Clear The Bench Colorado Director Matt Arnold interviewed by Jimmy Sengenberger of SengCenter radio on the importance of impartial justices, judicial philosophy, and upholding the rule of law against the backdrop of President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court and the failure of the “Mullarkey Majority” on the Colorado Supreme Court to live up to the standards of jurisprudence demanded of justices at the highest level.

Matt discusses some of the reasons that Colorado voters should “clear the bench” in 2010 by voting “NO” on four “unjust justices” of the Mullarkey Majority (Justices Michael Bender, Alex Martinez, Nancy Rice, and Chief Justice Mary Mullarkey) and how the Sotomayor nomination provides a teaching moment on the attributes, qualities, and standards expected of judges.

Listen to the interview (which starts at about halfway through the show, @29 minutes)

(Although this article doesn’t deal directly with the Colorado Supreme Court, it sheds an important light on the issue of judicial qualifications and attributes desirable in our judges - particularly on the highest court at both the State and Federal levels.  Cross-posted by permission of the author, Rossputin).

Well, we can’t say we weren’t warned. Obama has always said that the Constitution is essentially irrelevant, in the sense that it can and should mean whatever the newest, most liberal generation of activists in judges’ robes says it should mean.

And now we have the Supreme Court nominee to prove that Obama really meant it - and that elections have consequences.

Much fuss will be made over Sonia Sotomayor’s humble beginnings and Puerto Rican heritage, as if those things are qualifications for the nation’s (the world’s?) most important court. However, those beginnings and that heritage will remove the spine from enough Republicans that Sotomayor will have a relatively easy time getting approved.

For the record, I believe that the Senate should generally approve a president’s judicial nominations because that’s clearly a prerogative of winning an election unless the nominee is incompetent or was nominated through corruption, nepotism, etc.

But even a cursory look at some of Sotomayor’s decisions make one realize that she is a dangerous judge and one whose view of the importance of the Constitution is so twisted that she is, in my view, on the borderline of incompetence.

Most media discussion about Sotomayor’s judicial history is turning on a recent case in New Haven, Connecticut, where the city refused to promote firefighters after the results of the test created to judge who should be promoted ended up with no minorities passing the test. White firefighters sued, correctly saying that it was an obvious case of reverse discrimination. It has been widely reported that a highly respect judge on the same court, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, strongly criticized Sotomayor, saying that the 7-6 majority opinion essentially ignores “the weighty issues” involved in the appeal, particularly the weighty constitutional issues.

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case and, with luck, will overturn Sotomayor’s decision from the Court of Appeals…just as they did on a 6-3 vote a few weeks ago in the case of Entergy v. Riverkeeper.

Riverkeeper is a case which should make supporters of property rights and of rational, limited government shudder. In that case, Sotomayor ruled that the EPA was not permitted to perform a cost/benefit analysis of technologies used to protect animals located near power plants. Instead, all that mattered was whether the industry could afford the “best” technology. The Supreme Court overruled Sotomayor, saying that the EPA could choose to use cost/benefit analysis. Can you imagine the implications for government and society if government agencies didn’t just avoid rational cost/benefit calculations from time to time, but were actually not permitted to make them?

Sotomayor has also cited international law or practices in her court decisions, another aspect of her approach which should frighten Americans.

A CNN review of Sotomayor’s rulings which have been heard by the Supreme Court shows that she is usually overruled, and that when she is not she is still often criticized for faulty logic or a faulty understanding of the law.

All in all, Sonia Sotomayor is exactly what we should have expected and feared from Barack Obama: A liberal activist who legislates from the bench, using any twisted logic she can find to squirm through existing law and obviate our Constitution.

Yes, Virginia, elections have consequences…

Link to Original post at Rossputin.com.

What makes a good judge?  According to President Barack Obama, the replacement he’s seeking for retiring Justice David Souter “must be an individual endowed with ‘empathy’.”

A recent article by Mike Rosen in the Denver Post explores the topic in greater depth.  Rosen notes that President Obama proclaimed of his potential Supreme Court nominee that ”‘I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book.  It is also about how our laws affect the daily reality of people’s lives.’  (Oprah, perhaps?)  Compassionate and seductive as this pronouncement may sound to some, it represents a radical and dangerous departure from traditional American jurisprudence.”

“When empathetic judges rule on their feelings, they are exceeding their authority …  The point is that the role of the judicial branch of our government is to rule on the Constitution as written and the law as passed by Congress and signed by the president.  The courts are a co-equal branch of government, not a superior branch.  Their job is not to rule on what they think the law ought to be.”

As noted in a previous post, there is a fundamental difference in principle between those (such as President Obama) who advocate for judges to render decisions based on “empathy”, twisting the law as necessary to reach a preferred outcome (as in recent rulings by our own Colorado Supreme Court), and those who hold judges accountable to exercise their proper function (and sworn duty) to uphold the rule of law. 

ALL citizens of Colorado (and the United States) are entitled to equal treatment before the law.  Judges who rule by “empathy” are playing favorites, “helping” a select few while harming everyone else.  Unless judges are restricted to their proper role as referees, not players, we all lose.