My Way News

My Way News - Alito Hearing Article

The link is to a short article on today's hearings on Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court. It emphasizes his comment that a judge should not have an agenda.

Part of what we see in the spectacle of these hearings are two different views of judging one makes judges social engineers. In that view the views of the judge on the future of society are everything. In the other view judges just apply rules according to yet more rules. In this view the judges personal views are unimportant. Judge Alito holds the latter view, and the Senate democrats, the former.

While I believe the second view is the safer of the two views on display, the ideal view of judging is still a bit different. I agree that judges hear the real cases and controversies before them instead of planning social policy and hunting for ways to enact their plans into reality. But a judge, in discovering the law to apply to a particular dispute, must know how to find the real law - the law that is moral, rational, reasonable, and within the boundaries set for human law by God as well as, ideally, within the writings of the legislative branch, the prerogative of the executive, and the consent of the governed. This type of law finding requires practical wisdom, character, insight, vision, and virtue as well as a good education and valuable experience. It relates not to the judges opinions, but to whether he sees things as they really are.