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How Obama will Choose Supreme Court Justices

Posted by Duane Lester on May 1st, 2009 • Clicks

Jimmie at the Sundries Shack reminded me in this post that Obama has detailed what his criteria would be for a new justice:

Here’s what he said in Westerville, Ohio in March of 2008:

Here’s what he said before a Planned Parenthood audience in July 2007. It’s very similar to the above video:

I think the Constitution can be interpreted in so many ways. And one way is a cramped and narrow way in which the Constitution and the courts essentially become the rubber stamps of the powerful in society. And then there’s another vision of the court [sic] that says that the courts are the refuge of the powerless. Because oftentimes they can lose in the democratic back and forth. They may be locked out and prevented from fully participating in the democratic process. That’s one of the reasons I opposed Alito, you know, as well as Justice Roberts. When Roberts came up and everybody was saying, “You know, he’s very smart and he’s seems a very decent man and he loves his wife. You know, he’s good to his dog. He’s so well qualified.”

I said, well look, that’s absolutely true and in most Supreme Court decis–, in the overwhelming number of Supreme Court decisions, that’s enough. Good intellect, you read the statute, you look at the case law and most of the time, the law’s pretty clear. Ninety-five percent of the time. Justice Ginsberg, Justice Thomas, Justice Scalia they’re all gonna agree on the outcome.

But it’s those five percent of the cases that really count. And in those five percent of the cases, what you’ve got to look at is—what is in the justice’s heart. What’s their broader vision of what America should be. Justice Roberts said he saw himself just as an umpire but the issues that come before the Court are not sport, they’re life and death. And we need somebody who’s got the heart—the empathy—to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old—and that’s the criteria by which I’ll be selecting my judges. Alright?

On the hard cases, he wants a justice to judge based on “what’s in their heart” rather than what the law or the Constitution says. He wants cases based on “empathy” or “enough feeling on what an ordinary person is going through” rather than what the law or Constitution says.

This is called judicial activism and it is based on the idea that the Constitution is a living document. The Founder and Framers didn’t hold that belief. That’s why they included the amendment process. They felt that if the Constitution needed to change, it shouldn’t be up to a few judges on a bench.

Today’s liberals don’t want the people to decide. They already know what is best for them.