A lot of people hesitate to take responsibility for their problems because they believe that to be responsible for your problems is to also be at fault for your problems.
Responsibility and fault often appear together in our culture. But they are not the same thing. If I hit you with my car, I am both at fault and likely legally responsible to compensate you in some way. Even if hitting you with my car was an accident, I would still be responsible. This is the way fault works in our society. If you fuck up, you’re on the hook for making it right. And it should be that way.
But there are also problems we aren’t at fault for, yet we are still responsible for them.
For example, if you woke up one day and there was a newborn baby on your doorstep, it would not be your fault that baby was put there, but the baby would now be your responsibility. You would have to choose what to do. And whatever you ended up choosing (keeping it, getting rid of it, ignoring it, feeding it to your pet parrot), there would be problems associated with any of those choices and you would be responsible for those as well.
Judges don’t get to choose their cases. He or she did not commit the crime, was not a witness to the crime, was not affected by the crime, but the judge is still responsible for the crime (they can choose to recuse, but it’s rare). The judge must choose the consequences; he or she must identify the metric against which the crime will be measured and make sure that metric is carried out.
We are responsible for experiences that aren’t our fault all the time.
Judges choose to be in a profession where responsibility is placed on them by there on fault .