The basic is that the law is immutable. It doesn't change with the defendant. It matters not if you are the king or the lowest serf, the law applies equally. If you don't like the law, you don't re-interpret it to suit the individual in front of the bench. You must repeal or change the law through the legislative process.
With the rule of law in place, every citizen knows that they will receive the same treatment before the court regardless of their circumstances, whether high-born or low.
We are about to see a Supreme Court justice replaced. The opportunity occurs very early in the administration of the Messiah and it is likely to be doubled as Ruth Bader Ginsberg ends her tenure shortly. Here's some detail on the situation:
Souter to Step Down
The critical quote in that piece is this one:
In the summer of 2007, he said "we need somebody who's got the heart . . . the empathy to recognize what it's like to be a young, teenaged mom; the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting my judges."
You shouldn't be surprised. He has long made it clear that justice in his perception is about concern for the poor, the minority, the special folks who were the ignorant ones who voted for him. It isn't about the law, it is about sticking it to "the Man." Being Black or gay or young hasn't got a damned thing to do with the law.
He's intending to shape the justice system to look a lot like Madame Defarge is on the bench. Whether or not there will be a guillotine on Pennsylvania Ave. in the near future is yet to be determined.
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Nor should we forget what the President has said about the Constitution:
"But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendancy to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that."
It is my understanding that these ideas are fundamental to his understanding of the Constitution and government, and we can reasonably assume his nominations will be made from among legal scholars who share these radical--indeed anti-Constitutional--views.
(google "charter of negative liberties" for sources and discussion. It is all over the net.)
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