Judge Calabresi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit yesterday issued an unusual letter of apology to the circuit’s chief judge. The apology came in response to a chain of events set off by Judge Calabresi’s comments Saturday to a conference of liberal lawyers. In the comments, which were first reported in The New York Sun on Monday, the judge said President Bush came to power by means similar to Mussolini or Hitler. He declared that members of the public should, without regard to their political views, expel Mr. Bush from office so as to cleanse the democratic system.

Judge Calabresi’s apology yesterday was profuse: “What I actually said was too easily taken as partisan. That is something which judges should do their best to avoid, and there, I clearly failed.…I am truly sorry.” The chief judge of the Second Circuit, John M. Walker Jr., responded by reminding his colleagues that “partisan political comments” are “violations of the Code of Judicial Conduct.”

The question is, why? After all, many judges, like most Americans, have political views. What is gained by keeping them concealed from the public or from potential litigants? The code of conduct warns that violations diminish “public confidence in the impartiality of the judiciary.” If a particular judge is indeed politically partial, however, preventing the judge from disclosing it doesn’t make the judge any less partial — it just keeps the public in the dark. The code seems to be trying to instill in the public a false sense of confidence.

One may differ with Judge Calabresi on one ruling or another. The fascist comments struck us as truly off-the-wall. But Judge Calabresi has a long, impressive, distinguished record of independent-mindedness. He supported the nomination of Clarence Thomas, declined to find a constitutional right to assisted suicide, and declined to find a right to sue health maintenance organizations for medical malpractice. The conservative critics of Judge Calabresi risk sliding into the same error as the liberals who wanted Justice Scalia to avoid going duck hunting with Vice President Cheney. A judiciary of friendless, opinionless monks is one in which neither Justice Scalia nor Judge Calabresi would be welcome on the bench — and the nation would be the poorer for it.