This one may just drive us all over the edge. The Young President has already been given the opportunity to nominate a Supreme Court Justice. Speculation is all over the place.
Some pundits think that, knowing he'll probably have more than one appointment over the next 3 1/2 years, he may back off and nominate a fairly moderate centrist. Others think he'll dive directly into the left end of the pool. Of course, race/ethnicity and gender will be criteria. Immutable characteristics such as skin color and reproductive organs are certainly reliable predictors of judicial acumen. Yawn.
The Young President has been quoted as saying he believes the time for radical judicial activism has passed, but another quote has him desiring a nominee "who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book." Huh? Being able to empathize with a litigant's "pain" does not help one to construe a statute or to discern legislative intent.
The Supreme Court rarely seeks the abstract concept of "justice" as its goal; the Supreme Court is tasked by the Constitution and the Common Law system with interpreting the law as it applies to a specific set of facts. Our law school profs taught us that first you argue the Law, and if the law's not on your side, then you argue the Facts; only as a last resort do you argue Public Policy (read: justice). It's that whole hobgoblin-of-small-minds concept.
I just can't see him abandoning juicy judicial activism. He's already thrown most of the Constitution out the window -- why not toss common law precedent out there, too?
Crossposted here.
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He's apparently made a choice. Now we've got to find out something about this guy. Let's hope it had nothing to do with race, religion or gender.
ReplyDelete(I wonder what his Harvard law school profs think of these comments?)