Sen. Joe Biden (D, Del.), a more or less announced candidate for the next Democratic presidential nomination (and who, I confess, I’ve always found one of the more appealing Democrats), has an OpEd in the San Diego Union Tribune arguing that the
most important criteria a president should use in exercising his or her constitutional duty to appoint justices to the Supreme Court should be the independence and impartiality of the nominee.
To make sure we don’t miss his point, Sen. Biden returns to “independence and impartiality” a number of times in the short piece. (I said I rather liked him; I didn’t say he doesn’t repeat himself.)
- Justice O’Connor satisfied both the standards of independence and impartiality, and I was proud to support her nomination.
- … I admired the way she approached her job: with open-mindedness, without ideological preconceptions, and with sensitivity to the effects her decisions would have on the American people.
- The American people have a vital interest in an independent and impartial judiciary….
- It is also my sincerest desire that [the president] will look first for detachment and statesmanship in a nominee
biden may wish for an unpricipled open mindedness, which would follow fashions taken up by officials and their professoriate, in desultory pursuit of absolute power and absolute corruption. It would be helpful towards the further fomenting of intercommunal conflict here, if federal judges were impartial as to injustice, and disinterested in justice for the majority. A preconception, that one should have no preconceptions, is a contradiction in terms.
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