Constitutional Rorschach Test (or Zen Koan)
posted by Gerard Magliocca
“I have a lifetime job. He doesn’t.”
Justice Kennedy, responding to a question at Pepperdine about the President’s criticism of Citizens United.
February 4, 2010 at 7:17 pm
Posted in: Current Events
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Responses (6)
A.J. Sutter - February 5, 2010 at 1:14 am
I’ll hazard a guess at an interpretation: so therefore he doesn’t give a **** if he screws up the process whereby people get elected for non-lifetime jobs?
Ken Rhodes - February 5, 2010 at 10:34 am
>>I’ll hazard a guess at an interpretation: so therefore he doesn’t give a **** if he screws up the process whereby people get elected for non-lifetime jobs?>>
I think that’s unnecessarily cynical, especially since he was in the majority. Rather, I think, he’s saying he doesn’t give a **** if some guy with a law degree and a little professional experience in that field happens to disagree with him.
Jackson Pollack - February 5, 2010 at 7:00 pm
some guy with a law degree and a little professional experience
Who will be appointing your new colleagues.
A.J. Sutter - February 5, 2010 at 8:56 pm
Ken: If he weren’t in the majority, he couldn’t screw things up. And, to shave with Occam’s Razor: his remark applies to anyone in elected office, regardless of experience, so your inference may be unsupported. Jackson: unfortunately, it’s most likely C.U. minority Justices who’ll be retiring next; given the politics in the Senate, their replacements will probably be closer to Kennedy’s views than they are.
Ken Rhodes - February 6, 2010 at 11:27 am
AJ wrote>>Ken: If he weren’t in the majority, he couldn’t screw things up.>>
Yes, that is logically correct. My point, however, was that since he was in the majority he was entitled to believe that he *didn’t* screw things up. In which case the opposing view expressed by Justice Stevens, also a distinguished jurist, probably would deserve a suitable refutation, but an off-hand slap by a non-jurist merited no more than a casual dismissal.
>>And, to shave with Occam’s Razor: his remark applies to anyone in elected office, regardless of experience,>>
Well, your use of “applies” is a presumption on your part. His remark was specifically about a specific comment by a specific person–a person of great importance, to be sure, but not a distinguished jurist. I would guess that Justice Kennedy would be much more concerned about the disagreement of his four colleagues, also distinguished jurists, than he would about a politician in elective office. That, of course, is simply my guess, but it conforms to the wording of his remark.
Alan - February 7, 2010 at 7:44 pm
Could we please see the question to which Kennedy was responding, and the rest of Kennedy’s response (if any)? Is that really too much to ask?
Anyway, out of context, I interpret this statement as just a snide putdown of Obama as someone whose views of the First Amendment don’t matter much, because he’s just a politician, not a judge.
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