Senate Debate on Empathy
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| 2010-05-07 - Jeff Sessions - Americans look for Supreme Court (- sort-d) | ||||
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Americans look for Supreme Court to restrain federal power, not expand it
When the president nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the court last May, he said he wanted a justice who would decide cases based on her sense of empathy. But the empathy standard was soon rejected by the American people for what it was: license for unaccountable, lifetime-appointed judges to impose their political and social preferences from the bench. Despite widespread repudiation of the empathy standard -- including an explicit rejection from Sotomayor -- the president has not retreated from this view. Instead, he has searched for new ways to describe the same flawed idea. President Obama said recently that his court nominee must have "a keen understanding of how the law affects the daily lives of the American people." This is nothing more than another thinly veiled attempt to justify judicial activism. |
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