The federal judiciary should be independent of politics. But it isn't. Justice John Roberts in his highly public statement may have been chiding other judges, not Donald Trump. Roberts' comment can be found HERE. To wit:
Normally restrained Chief Justice John Roberts took issue on Wednesday with President Donald Trump's characterization of a federal judge who ruled against his administration as an "Obama judge."
"We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges," Roberts said in a statement. "What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them."
"That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for."
Roberts issued the statement in response to a request from The Associated Press after Trump's comments about the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar in San Francisco, who on Monday blocked the Trump administration's effort to keep migrants trying to enter the U.S. from applying for asylum.
Unfortunately, there are too many Federal Judges who think we have a "living constitution" -- a constitution like a rubber band to be stretched to fit whatever the popular view happens to be. It's hard to be a constitutionalist. The jurist has to know the constitution and be current on all the precedent about the issue. Adherents to the "living constitution" theory need only have read the opinion pages of two or three national newspapers.
Chief Justice Roberts has to know that there are too many "living constitution" judges on the bench and too many judges who will indeed rule for or against a sitting president's policies based on politics. And giving Roberts the full benefit of the doubt, he could have been trying to diplomatically point out to them that they are doing it wrong. We all want Justices who will look at the law, not at the litigants. They call that blind justice.
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1:58 PM 11/22/2018
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