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Jdude wrote:

The best Justice is someone who applies the law and Constitution as written, not based on the way he feels that day.

Since Alexander Hamilton didn't agree with that statement I'd wager that this "interpretation" on your part about how the Constitution should be interpreted wasn't actually included in the Constitution.  In fact, it's a debate that has gone on since the Republic ratified the document, but it's only been since the mid-1980's that modern conservatives have been able to pimp their ideological bent about this issue as some sort of requirement that all must ascribe to in the public's mind.

Sadly that was mostly blowback from Civil Rights era decisions that empowered uppity Negroes and we still live with this outdated and extreme form of political activism today.

ScifiterX wrote:

Didn't the Specter defection and Franken win put the kibosh on that filibuster thing?

Having a democrat-controlled senate helped Obama out so much with the GTMO closing, after all. 

Hang on... when did Franken win?  :runs to look:

Edit: he still hasn't been seated.

Last edited by zeitgeist (2009-05-25 8:23 am)

I don't think it matters this go 'round.  I really can't see Olympia Snowe supporting a filibuster.

The GOP's misguided confused campaign against judicial empathy.

To Obama, empathy chiefly means applying a principle his mother taught him: asking, "How would that make you feel?" before acting. Empathy in a judge does not mean stopping midtrial to tenderly clutch the defendant to your heart and weep. It doesn't mean reflexively giving one class of people an advantage over another because their lives are sad or difficult. When the president talks about empathy, he talks not of legal outcomes but of an intellectual and ethical process: the ability to think about the law from more than one perspective.

Unless perhaps it's some kind of codeword, a la "judicial restraint means that Roe v Wade is going down!"

Seriously, there was a recent New Yorker article which claimed that every decision John Roberts has made while on the Supreme Court has reinforced existing power structures. Empathy is sorely needed. If the "little guy" presents a compelling argument, he should be listened to.

No more Mr Nice Guy

Last edited by jerwin (2009-05-25 10:11 am)

I thought they wanted to call themselves "compassionate conservatives".

One of those pussies was George W. Bush.

Jdude wrote:

The best Justice is someone who applies the law and Constitution as written, not based on the way he feels that day.

Ha!  Let me know when we get one of those.

Jdude wrote:

The best Justice is someone who applies the law and Constitution as written, not based on the way he feels that day.

We definitely need better legislators, then.

matt wrote:

Jdude wrote:

The best Justice is someone who applies the law and Constitution as written, not based on the way he feels that day.

Does that mean that you agree with the Dred Scott decision?

Not to quibble (ok to quibble a lot) Dred Scott reflected an application of the Constitution NOT as written.  First, it found that AFrican Americans were not included in the term "People" in the Constitution, a result that defies straightforward textual analysis (see, e.g., the Three Fifths Clause:  "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons." -- A clause that was CLEARLY intended to refer to African American slaves in the south).

Second, by finding that slaves were some kind of über protected property, Chief Justice Taney engaged in a form of early substantive due process (through the Fifth Amendment) that read out of the Constitution Congress' ability to exercise its plenary power over the territories to ban slavery.

So, in truth, Dred Scott was an example of a southern sympathizing Chief Justice (who had grown weary of Northern insults to the South and a general fear of the Southern way of life dying) delivering what was interpretted then, and is believed to be now, an "outside the Constitution's text" opinion.

All this crap about "judicial activism" or "ruling on feelings" is nonsense.  Threatening a filibuster before anyone has even been named is ridiculous.  Any close legal question can tip either direction.  This is compounded by the fact that later decisions are often based on earlier decisions, at least in part.  At the end of the day, it's naive to believe that judges use some sort of cold analysis to reach the one, 'true' answer to a particular question.   

Judges should reach narrow opinions while avoiding questions that are unnecessary in that particular case.

jerwin wrote:

Farmerkev wrote:

In other words, a judges "empathy and ruling on his feelings" is what gave us trouble.

Do you even know what empathy means? Or has Ayn Rand stripped away that weakness?

Yes I know very well what empathy means and unless you intend for them to let it influence their decisions there really isn't any point in using it as a criteria for a judge.

There's a word for people who lack empathy. They call them sociopaths.