Bouncing off my earlier post, let’s take a look at John Yoo’s most recent column, which takes the general right wing line on Obama’s potential court picks:
In his 2005 confirmation hearings, Roberts compared judges to neutral umpires in a baseball game. Sen. Obama did not vote to confirm Roberts or Alito, but now proposes to appoint a Great Empathizer who will call balls and strikes with a strike zone that depends on the sex, race, and social and economic background of the players. Nothing could be more damaging to the fairness of the game, or to the idea of a rule of law that is blind to the identity of the parties before it.
Yes, yes, conservatives believe that considering how the outcome of a ruling might affect people in the real world is somehow antithetical to interpreting the law correctly. Of course, John Yoo didn’t always think that judges should be “neutral umpires.” In fact, the thought that doing that meant “not being a judge”, as he so articulately expressed on PBS’ Newshour five years ago:
JIM LEHRER: So that’s what you think Justice O’Connor should be doing more of, in other words follow an ideology or follow a philosophy and be consistent with that and not switch back and forth, one time be with the conservatives and one time be with the liberals, is that what you’re saying, John Yoo?
JOHN YOO: Yes, because if you’re just switching back and forth all the time, if you’re in the middle all the time, are you really being a judge – I mean, isn’t that what we elect people to be legislators, is to cut compromises and to split the differences, not judges?
What’s fascinating here is that Lehrer asks such a direct question, and Yoo answers it with complete honesty. A judge’s job is not to interpret the law, according to Yoo, it’s to make a decision based on his political sympathies. That used to be what “being a judge” meant to Yoo. Now he wants to make sure that Obama appoints “neutral umpires”. He was frustrated that Justice O’Connor decided her opinions based on the law in each individual case, rather than sticking with the Republican party line at all times.
It’s rather incredible isn’t it? There simply are no rules for John Yoo, they are whatever he thinks they should be depending on the situation. His legal mind is an eternal game of Calvinball.
— A. Serwer
