A Red Judge, at any rate for English speakers (rather than speakers of American) is not the same as a Juge Rouge. To English speakers it means a senior judge who wears scarlet robes.

In France however the 'rouge' refers to the presumed political affiliation of the lawyer and is generally a term of abuse.

The 'juges rouges' have been much in the news lately. Judges and proscutors are trained apart from other lawyers in France and have a totally different career path. They are civil servants and are collectively known as magistrats and they have their own trade unions. Pictures of the offices of one of these trade unions, the Syndicat de la Magistrature, were recently published, and in particular, pictures of the Mur des Cons where the magistrats put up pictures of people (many of them from la sarkozye) whom they find stupid or irritating.

According to certain ill-intentioned people the existence of this display board shows incurable bias on the part of the syndicat and it should therefore be dissolved. This of course begs the question (again in the English, rather than the American usage) of how to counter the incurable bias of the Red Judges who are not unionised, and who are still overwhelmingly male, white, upper middle class products of private school and Oxbridge. The gentleman in the picture above, for instance, is a product of the Oratory School and Magdalene College, Cambridge. He is currently head of the judiciary in England and Wales.

It's wrong to judge people by the schools they went to and I have a high opionion of British judges who generally interpret law, insofar as it is possible, according to precedent rather than personal prejudice. But Lord Chief Justice Judge is wearing a robe so long he needs a servant to carry it, and silver buckles on his shoes. He is seen here in public with the notorious Jack Straw. Il serait pas un peu con, ce mec? Is there room for him on the wall?