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Obama’s Judiciary
The qualities he says he’s looking for are not what you’d expect from a guy whose been very keen in presenting himself as moderate, mainstream, and not wedded to the interests of the disadvantaged. I approve, though.
9 Responses to “Obama’s Judiciary”
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Obama’s “empathy” remark (and more than one additional remark he made) is flirting with activism and illegitimate behavior by judges — he is appealing to the emotions of the mentally and morally “challenged,” and hinting at substituting whim and desire and law-making by judges for legitimate judicial conduct. It’s illegitimate, playpen leftist politics (delivered to a suitable audience; Obama’s team is good), and anti- as well as un-American I had predicted you would approve.
I certainly approve of understanding that laws are more than words on a page. They have to be uncersood, as well, in terms of how they will iaffect real people and real lives.
That’s one of the attibutes I liked about Sandra O’connor. She understood that. I don’t think she was ever accused of being an ‘activist’ (in any of that word” extremely dubious usages) or un-American.
David, I was skeptical until I read your own analysis. After that, I am a convert to your view. Good post.
I would recommend that you avoid the unintended implication that Obama’s view and/or your view is not “moderate” because I think it is moderate unless, of course, it descended into quota or something which I do not think you are advocating.
David, for the first time on this issue, I must agree. It’s clear you aren’t advocating electing judges based on race, but simply taking certain sensibilities in mind. I think there must be many judges qualified for the Supreme Court. Amongst those it should count as a positive point to be the sort of jugde that takes the spirit of the law and the defense of the ususally defensless into account, though obviously always within the law. Certainly the SC must always strictly follow the law, but even the most objective judge is affected by their personal experience and a court with a diversity of personal experience will be a more versatile functional one.
Jason and Lynx agreeing with me on a diversity issue? Piece of proof #252 that Barack Obama is the messiah of American politics
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See, I don’t see it as a “diversity issue” so much as a “how to construct the best judiciary” issue. The most impressive element of your analysis of Obama’s judges philosophy is that it broke out of the rigid system of classifications that underlies quotas (e.g. “race”, “gender”, and “class”) to acknowledge a much more complex nature of partially-shared experience sets.
But that’s the whole point of the analysis: the “diversity issue” is a “how to construct the best judiciary” issue. Diversity is absolutely a larger issue than mere formalistic classification, but that doesn’t make it no longer “diversity,” just a more nuanced form.
If this was all that kept us apart, I feel like we could have saved a lot of heartache.
DLS, a report I wish I could find showed that the most activist judges on the SC were in order…Scalia, Rhenquist (old study LOL), Thomas, and Kennedy.
Infact right leaning jusges nationwide usually tend to be much more activist than those of the left.