Empathy vs. the rule of law
Posted by Richard on May 28, 2009
At GetLiberty.org, William Warren succinctly summarized the problem with Sonia Sontomayor in this cartoon:
Dr. Thomas Sowell addressed the issue in greater depth in his latest column:
Barack Obama’s repeated claim that a Supreme Court justice should have “empathy” with various groups has raised red flags that we ignore at our peril — and at the peril of our children and grandchildren.
“Empathy” for particular groups can be reconciled with “equal justice under law” — the motto over the entrance to the Supreme Court — only with smooth words. But not in reality. President Obama used those smooth words in introducing Judge Sotomayor but words do not change realities.
…… Speaking at the University of California at Berkeley in 2001, she said that the ethnicity and sex of a judge “may and will make a difference in our judging.”
Moreover, this was not something she lamented. On the contrary, she added, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”
No doubt the political spinmasters will try to spin this to mean something innocent. But the cold fact is that this is a poisonous doctrine for any judge, much less a justice of the Supreme Court.
That kind of empathy would for all practical purposes repeal the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which guarantees “equal protection of the laws” to all Americans.
The Sotomayor nomination, the railroading of bondholders, the massive expansions of wealth redistribution, and countless other actions and pronouncements have made it crystal clear that Barack Obama doesn't value the Constitution or "equal justice under law" very much. He gladly tosses them out when they interfere with his desire to expand the power of government and forcibly impose greater equality of outcomes. As Friedrich A. Hayek observed, the latter is incompatible with the former:
From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time.
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