Walter Franklin has to cope with a bad case of nerves as he preens for his first date with widow Linda Jenkins in almost two years.

Walter finds that hiring a new clerk can be a trying experience. He interviews an odd-lot assortment of law-clerk applicants and surprise everyone with his final choice.

Walter becomes infatuated when he meets another Judge, Eleanor Hooper, and they try to find some privacy together by meeting in Atlantic City.

After delivering a well-received speech, Walter is inundated with public-speaking requests that send his ego sailing. He gets too big for his judicial robe when he accepts too many speaking engagements and starts believing his own publicity.

Walter finds out that his tone-faced, sharp-tongued secretary, Miss Reubner, has another side to her personality when he asks her to his home to celebrate her birthday with his family. Ashamed of getting tight at her birthday party, Miss Reubner resigns.

After Walter upholds a local theater's right to show a pornographic film, he forbids his eighteen-year-old daughter to see it.

Walter gets more than he bargained for on the bench when he replaces another jurist and has to deal with an attorney notorious for his devious tactics. .

Walter loses his cool in the courtroom when a new law clerk keeps interrupting him, and the issue of his emotional sickness is taken up by the judicial review board.

Walter's family thinks his engagement to Judge Hooper is premature.

Believing there's no place like home for the holidays, Walter brings home a convicted criminal to spend the Christmas holidays with his family.

Walter is tempted by a friend's offer of a law partnership.