Empathy verses Law - Repealed of the 14th Amendment

by Thomas Sowell: Justice David Souter's retirement from the Supreme Court presents Pres. Barack Obama with his first opportunity to appoint someone to the High Court. People who are speculating about whether the next nominee will be a woman, a Hispanic, or whatever, are missing the point. That we are discussing the next Supreme Court justice in terms of group “representation” is a sign of how far we have already strayed from the purpose of law and the weighty responsibility of appointing someone to sit for life on the highest court in the land.

That President Obama has made “empathy” with certain groups one of his criteria for choosing a Supreme Court nominee is a dangerous sign of how much farther the Supreme Court may be pushed away from the rule of law and toward even more arbitrary judicial edicts to advance the agenda of the Left and set it in legal concrete, immune from the democratic process.

Would you want to go into court to appear before a judge with “empathy” for groups A, B, and C, if you were a member of groups X, Y, or Z? Nothing could be farther from the rule of law. That would be bad news, even in a traffic court, much less in a court that has the last word on your rights under the Constitution of the United States.

Appoint enough Supreme Court justices with “empathy” for particular groups and you would have, for all practical purposes, repealed the 14th Amendment, which guarantees “equal protection of the laws” for all Americans. We would have entered a strange new world, where everybody is equal but some are more equal than others. The very idea of the rule of law becomes meaningless when it is replaced by the empathies of judges.

Barack Obama solves this contradiction, as he solves so many other problems, with rhetoric. . . . [Read Full Story]
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.

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Tags: 14th Amendment, Barack Obama, empathy, equal protection, judicial appointments, law, SCOTUS, Thomas Sowell, US Supreme Court To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!