Senator Jeff Sessions says that the ‘Publicans won’t filibuster Judge Sontomayor, but they’re going to ask some darned tough questions:

“We have an absolute constitutional duty to make sure that any nominee, no matter what their background and what kind of life story they have . . . will be faithful to the law and not allow their personal views to influence decision-making.”

Of course, we all have personal views and impersonal views. The former are judgments that we come to ourselves, based on our experience and understanding of the world around us, and, in the specific case of judges, on their understanding of the law. Our impersonal views, far more reliable and impartial than our personal views, our whispered to us by Fifth-Dimensional elves who are utterly impartial in everything they do.

More seriously, you would expect that anyone with the apparent intelligence of Judge Sotomayor would be able to ground any defense of their personal views in the law… which would make them legal views. Then again, we saw Justice Kennedy fail to do just that in a case recently approving restrictions about abortions. His decision said he figured women might feel bad about them. That’s not the law, that’s personal… But I doubt that’s the example Sessions was thinking of.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 28th, 2009 at 1:37 am and is filed under The Political Mindscape. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.