With characteristic brilliance, Thomas Sowell has perfectly analyzed President Obama’s statement that he intends to appoint a Supreme Court justice who will be empathetic to certain groups. I’m really having a tough time excerpting his article here because it’s so good, and I recommend you read the whole thing.
Here are a few highlights:
That we are discussing the next Supreme Court justice in terms of group “representation” is a sign of how far we have already strayed from the purpose of law and the weighty responsibility of appointing someone to sit for life on the highest court in the land.
That President Obama has made “empathy” with certain groups one of his criteria for choosing a Supreme Court nominee is a dangerous sign of how much further the Supreme Court may be pushed away from the rule of law and toward even more arbitrary judicial edicts to advance the agenda of the left and set it in legal concrete, immune from the democratic process.
And what about that notion that justice should be blind?
Would you want to go into court to appear before a judge with “empathy” for groups A, B and C, if you were a member of groups X, Y or Z? Nothing could be further from the rule of law. That would be bad news, even in a traffic court, much less in a court that has the last word on your rights under the Constitution of the United States.
Appoint enough Supreme Court justices with “empathy” for particular groups and you would have, for all practical purposes, repealed the 14th Amendment, which guarantees “equal protection of the laws” for all Americans.
We would have entered a strange new world, where everybody is equal but some are more equal than others. The very idea of the rule of law would become meaningless when it is replaced by the empathies of judges.
But why is it that people like me are so concerned?
In the American system of government, presidential term limits restrict how long any given resident of the White House can damage this country directly. But that does not limit how long, or how much, the people he appoints to the Supreme Court can continue to damage this country, for decades after the president who appointed them is long gone.
Justice John Paul Stevens virtually destroyed the Constitution’s restrictions on government officials’ ability to confiscate private property in his 2005 decision in the case of “Kelo v. New London”– 30 years after President Ford appointed him.
The solution to institutional discrimination is not discrimination in the other direction. Fairness and justice are not served when a pendulum of empathy swings from side to side. While President Obama tries to rip the blindfold off Lady Justice, the people should demand it be tightened ever more.
I had predicted a Supreme Court vacancy early in Obama’s term, but I was a bit surprised to see Souter go. It is highly likely that President Obama will get to appoint at least three Supreme Court Justices, who—depending on age—could affect the Court for the next 30-40 years. These are the spoils afforded the victor, and Republicans had better get the message that it is happening because they squandered their opportunities to govern as conservatives. The consequences always come.
Finally, though I prefer our system of government to all others on Earth, I am all the more thankful that in the coming Court of Judgment we will all be treated the same and that the Judge is Justice Himself.
Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, and the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy.
