governs a case in First Parish Court is written in the Louisiana Civil Code, the Code of Civil Procedure, the Code of Criminal Procedure, the Revised Statutes, and the ordinances of Jefferson Parish and its municipalities. A judge’s first obligation is to read it, apply it, and be able to explain the result in terms the parties can follow.
Where the law gives a judge discretion, and in a court handling misdemeanors, first offense DWI, and small civil disputes it often does, that discretion should be exercised consistently.
The same facts should produce the same result on a Tuesday as on a Thursday, for a represented party as for one appearing alone.
Two
Move the docket
Efficiency is not a bureaucratic virtue in a court like this one. It is a substantive one.
A civil case in First Parish Court is worth $50,000 or less. If it takes two years and three continuances to resolve, the delay itself can cost more than the claim. A small contractor waiting to be paid, or a defendant waiting to find out whether they can keep driving to work: each of them is paying for delay in a currency the docket does not measure.
Michael’s experience here is unusually direct. Eleven years as First Parish Court’s Traffic Hearing Officer, overseeing more than 25,000 docketed matters, is eleven years of learning how a high-volume docket actually moves, where it jams, which continuances are necessary and which are habit, and how to keep a courtroom running without rushing the person standing in front of you.