How you address a judge reveals a country's legal history
In India, lawyers were long expected to call senior judges My Lord. In 2006 the national bar council declared such phrases relics of the colonial past and approved Your Honour instead, yet the old habit largely persisted. In 2009 one Madras High Court judge simply banned the lordly address from his courtroom.
Forms of address carry history everywhere. Hong Kong's higher courts still use My Lord and My Lady in English; in Cantonese, the courtesy title for a judge changed after the 1997 handover from a phrase meaning judge, your lordship to one meaning judge, your honour. Malaysian superior court judges are called Yang Arif, the Learned One. Israeli judges are addressed simply as sir, madam or Your Honour, followed by the word for judge.
Dress follows tradition too. Judges in many countries wear long robes, often black or red, and sit on a raised bench. Commonwealth judges kept wigs, the full-length version now reserved for ceremonies, and Britain is phasing them out of non-criminal courts. Some judges in California once presided in everyday clothes. Portuguese judges used to carry staffs, red for local judges and white for those brought in from outside. The gavel has become a worldwide symbol, although American judges rely mainly on bailiffs and the power to punish contempt to keep order.
The job itself differs by system. In adversarial common law courts, the judge acts as a neutral referee over procedure while a jury often decides the facts. In inquisitorial civil law systems there is usually no jury, and the judge investigates and decides alone or on a panel that may include lay members. English magistrates serve unpaid and need no legal training, while professional judges in the United States are typically drawn from experienced lawyers.
American federal judges serve during good behaviour, meaning in practice for life unless they retire or are impeached. States have more freedom: as of 2015, 33 of them plus the District of Columbia set mandatory retirement ages, mostly between 70 and 75, but as high as 90 in Vermont.
Source: Judge
