A "BULWARK AGAINST THE MAJORITY'S WORST INSTINCTS"

Colbert King editorializes wonderfully about an essential qualification for Supreme Court nominees. Read the whole thing.

Missing from the litany of legal virtues approved by the high priests is any expression of values, any awareness of the court's leavening role in society, any recognition of the court as a bulwark against the majority's worst instincts. They seem to think it wrong for a judge to search for a constitutional way to "to help, or at least protect, those [who] have a moral claim on the society," to use The Post's language in a second editorial on Bork that year.

Those values were lost on the defenders of segregation, who undoubtedly were professionally qualified and faithful to their profession's ethical standards. Lost on those standard-bearers for racial separation, however, was how much the outcome of what they sought to achieve in court really mattered to people for whom the Bill of Rights and the 14th Amendment still lacked fulfillment.

What about justice? What about relief?

Notwithstanding the norms of the high priests of conservatism, prospective Supreme Court justices, I humbly submit, must be judged as well by the values that they bring to bear.

Tags: Supreme Court, Alito