http://philosophyonthemesa.com/2009/05/26/judicial-activism/ Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:52:19 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://philosophyonthemesa.com/2009/05/26/judicial-activism/#comment-2183 Thu, 28 May 2009 05:56:02 +0000 http://philosophyonthemesa.wordpress.com/?p=955#comment-2183 [...] As I pointed out yesterday, judges have to interpret the law and apply the law to the facts that constitute the case on which they are ruling. Supreme Court justices are making decisions that will set policy and legal standards for the entire nation. So their decisions have consequences. But most judges are wealthy, well-educated elites, insulated from the struggles less privileged people must endure. And their occupation gives them a unique outlook on the world not widely shared by people outside the legal profession. If their conception of the impact of their rulings is bounded by the cloistered, privileged parameters of their own lives, the result will not only be bad law, it will be law that is partial to their social and economic class. It is simply a myth that there is some standpoint, from which a judge can rule, shorn of values and divorced from the circumstances of life. The belief that there is such a standpoint is itself an ideology and a pernicious one at that. [...]

]]> http://philosophyonthemesa.com/2009/05/26/judicial-activism/#comment-2182 Thu, 28 May 2009 05:49:26 +0000 http://philosophyonthemesa.wordpress.com/?p=955#comment-2182 [...] As I pointed out yesterday, judges have to interpret the law and apply the law to the facts that constitute the case on which they are ruling. Supreme Court justices are making decisions that will set policy and legal standards for the entire nation. So their decisions have consequences. But most judges are wealthy, well-educated elites, insulated from the struggles less privileged people must endure. And their occupation gives them a unique outlook on the world not widely shared by people outside the legal profession. If their conception of the impact of their rulings is bounded by the cloistered, privileged parameters of their own lives, the result will not only be bad law, it will be law that is partial to their social and economic class. It is simply a myth that there is some standpoint, from which a judge can rule, shorn of values and divorced from the circumstances of life. The belief that there is such a standpoint is itself an ideology and a pernicious one at that. [...]

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