His cowardly inability to pursue justice fairly forces me to disagree with you here. He may have been better than the alternatives, but that hardly makes him any good at all.
You do not need to “pursue justice” as a judge. You just need to allow others to pursue justice through you and possess an ability to apply the law. There are no political repercussions for judges that can harm their career. He acts the way he does because he doesn’t want political backlash about it. If he’s a judge, he has the ability to not care about others’ opinions of his rulings.
The position of attorney-general requires a different skillset and mindset. An effective attorney-general is willing to take risks to pursue justice. Judges play a more passive role. That’s why he’s not a good attorney-general, but I still maintain he’d be a very good judge.
Lemmy has the tendency to think that because a person is bad in one aspect, they must be bad in every related aspect as well. Of course, nobody will admit they think like that, but I pray you don’t.
I cannot and do not, in any way, support - not agree with - your defense of this man.
The only fair application of justice is to be blind to anything but the facts of the crime and to properly adjudicate them in accordance with the law. No person who is too scared (or corrupt) to do the job of the top criminal prosecutor in this country should never hold the position.
Your position and view towards the law is admirable and very worthy of respect, but you are holding him to a standard that is not applicable within a legal system based on the traditions English common law, like the American one. You’re describing the role of a judge in an inquisitorial system, not an adversarial system.
The role of a judge in an inquisitorial system is to answer the questions “Did they do it? Do they deserve to be punished?”
In the traditional English system, the is the role of the jury. The judge is just there to ensure everyone is playing by the rules of the court.
Of course, it is impossible for anyone to be truly divested from personal opinion and bias. We are all human, after all. The guiding design principle of an inquisitorial system is that judges are expected to be as neutral as possible, and then the legal system presumed they succeeded. An adversarial system, on the other hand, is aware of the inherent biases of mankind and attempts to design around them.
Which approach is more valid is a long-running topic of debate in philosophy.
I just can’t countenance your open and blatant endorsement of cravenness and corruption running the DoJ. Oh, and your patronizing tone is nothing short of insulting.
If your best argument is that there’s no legal requirement to do this correct and just thing - the moral and ethical thing - you’ve only made yourself look as inept and corrupt as Gorsuch.
You’re free to disagree with the way the American legal system is structured. I’m not here to argue with you, and in many ways, I actually agree with you wholeheartedly that Garland would make a terrible judge in my notion of an ideal legal system.
The role of a judge in an inquisitorial system is to answer the questions “Did they do it? Do they deserve to be punished?”
In the traditional English system, this is the role of the jury. The judge is just there to ensure everyone is playing by the rules of the court. And in that role, Garland is pretty suitable. And yes, a sense of fairness and impartiality is not strictly required. Just a sense of logic, which Garland definitely has. You can correctly describe that as a fault of the legal system.
I apologise if you find this insulting.
Think of the judge in My Cousin Vinny. Do you think that he walked into that courtroom every day thinking “these idiots definitely did it”? It’s very likely he did. But he also recognised it wasn’t his job to broadcast that to the court. He had to put on a mask of neutrality because he recognised that it is the jury’s role to determine guilt, not his. He doesn’t need to be truly impartial to the defence’s case; he just needs to make the correct evidentiary and legal rulings. Which he mostly did.
Contrast that to the role of the prosecutor, which is what the attorney-general is. It’s the prosecutor’s job to come into court thinking “these guys are guilty” and convince the jury of the same.
Garlands inability to execute the duties of his current job don’t indicate to me he would have been a inadequate as a Justice. It’s a different job with different duties and by all indications he would have likely performed fine.
Merrick Garland needs to be removed and replaced by someone who cares about the rule of law.
He ain’t it. He’s asleep at the wheel.
He’s so terrified of anything appearing to be “political“, he will absolutely do nothing as long as the criminal is in some way politically connected.
He would have made a decent Supreme Court justice but he’s just not cut out to be attorney-general.
His cowardly inability to pursue justice fairly forces me to disagree with you here. He may have been better than the alternatives, but that hardly makes him any good at all.
You do not need to “pursue justice” as a judge. You just need to allow others to pursue justice through you and possess an ability to apply the law. There are no political repercussions for judges that can harm their career. He acts the way he does because he doesn’t want political backlash about it. If he’s a judge, he has the ability to not care about others’ opinions of his rulings.
The position of attorney-general requires a different skillset and mindset. An effective attorney-general is willing to take risks to pursue justice. Judges play a more passive role. That’s why he’s not a good attorney-general, but I still maintain he’d be a very good judge.
Lemmy has the tendency to think that because a person is bad in one aspect, they must be bad in every related aspect as well. Of course, nobody will admit they think like that, but I pray you don’t.
I cannot and do not, in any way, support - not agree with - your defense of this man.
The only fair application of justice is to be blind to anything but the facts of the crime and to properly adjudicate them in accordance with the law. No person who is too scared (or corrupt) to do the job of the top criminal prosecutor in this country should never hold the position.
Your position and view towards the law is admirable and very worthy of respect, but you are holding him to a standard that is not applicable within a legal system based on the traditions English common law, like the American one. You’re describing the role of a judge in an inquisitorial system, not an adversarial system.
The role of a judge in an inquisitorial system is to answer the questions “Did they do it? Do they deserve to be punished?”
In the traditional English system, the is the role of the jury. The judge is just there to ensure everyone is playing by the rules of the court.
Of course, it is impossible for anyone to be truly divested from personal opinion and bias. We are all human, after all. The guiding design principle of an inquisitorial system is that judges are expected to be as neutral as possible, and then the legal system presumed they succeeded. An adversarial system, on the other hand, is aware of the inherent biases of mankind and attempts to design around them.
Which approach is more valid is a long-running topic of debate in philosophy.
I just can’t countenance your open and blatant endorsement of cravenness and corruption running the DoJ. Oh, and your patronizing tone is nothing short of insulting.
If your best argument is that there’s no legal requirement to do this correct and just thing - the moral and ethical thing - you’ve only made yourself look as inept and corrupt as Gorsuch.
You’re free to disagree with the way the American legal system is structured. I’m not here to argue with you, and in many ways, I actually agree with you wholeheartedly that Garland would make a terrible judge in my notion of an ideal legal system.
The role of a judge in an inquisitorial system is to answer the questions “Did they do it? Do they deserve to be punished?”
In the traditional English system, this is the role of the jury. The judge is just there to ensure everyone is playing by the rules of the court. And in that role, Garland is pretty suitable. And yes, a sense of fairness and impartiality is not strictly required. Just a sense of logic, which Garland definitely has. You can correctly describe that as a fault of the legal system.
I apologise if you find this insulting.
Think of the judge in My Cousin Vinny. Do you think that he walked into that courtroom every day thinking “these idiots definitely did it”? It’s very likely he did. But he also recognised it wasn’t his job to broadcast that to the court. He had to put on a mask of neutrality because he recognised that it is the jury’s role to determine guilt, not his. He doesn’t need to be truly impartial to the defence’s case; he just needs to make the correct evidentiary and legal rulings. Which he mostly did.
Contrast that to the role of the prosecutor, which is what the attorney-general is. It’s the prosecutor’s job to come into court thinking “these guys are guilty” and convince the jury of the same.
Thank you for a solid, informative explanation. Any judge must be impartial and resistant to their own biases, which is not an easy task.
Garlands inability to execute the duties of his current job don’t indicate to me he would have been a inadequate as a Justice. It’s a different job with different duties and by all indications he would have likely performed fine.
Genuinely the most catastrophically idiotic appointment of the entire Biden administration.
Every time I see a picture of him he looks terrified