The Judge Who Remembered Their Names

In 2015, Judge Victoria Pratt presided over Newark Community Solutions Court in New Jersey — a courtroom where most defendants were homeless, addicted, or trapped in cycles of poverty. Most judges processed cases in minutes. Pratt did something different. She learned names. She asked about children. She remembered that Mr. Williams had a job interview last Tuesday and Mrs. Guerrero was three weeks clean.

When a young man appeared before her for the fourth time on a trespassing charge — he had been sleeping in a parking garage — Pratt didn't escalate his sentence. She connected him with housing services, then checked on him personally two weeks later. "Precious in his sight is their blood," the psalmist wrote, and Pratt governed as though she believed it.

Her courtroom had the highest compliance rate in the city. Not because she was lenient, but because she was just. She held people accountable while treating them as human beings worthy of dignity. The powerful came to respect her rulings. The broken came to trust her word.

Psalm 72 paints a portrait of a king who "delivers the needy when they cry, the afflicted who have no one to help." This is not soft leadership — it is the hardest kind. It requires seeing the invisible, remembering the forgotten, and believing that justice and compassion are not opposites but companions. Every time authority bends toward the vulnerable instead of away from them, we catch a glimpse of the kingdom the Almighty has always intended.