Karl Rove and the Mystery of the Obvious

If you are going to pursue truth, you have to be prepared to change your mind!

Maybe Rove Is Starting to Get it:

He has declared: "Empathy" is the latest code word for liberal activism, ....”

Yes, imagine that!

Liberals like liberal activism, conservatives like conservative activism.

Go figure....

I’m always amazed when political folks portray the most obvious of truths as the re-appearance of Beazelbub. Maybe the sulphurous smoke is blinding them? (Actually, I’m not amazed at all - this is the very life breath of jingoism....)

“...for treating the Constitution as malleable clay to be kneaded and molded in whatever form justices want. It represents an expansive view of the judiciary in which courts create policy that couldn't pass the legislative branch or, if it did, would generate voter backlash.”

Yes there are laws that can’t get through a legislature. Some bad ones, some really good ones that get blocked, some that legislatures haven't even though about yet.

One would suspect that Mr. Rove is familiar with lobbyists and special interest groups and the huge growth in corporate money being spent to affect (and sometimes block) legislation.

Judges have made law and policy throughout our legal history: we are a common law system - in a common law system, judges make law. The “sudden” concern for this historic truth apparently reflects the fact that lately (the last 100 years or so) “activist judges” have, in delivering justice, found that the legislatures have failed to come up with justice on their own. Maybe because of lobbying? Special interests?

In the mid and late 1800s, activist judges created a slew of law about railroads, clearing away some old views about property rights and of torts that were blocking expansion of the railroads. The legislatures were slow to act and the law was very different from state to state.

Uniform law was needed and the judiciary provided it for the benefit of “big business and commerce.”

Kind of too bad in a way. It would have been interesting to see how commerce would have grown if we had stuck to rivers and canals.

Re judicial activism: see also my earlier blog entries for April.

And this recent one on empathy as being a required element of judging for some areas of law.

Judging, Empathy and the Law: Part I

If you are going to pursue truth, you have to be prepared to change your mind!

Judging Empathy And Law: Part II

A few weeks ago, President Obama mentioned “empathy” as one of several qualities he would look for in his judicial appointments.

Some critics have asserted that “empathy” is just a code word for “activist judges” (apparently assuming that the ‘activist’ judiciary which has created a great deal of the fundamental law of our nation throughout our history was somehow ‘unamerican’ or acting contrary to the funding principles of the nation.)

Accepting that “code word” characterization at face value, it should be noted that, in this era of our history, “activist judge” is itself a code word for “liberal judge.”

Conservatives have openly advocated a conservative judiciary and the appointment of conservative judges - a perfectly natural and appropriate expression of their views.

At best, it it disingenuous, however, to condemn liberals for advocating a liberal judiciary when one engages in exactly the same sort of political advocacy from a different viewpoint.