Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature currently requires accessing the site using the built-in Safari browser.
Lady Justice's blindfold - The Boston Globe
JUDICIAL dispassion - the ability to decide cases without being influenced by personal feelings or political preferences - is indispensable to the rule of law. So indispensable, in fact, that the one-sentence judicial oath required of every federal judge and justice contains no fewer than three expressions of it: "I . . . do solemnly swear that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me . . . under the Constitution and laws of the United States, so help me God."
Without judicial restraint there is no rule of law. We live under "a government of laws and not of men" only so long as judges stick to neutrally resolving the disputes before them, applying the law, and upholding the Constitution even when doing so leads to results they personally dislike. That is why the judicial oath is so adamant about impartiality. That is why Lady Justice is so frequently depicted - as on the sculpted lampposts outside the US Supreme Court - wearing a blindfold and carrying balanced scales.
Time and again, Obama has called for judges who do not put their private political views aside when deciding cases. In choosing a replacement for Justice David Souter, the president says, he will seek not just "excellence and integrity," but a justice whose "quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles," would be "an essential ingredient" in his jurisprudence. In an interview last year, he said he would look for judges "sympathetic" to those "on the outside, those who are vulnerable, those who are powerless."
When he voted against the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts in 2005, Obama declared that the "truly difficult" cases that come before the Supreme Court can be decided only with reference to "the depth and breadth of one's empathy," and that "the critical ingredient is supplied by what is in the judge's heart."
But such cardiac justice is precisely what judges "do solemnly swear" to renounce. Sympathy for others is an admirable virtue. But a judge's private commiserations are not relevant to the law he is expected to apply.
Do you believe a judge should be empathic when passing out judgments?
Absolutely not. Empathy is based on emotion.
Etymology: Greek empatheia, literally, passion, from empathēs emotional, from em- + pathos feelings, emotion
Judgments and/or rulings should be dispassionate. As an attorney, Obama should full-well know this. One can only wonder at his audacity to question Roberts' record when he could only come up with 1% of Roberts' decisions that he felt didn't display the appropriate empathy.
Judges aren't supposed to make law. THey're supposed to enforce it.
Incorrect. See the past 500 years of Ango-American jurisprudence. Again, why do you hate our American traditions?
I re-iterate, judges aren't supposed to make law. THey do it, but they're wrong to do so.
WHich is why we continue to ask the simple, straight forward questions and answer with simple, straightforward answers.
Define common law. He couldn't do it.
And to the off-the-wall rambling about hating American tradition, which has nothing to do with judges making law, answer with something simple and to the point...
Judges aren't supposed to make law.
Judges aren't supposed to make law. THey're supposed to enforce it.
Incorrect. See the past 500 years of Ango-American jurisprudence. Again, why do you hate our American traditions?
And THIS friends is why we should begin the discussion of why such idiots need to be forbidden from voting... they're idiots.
There is absolutely NOTHING in Western Jurisprudence which provides the judiciary with the power to MAKE LAW.
ZERO
.
.
.
NADA
.
.
.
ZILCH....
Such people are what are technically referred to as an IGNORAMUS... AKA: A derogatory term used to describe one who is proven to possess a lack of knowledge or, education in general or in a specific subject, but who profess otherwise.
Now those ignoramusses out there who find yourself OUTRAGED at that... simply site the US Constitution and the articles where Judges are empowered to make law.
Now for the sake of rubbing it in... there is no such article or any other potential reference TO such power being imparted to the US Judiciary... PERIOD.
And 'Common law' or 'conventional wisdom' does not provide for such, notwithstanding the opinions of the 'Moderate progressives' amongst us. Such notions are subversive to the US Constitution and America on the whole; and those holding such opinions are in point of INCONTESTABLE FACT... THE PROBLEM!
Umm...common law as constrasted with statutory law. For a simple primer see this: Common law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The US has a rich history of such law, and in fact much of our current property and contract law is common law. Do you want to throw out 500 years of tradition, 200 years of American jurisprudence, and a rich history of judge-made law? Why do you hate our traditions so much?
Judges aren't supposed to make law. THey're supposed to enforce it.
Umm...common law as constrasted with statutory law. For a simple primer see this: Common law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The US has a rich history of such law, and in fact much of our current property and contract law is common law. Do you want to throw out 500 years of tradition, 200 years of American jurisprudence, and a rich history of judge-made law? Why do you hate our traditions so much?
Case law is very important in the American jurisprudence, but it should be done without emotion. Should SCOTUS Justices violate their oaths?
Judges aren't supposed to make law. THey're supposed to enforce it.
Judges don't make the law. They don't enforce it. The police enforce it (thus they are called Law Enforcement).
Judges interpret the law.
Umm...common law as constrasted with statutory law. For a simple primer see this: Common law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The US has a rich history of such law, and in fact much of our current property and contract law is common law. Do you want to throw out 500 years of tradition, 200 years of American jurisprudence, and a rich history of judge-made law? Why do you hate our traditions so much?
Case law is very important in the American jurisprudence, but it should be done without emotion. Should SCOTUS Justices violate their oaths?
Empathy isn't an emotion. Its the ability to understand the emotions of others, and why others feel those emotions.
Case law is very important in the American jurisprudence, but it should be done without emotion. Should SCOTUS Justices violate their oaths?
Empathy isn't an emotion. Its the ability to understand the emotions of others, and why others feel those emotions.
So should they violate their oaths now?
No human that suppresses their emotions is human ... hell ... they are not even living things at that point.
Deciding law based upon the law isn't emotionless.
No human that suppresses their emotions is human ... hell ... they are not even living things at that point.
Deciding law based upon the law isn't emotionless.
No human that suppresses their emotions is human ... hell ... they are not even living things at that point.
Deciding law based upon the law isn't emotionless.
Aaah ... but there's a flaw, how do you just turn off emotions?
Oaths of Office For Federal Officials - Supreme CourtNo human that suppresses their emotions is human ... hell ... they are not even living things at that point.
Deciding law based upon the law isn't emotionless.
Umm, you'll have to explain that one.
Judges aren't supposed to make law. THey're supposed to enforce it.
Judges don't make the law. They don't enforce it. The police enforce it (thus they are called Law Enforcement).
Judges interpret the law.
I actually agree with you, I do believe they should interpret the law without respect of their emotions.
Deciding law based upon the law isn't emotionless.
Aaah ... but there's a flaw, how do you just turn off emotions?
You don't turn them off, but you can subjugate them to your intellect. I believe strongly in due process for all individuals. And yet, my girlfriend was going to work at a clinic defending people who had their kids taken away for abuse (often with little to no due process). Several good friends of mine were abused as kids and if there is one thing that makes me want to kill someone, its people who abuse their kids. And I don't think I would be able to defend them, but I support my girlfriend doing it. Because they, like everyone else, deserves due process rights. And despite my emotional reaction of wanting to kill them, the intellectual reaction of knowing that despite the fact that the state has accused them of something, they may well be completely innocent.
