Our Own Philosopher Queen

What to make of Justice Ginsberg?

“I frankly don’t understand all the brouhaha lately from Congress and even from some of my colleagues about referring to foreign law,” Justice Ginsburg said in her comments on Friday.

Yes, but we already knew she didn't understand. It seems to me that she doesn't even understand what her job is. Perhaps it would help if she remembered her days back in grade school where she, like all of us, were taught that the role of Congress is to make laws, the role of the Executive is to enforce the law, and the role of the Court is to interpret the law. Justice Ginsberg believes her role is to issue decrees for actions she thinks are a good idea.
It doesn't really matter to her what the Constitution says about the matter, or what Congress has legislated. It's not really any more important to her than what a foreign judge has to say.

“Why shouldn’t we look to the wisdom of a judge from abroad with at least as much ease as we would read a law review article written by a professor?” she asked.

Um... because the professor is perhaps writing about American law, not the law of some other country?

The Canadian Supreme Court, she said, is “probably cited more widely abroad than the U.S. Supreme Court.” There is one reason for that, she said: “You will not be listened to if you don’t listen to others.”

And we are to give a cr*p because...? My guess is that this lack of world attention bruises Justice Ginsberg's enormous ego.

“What happened in Europe was the Holocaust,” she said, “and people came to see that popularly elected representatives could not always be trusted to preserve the system’s most basic values.”

Right. The trouble with Europe in the 20th century was too much damn democracy. If only they had relied more on dictatorships, the people could have been protected from themselves. Thankfully, we have Justice Ginsberg to act as our own Philosopher Queen.

“The police think that a suspect they have apprehended knows where and when a bomb is going to go off,” she said, describing the question presented in the case. “Can the police use torture to extract that information? And in an eloquent decision by Aharon Barak, then the chief justice of Israel, the court said: ‘Torture? Never.’ ... Then she asked, “Now why should I not read that opinion and be affected by its tremendous persuasive value?”

Frankly, I find these Ivory Tower absolutist positions juvenile. I can't say exactly at what point extreme measures are justified; that's the difficulty. I can however, envision a scenario where I believe the point has been crossed. If you'd rather see millions of New Yorkers vaporized by a nuclear bomb than compromise your principled position against torture and break some terrorist's arm, then I think there is something wrong with you.

She helped introduce the term “gender discrimination” as a synonym for “sex discrimination,” she said, explaining that her secretary had proposed the idea while typing a brief to be submitted to male judges.

An awesome achievement.

“Wagner is a great, great composer,” she said, “but he needed a good editor.”

People with this much ego really shouldn't be entrusted with such power.