Wrongly Choosing Judges

THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT would like Trump to put people on the supreme court who will overturn Roe v Wade. He'd be happy to do just that, or, if he (Trump) thought he'd benefit personally by appointing a pro choice liberal democrat, he'd do that too. Mr. Flexible. Trump has no core values, for those who haven't noticed. What Trump's supporters fail to grasp is that the president's values do not match their own. Trump is not concerned about core values. He'd gladly become a liberal democrat tomorrow, if he saw personal benefit in so doing, just as he indeed was once upon a time a pro choice democrat. The right wingers who want to overturn Roe v Wade seem to care little about any other issues. As conservatives, they tend to rail against liberal judges who upend existing laws and actively give new interpretations to them, and they call such magistrates "judicial activists", a derisive term. Judicial activism is precisely what conservatives advocate in wanting to set aside a law, a woman's right to have an abortion, that has been in effect for forty five years. The American people, and particularly right wingers, seem to have forgotten that personal political ideology is not a qualification for serving as a Supreme Court justice, or a judge at any other level. What matters is not whether a candidate is liberal or conservative, but whether a candidate has demonstrated, over time, a consistent tendency to render justice under law based on facts and reason, rather than personal preferences. We must somehow rid ourselves of the judicial disease according to which conservative judges are considered preferable.