{"id":325,"date":"2009-05-13T21:37:01","date_gmt":"2009-05-14T01:37:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/?p=325"},"modified":"2009-05-13T21:40:12","modified_gmt":"2009-05-14T01:40:12","slug":"feeding-frenzy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/?p=325","title":{"rendered":"Feeding Frenzy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"shark-feeding\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Justice will be served.\u00a0 It will be rare.\u00a0 It will be bloody<\/em>.\u00a0 But it will be served, and we will be privy to every gory detail.\u00a0 This is what it means to choose a new Supreme Court Justice in this day and age.\u00a0 Law and politics are not supposed to go together – that’s why this is painful.\u00a0 And with the lifetime appointment, the chosen Judge will wield an enduring kind of power.\u00a0 Just as with the run-up to the election in November of last year, there will be another (though different) crescendo that will be made all the louder by the echo chamber<\/a>, but I’ll offer more on that another time.<\/p>\n

I have added the Slate.com – Jurisprudence<\/a> category to my links.\u00a0 Emily Bazelon and Dahlia Lithwick are extremely sharp legal minds who who have the greatest jobs any lawyer could ever hope for.\u00a0 (There are also other writers in that section of the Slate stable, but I don’t know anything about them, yet.)<\/p>\n

But it’s all so left-wing.\u00a0 I really need to break out of the echo chamber so I can, at least, understand the substance, scanty though it may prove to be, of the myriad smears that will undoubtedly follow Obama’s selection of the nominee.\u00a0 There’s also the chance that I may not agree with every aspect of the candidate’s judicial philosophy.\u00a0 Something tells me that National Review Online and Town Hall are not going to satisfy the need for a more scholarly critique.<\/p>\n

This is, or will be, good theater.\u00a0 The media (including ‘new’) relish the story, the controversy, the drama that just keeps on giving.\u00a0 That’s how everyone was with the election, and I expect much of the same this summer.\u00a0 Beware the pundits!\u00a0 Don’t get sucked into the fake journalists who are really just talking heads starring in their own version of reality TV.\u00a0 For those folks, the Court doesn’t matter.\u00a0 Obama doesn’t matter.\u00a0 All that matters is their brilliance and beauty as they, oh so humbly, bring you this pivotal moment in history.\u00a0 Where would we be without them?!?<\/p>\n

But I eat it up also.\u00a0 It’s exciting and important.\u00a0 The hearings might get rough, but there’s an excellent chance that no one will die.\u00a0 All the latest technology will be employed by both those ‘for’ and those ‘against’, but in the end it will come down to the ancient process set forth in our Constitution.<\/p>\n

And, at it’s best, the debate will be philosophical and complex.\u00a0 If it is a current member of the bench, we will look at opinions and briefs and law reviews.\u00a0 Hey!\u00a0 That’s basically what I do for a living.\u00a0 Cool!\u00a0 Even if it’s not a current or former judge, we will still learn everything about this person.\u00a0 Everything she did in her life up until this moment is fair game – everything she ever said.\u00a0 And we will not be looking for those ‘gotcha!<\/em>‘ moments.\u00a0 Hopefully, the Obama people are smart enough not to select a child molester for the high bench.<\/p>\n

No, instead, we will look at the niceties of language and thought.\u00a0 At our<\/em> best, we will want to learn how this person thinks and predict what this person will do within the highest ivory tower this country has.\u00a0 Supreme Court Justices don’t make policy or write law.\u00a0 I don’t care how far right or left anyone thinks a certain Judge may happen to be.\u00a0 Whether you like them or not, their job is to decide cases<\/strong>.\u00a0 The cases<\/strong> make the law, but the Judges can only decide<\/em> cases.<\/p>\n

So, in those realms where the debate is elveated above the feeding frenzy, we will learn about cases.\u00a0 In other places, the only case anyone will discuss or remember will be Roe v. Wade<\/em>, but that is to be expected from media that is more concerned with entertaining you than enlightening you.\u00a0 But I will hear the names of vaguely remembered cases from law school, and I will run to look them up and I will discover, all over again, the wonder of our common law.\u00a0 It is a living thing that changes and grows all the time.\u00a0 That is not a partisan utterance, but rather a documented fact that I live with every day as a modest trial lawyer.\u00a0 Customs become molded into law by case decisions over the years, and then the old rules change and new rules come along as human thought is not a static process.<\/p>\n

Enjoy the show, but don’t forget to listen and watch carefully.\u00a0 Everyone knows how important this is, but let us share a greater understanding of how it works – not just the selection process, but the actual job that must be done afterwards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Justice will be served.\u00a0 It will be rare.\u00a0 It will be bloody.\u00a0 But it will be served, and we will be privy to every gory detail.\u00a0 This is what it means to choose a new Supreme Court Justice in this … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[31,111,1],"tags":[314,311,315,129,1479,317,312,316,112,313,158],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=325"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":329,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325\/revisions\/329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mpomy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}