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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (54998)	5/29/2009 9:45:50 AM
From: nigel bates	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 149317

>>If the courts can create law, rather than just apply it, they take the legislative function and add it to the judicial.<< Creating law is indeed one of the functions of the courts, and has been throughout history. Much of your judicial system is based on English Common Law, which was created precisely in this way. It would be more accurate to say that the area in which judges can create law is tightly circumscribed by legislation, by precedent, and in your case by the Constitution. As far as interpretation of the Constitution is concerned, I have argued before on this thread that the Supreme Court has regularly (though not consistently) re-interpreted what parts of it mean. It is often the case that the creative element of Supreme Court decisions is ignored by those (of either party) who support their conclusions. I find the whole 'empathy' argument bizarre. A person devoid of empathy is autistic. Is that really a quality we want in our judges ? Empathy is the ability to intuit the point of view of others, and can only enhance judicial understanding. In any event, there is clear evidence that Sotomayor does not confuse empathy with sentimentality, which seems to be what you are doing. salon.com