That’s the only conclusion possible after reading this column about the Roberts nomination
If I were in the Senate, I’d vote no on Roberts — not because I think he’s unqualified intellectually to be the next chief justice but because I fear an easy life has led him to easy answers. Judge Roberts will surely get his seat on the high court. He was virtually born to it. I wish, though, that I thought it remotely possible he’d read “The African-American Odyssey.” It’s about people who for too long a time were born to something else.
In other words, because he is successful, because he’s smart, because he has been fortunate to contribute in so many ways to the legal profession, John Roberts is absolutely unqualified to be Chief Justice of the United States.
Stupid. Just stupid.
Read the whole thing, but only if you have the stomach for it.
Update: Apparently, Richard Cohen isn’t the only one wishing for an empathic Chief Justice. George Will recounts this statement from California Senator Diane Feinstein:
Exploring Roberts’s “temperament and values,” Feinstein asked him about “end of life” decisions, urging him to talk to her “as a son, a husband, a father.” Instead, she says disapprovingly, he “gave a very detached response.”
Now, some people might think that detachment is a good thing in a judge — that it might be the virtue called judiciousness. Never mind. Feinstein’s real worry is, she said, Roberts’s failure to explain how he planned to be “in touch” with “the problems real people have out there.” She was dismayed by the inadequacy of his discussion of “the importance of reaching out to communities that he normally would not be in contact with, and spending time to understand the problems that average people face, in my communities of Hunters Point, of East L.A., of some of the agriculture areas of our state.”
Feinstein said, “His answer failed to recognize the point of the question and the concern about staying in touch with people who have different life experiences.” Well, what was the point of the question?
Exactly. What is the point ? It depends on what kind of judge you want, I suppose. If you want one that follows the law, the question of whether or not he or she is “in touch” with certain communities is irrelevant. If you want, however, a judge that follow the whim of public opinion, then it is vitally important that they be in touch with “the street.” It is clear where Feinstein stands on this choice.
Will goes on to ask:
At the risk of revealing a serious empathy deficit, one might ask: What is the importance of a Supreme Court justice’s understanding the problems of lettuce farmers in California’s Central Valley? How, in the course of performing his judicial duties, does a justice reach out to, and stay in touch with, those farmers? Perhaps Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, two of Feinstein’s pin-ups, routinely do the empathetic things that Roberts, Feinstein has decided, does not know how to do, or is too emotionally impoverished to do. But how does any of what Feinstein was talking about pertain to judging?
It doesn’t and that is precisely the point. The left views the Courts as just another avenue that can be used to push their agenda. To be fair, there are groups on the right that are just as guilty in this respect. The idea of the impartial judge means nothing to these people.
Linked with today’s Beltway Traffic Jam
