Empathy Not Necessary for Supreme Court Justice

[erpowers]

I realize that I am a little late on the empathy argument in that President Obama has already picked his Supreme Court nominee and she seems to have empathy. However, I do not believe empathy needs to be a quality in a Supreme Court justice. I may be wrong but the main job of a Supreme Court justice is to determine whether or not actions are constitutional. In my opinion, which many will probably disagree with, the only things required to be a Supreme Court justice is knowledge of the law and an ability to interpret the law. That does not mean I think people ideas should not be examined. I do want people with certain ideas on the Supreme Court. I do want people who are left leaning on the Court.

What would be the point of a Supreme Court justice having empathy? I do not see the point of a Supreme Court justice having empathy. The questions before the justices are always whether or not something is constitutional. In my opinion, Supreme court rulings are not like sentences in which a judge decides what type of punishment to give someone after they have been convicted of a crime. With the Supreme Court, justices decide whether something is constitutional. To me those are questions of yes or no, not to what degree. In my opinion the only thing that empathy in a Supreme Court justice can cause is for a justice to say this is unconstitutional, but due to empathy the court will allow you to do this action. I just do not see the point of empathy on the Supreme Court.

I am not a person who is against empathy. I think empathy is a good thing; however, I do not think a Supreme Court justice needs to have empathy to do his/her job. The questions before them only deal with whether or not something is constitutional. In my opinion there is no need for empathy when answering whether or not an issue is constitutional.

[Enrique]

1. the judge needs to know how the law affects people

I heard Obama talk about the Lily Ledbetter decision, where it would help a judge to understand how things go in the workplace, to understand that sometimes the worker doesn't know right away about the discrimination (they ruled against her because she waited to long to report the discrimination).

I just read a pro business editorial praising Alito for understanding business's point of view. In other words he had empathy for business problems.

[Toasterlad]

2. Especially Not in California, Apparently.

[WeDidIt]

3. The presence of empathy indicates the nominee is not a psychopath

Lacking empathy is the very definition of a psychopath.

[jobycom]

4. People aren't arguing that empathy overrule constitutionality.

The issue is which way a judge will rule when there is more than one Constitutionally accurate interpretation. Say a major corporation has a piece of land condemned for a private factory that will put half the town to work, but it will displace a poor family from their family land and further impoverish them, when a nearby plot of land owned by the governor's daughter would serve just as well. A court rules in favor of the corporation because all laws are followed, but an appeals court rules in favor of the family because their rights to equal protection were violated. An appeals court would have to judge the strength of legal claims with two sets of precedence both having equal legal weight.

The Supreme Court's primary purpose is to judge the legality of law, not interpret each law, and they do this with several primary factors in mind. They have to understand the Constitution, they have to understand legal precedence, and they have to know when to override legal precedence because the spirit of the Constitution was violated. Sometimes neither position really violates established law, and a Justice has to decide which position is right.

In cases like Dredd Scott or Plessy v Ferguson, the Constitution and legal precedent could have been satisfied by either ruling, or at least interpreted as satisfied, but the rulings arrived at in the long run proved to violate the spirit of the Constitution because they underestimated the human element of the ruling. Plessy, for instance, ruled that races could be separate if they were treated equal, and that sounded Constitutional, but in the long run the reality proved that separate could never be equal. The legal, judicial ruling lacked an understanding of human nature, and that made the decision wrong.

There is of course the opposite syndrome, where Bush v Gore lacked all judicial integrity and was purely a ruling of self-interest, but that's a different case.

So the Constitutionality of a decision should be paramount, and a candidate's legal and judicial skills should be of the highest caliber, but we all know that there are a hundred judges out there equally qualified in terms of education, experience, intelligence, judicial integrity, etc. There is something extra which makes an exemplary justice, and empathy is as good a word for it as any.

[applegrove]

5. You need empathy to be a good human being. You have to be a good

human being to be a good judge. I don't know where you get your ideas from but I think you are very wrong.