politicizing the judiciary
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[Judges] don't make promises in exchange for public support. By and large, they don't casually swap votes or game the system to help one side or another. Their rulings aren't about personal or political ideologies. Instead, most judges — particularly at the Supreme Court level, where there are two highly meritorious sides in every appeal — meticulously attend to the letter of the law. They are heavily influenced by powerful precedent and their colleagues' reasoning. And in the end, judges become judges because they love to read and think, not because they dream of refashioning national policy.
In short, as hard as some may try to run these confirmations like any other election, a long-standing public tradition of respect for the courts and the rule of law will prevent us from allowing anyone to "Swift boat" our justices.
Make no mistake about it: This country is not well served by efforts to blacken Supreme Court nominees. Reducing any individual to a sentence lifted from a footnote in a decades-old memo is unfair, and it is even more so when such filaments of evidence are used to predict a future voting pattern. Pressing our judges through the machinery that makes political sausage is unfair; it devalues the work they do, and it could over time change our instinctive understanding of that work, making us believe that it is mere politics.
something to keep in mind during today's confirmation hearing for Justice Rothstein...
[Judges] don't make promises in exchange for public support. By and large, they don't casually swap votes or game the system to help one side or another. Their rulings aren't about personal or political ideologies. Instead, most judges — particularly at the Supreme Court level, where there are two highly meritorious sides in every appeal — meticulously attend to the letter of the law. They are heavily influenced by powerful precedent and their colleagues' reasoning. And in the end, judges become judges because they love to read and think, not because they dream of refashioning national policy.
In short, as hard as some may try to run these confirmations like any other election, a long-standing public tradition of respect for the courts and the rule of law will prevent us from allowing anyone to "Swift boat" our justices.
Make no mistake about it: This country is not well served by efforts to blacken Supreme Court nominees. Reducing any individual to a sentence lifted from a footnote in a decades-old memo is unfair, and it is even more so when such filaments of evidence are used to predict a future voting pattern. Pressing our judges through the machinery that makes political sausage is unfair; it devalues the work they do, and it could over time change our instinctive understanding of that work, making us believe that it is mere politics.
— Dahlia Lithwick, Los Angeles Times (2005/12/28)
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posted by þΛųL jØŋαŦhΛŋ @ 03:00
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