In The Situationist, Adam Benforado takes on the question of “liberal” bias in the American Bar Association’s evaluation of judicial nominees. Turns out the verdict is guilty, but guilty of what?
The problem, once again, is one of sloppy description, of misnaming. We cannot think usefully about things that we mislabel. Excerpt:
It may not just be that measurements of “judicial temperament” “leave room for subjective judgments that may tend to favor liberals”; it may also be that the elements that define this factor —“compassion, open-mindedness and commitment to equal justice”— are ones that, objectively, liberals tend to score higher on than conservatives.In their continuing work uncovering the cognitive and motivational differences between conservatives and liberals, Situationist contributor John Jost and his colleagues have shown that conservatives tend to exhibit, among other things, greater discomfort with ambiguity, greater need for cognitive closure, and greater tolerance for inequality.
If “judicial temperament” were measured by “commitment to avoiding uncertainty; desire for closure, order, and structure; and commitment to affirming the status quo”— traits that we, as a society, might very well decide that we would like our members of the judiciary to exhibit — the research by Jost and his colleagues suggests that conservative nominees would receive considerably higher scores than liberals.
All of this implies that the reason that liberals are receiving higher ratings may have more to do with liberal and conservative proclivities and the choice of rating factors than with the biased application of neutral criteria.
Perhaps the discussion concerning A.B.A. ratings would be more productive if it shifted away from accusing the members of the Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary of being “political” and, instead, focused on debating whether “compassion, open-mindedness and commitment to equal justice under the law” are the traits that we ought to seek in choosing our judges.
... debating whether “compassion, open-mindedness and commitment to equal justice under the law” are the traits that we ought to seek in choosing our judges.
yeah, i think we should have this debate. we clearly don't have enough narrow-minded people who lack empathy or a sense of fairness on the bench.
Posted by: karen marie on April 3, 2009 10:54 AMThe law is part of the state, and our particular state, like most, is a fully owned subsidiary of the rich and powerful. The best the rest of us can ever expect from the legal system is a few crumbs thrown us now and then to keep us barely sub-mutinous.
Posted by: Furber on April 5, 2009 3:05 PM