Empathy Not a Qualification for Supreme Court Justice
By David Anderson
06/02/2009
With the retirement of Justice Souter we have heard President Obama proclaim, "empathy is an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes." Numerous letters and editorials have been written on the Obama nomination of Sonia Sotomayor but let's not confuse empathy as a qualification for a Supreme Court Justice. Obama is mistaken this is not and should not be a qualification for justice.
Empathy has a proper place in some professions or life calling, such as medicine or charitable work. Some laws do take account of a party's identity when necessary -- such as racial or gender discrimination. But judges should not apply these rules differently in individual cases because of the skin color, or sex, or religion of the plaintiff or defendant. Nothing could be more damaging to the fairness of justice as a whole, or to the idea of a rule of law that is blind to the identity of the parties before it.
"The Supreme Court of the United States is the custodian of our Constitution. Justices of the Supreme Court must not only be jurists of the highest competence; they must be attentive to the specific rights guaranteed in our Constitution and proper role of the courts in our democratic system. ...[J]udges' personal preferences and values should not be part of their constitutional interpretations. The guiding principle of judicial restraint recognizes that under the Constitution it is the exclusive province of the legislatures to enact laws and the role of the courts to interpret them." --Ronald Reagan
Jonah Goldberg in his recent piece (Empathy vs. Impartiality) on National Review Online http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NGM1Y2U0NTAzMjhkM2NlMGEyNDg2NTQwNzFiNzYxYWQ= hit in on the head when he stated, "Obama and Sotomayor both assume that a firsthand understanding of the plight of the poor or the African-American or the gay or the old will automatically result in justices voting a certain (liberal) way." Clarence Thomas understands what it is like to be poor and black better than any justice who has ever sat on the bench. How's that working out for liberals?
As Goldberg continued to which I agree, "More important, who says conservatives are against judicial empathy? I, for one, am all for it. I'm for empathy for the party most deserving of justice before the Supreme Court, within the bounds of the law and Constitution. If that means siding with a poor black man, great. If that means siding with a rich white one, that's great too. The same holds for gays and gun owners, single mothers and media conglomerates. We should all rejoice when justices fulfill their oaths and give everyone a fair hearing, even if that's now out of fashion in the age of Obama." Exactly -- we all have empathy to some degree but that is not what should shape the judgment and rulings of our Supreme Court Justices.
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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.
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