COMMENTARY BY The idea that lawyers cannot be impartial judges because they are partners in a big law firm or take their religious faith seriously is not simply baffling, it is dangerous. William_Potter/Getty Images The Left today rejects the very idea of an impartial judge. This debate about the role and power of judges in our system of government is as old as America’s founding. Threats to restructure or manipulate the judicial branch itself are not simply extreme, they are insidious. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.) is right about one thing. In a brief recently filed in a Supreme Court case, he and several fellow Senate Democrats observed that a majority of Americans see the court as motivated or influenced by politics. The senators are wrong, however, to suggest that the “cure” for this situation is to restructure the courts so they render decisions that favor preferred political interests. The public perception of a politicized judiciary is nothing new. In 1953, Justice Robert Jackson lamented the “widely held belief” that the Supreme Court “no longer respects impersonal rules of law but is guided . . . by personal impressions which from time to time may be shared by a […]
