NEOAVATARA

I have heard many commentaries stating that Barack Obama,mas a constitutional scholar at the University of Chicago, was ‘practical’ and ‘pragmatic‘ regarding his views on the court.

What exactly does that mean?  For liberals, ‘practical’ means that they ‘understand’ the realities of minorities and the people of America.

The problem is, that is not the Constitutional role of the court

The Court’s role is to determine the legalities of the law; to define the gray areas of the legal playground.  Their role is to simply analyze and determine what laws, and the Constitution, mean in the real world.

For example, the leading candidate to replace Justice Souter, Sonia Sotomayor, has argued that ‘the courts are where policy is made’.  I am sorry, that is precisely what courts are not supposed to do.  This is judicial activism at its worst.

Harry Reid has promised that the President will bring the same competence and vetting that to picking the next justice as he did to pick his cabinet.  Woohoo!  More tax controversies all around!

I am not saying courts aren’t supposed to have a realistic view of the world.  I don’t even think Supreme Court Justices have to be judges.  But they must understand simply that their role is to interpret law, and not make it.  And so for, Sotomayor has shown that she doesn’t understand this distinction.  It is questionable whether our ‘Constitutional expert’ in the White House does either.