Should judges be angry at sentencing?

The question in the title of this post is prompted by this new article by Professor Terry Maroney, titled “Angry Judges.”   The interesting article covers a lot more that criminal law and procedure issues, but here is one intriguing passage discussing judicial anger and sentencing:

Judicial anger at criminal sentencing often can be justified as well, and for a similar set of reasons. By the time of sentencing, blameworthy conduct already has been shown. Assuming, as the judge must, the accuracy of that finding, the judge is entitled to respond emotionally to any harm the defendant has caused.  Expressing anger vividly demonstrates to victims and their survivors that they are within the judge’s zone of care. It communicates, in a way that other demonstrations could not, that they are members of the valued community.  It also demonstrates judicial respect for the defendant. As one feels anger only where a human agent has chosen to inflict an unwarranted harm, showing anger reveals the judge’s assessment that the defendant is a fellow human possessed of moral agency.  By using his authoritative position to send moral messages to the wrongdoer, the judge ideally frees others in society from feeling a need to do so themselves, including through vigilante action.

In contrast, judicial anger might be used not to send deserved moral messages but to belittle, humiliate, or dehumanize.  This is a particular danger in criminal sentencing, but it is by no means limited to that setting.  For example, rather than force the defendant to hear both an account of the harm he has caused and the judge’s moral condemnation of those acts, she might call him a “lowlife” or “scumbag.”  Insults, gratuitous displays of power, extreme sarcasm, mocking, and demeaning language all reflect that the judge is using anger to assert her dominance.  Assertions of power are, to be sure, sometimes appropriate.  Anger at lawyers, witnesses, and parties may be helpful in reminding those persons that the judge is in charge of both the courtroom environment and the processes of litigation.  Belittling actions appear meaningfully different.  Acting so as to humiliate or belittle strongly suggests that anger is no longer operating in isolation: instead, it has become corrupted with contempt.  Contempt, like anger, reflects a judgment that a fellow human has acted badly.  Unlike anger, it goes on to value that fellow human as “vile, base, and worthless.”  It explicitly positions its target as an inferior, not just hierarchically but as a human being, and motivates public assertions of that inferior status.  When judicial anger becomes intertwined with contempt, it loses its claim to justification, for it has internalized a fundamentally bad judicial value: superiority.  While judges have a legitimate claim to authority, they have no such claim to superiority.