{"id":5693,"date":"2010-06-11T16:51:15","date_gmt":"2010-06-11T20:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=5693"},"modified":"2010-06-11T16:51:15","modified_gmt":"2010-06-11T20:51:15","slug":"david-souter-speaks-truth-without-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/5693\/david-souter-speaks-truth-without-power\/","title":{"rendered":"David Souter Speaks Truth Without Power"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Retirement must be a wonderful thing for former Supreme Court Justice David Souter.\u00a0 Unburdened by the consequences of deciding cases, the judicial version of a RINO (Republican In Nomination Only) is telling Americans what he wants them to hear.\u00a0 In essence, judging isn\u2019t easy. \u00a0Thus, demands to restrict a judge\u2019s attention to the text of a statute or the Constitution itself when deciding a dispute are pointless because a written law can\u2019t contemplate every situation.\u00a0 Sometimes a judge has to be a gap-filler.<\/p>\n<p>Souter\u2019s recent <a href=\"http:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2010\/05\/text-of-justice-david-souters-speech\/ \" target=\"_blank\">commencement address at Harvard<\/a> is worth the read to get a sense of a pointed critique of Justice Antonin Scalia\u2019s countervailing view of textual interpretation (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Matter-Interpretation-Federal-Courts-University\/dp\/0691004005 \" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">A Matter of Interpretation<\/span><\/a>).\u00a0 Ironically, the main gripe with Souter\u2019s speech isn\u2019t its substance, but its timing.\u00a0 Even Dahlia Lithwick of <em>Slate<\/em> stammers to explain a reason for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2256458\/pagenum\/all\/#p2 \" target=\"_blank\">waiting until after serving 19 years<\/a> on the Supreme Court to make a cogent counterpoint.<\/p>\n<p>Are the Justices overworked?\u00a0 They do, after all, get summers off.\u00a0 Of the current crop, only Justices Steven Breyer (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Active-Liberty-Interpreting-Democratic-Constitution\/dp\/0307263134 \" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Active Liberty<\/span><\/a>) and Scalia have written books explaining their methods of interpretation \u2013 and Scalia\u2019s is an edited version of lectures he gave.\u00a0 Since Souter didn\u2019t take the time to write a systematic approach to judging while judging, perhaps he\u2019ll use some of his self-imposed availability to give future judges a sense of how to wrestle with the complexities of the job.<\/p>\n<p>Given Souter\u2019s temperament, such a book may be published posthumously.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Retirement must be a wonderful thing for former Supreme Court Justice David Souter.\u00a0 Unburdened by the consequences of deciding cases, the judicial version of a RINO (Republican In Nomination Only) is telling Americans what he wants them to hear.\u00a0 In essence, judging isn\u2019t easy. \u00a0Thus, demands to restrict a judge\u2019s attention to the text of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[285,1093,1403,1402,1401,284],"class_list":["post-5693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-antonin-scalia","tag-david-souter","tag-interpretation","tag-judiciary","tag-steven-breyer","tag-u-s-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5693"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5699,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5693\/revisions\/5699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}