{"id":5130,"date":"2009-05-13T13:02:32","date_gmt":"2009-05-13T18:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=5130"},"modified":"2009-05-13T13:02:32","modified_gmt":"2009-05-13T18:02:32","slug":"logic-and-empathy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2009\/05\/logic-and-empathy\/","title":{"rendered":"Logic and Empathy"},"content":{"rendered":"

I might have commented on Ed Fallone’s post <\/a>regarding the role of logic in Supreme Court decisions, but there is nothing in the post with which I disagree. But I do think that it raises two additional issues, one of which has been the subject of much recent popular conversation.<\/p>\n

President Obama’s stated preference for judges with “empathy” has been a jumping-off point for a variety of conservative versus liberal debates on constitutional interpretation. Folks who tend to think like I do on these matters have roundly criticized the President for suggesting that judges ought to abandon the rule of law in favor of preferred results.<\/p>\n

But the real debate, in my view, is not about whether empathy is a desirable quality in people and judges, but what role empathy ought to play in, to borrow from Ed, seeking “the logical consequence of undisputed first principles, the overall structure of the document, and prior interpretations.” <\/p>\n

It seems to me that, while empathy may not be the most important\u00a0quality in such an enterprise and\u00a0emphasizing\u00a0it\u00a0presents certain risks to the\u00a0rule of law, it is not wholly irrelevant.\u00a0 For instance, in applying the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection, a certain degree of\u00a0empathy with the position of African-Americans facing a legal regime of “seperate\u00a0but equal” may be relevant.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, I think the President’s emphasis on empathy is problematic. The first concern is that, as presented, the empathy that he called for\u00a0seemed to be ideologically\u00a0slanted, singling out those dispossessed groups that the progressive political tradition has historically regarded as uniquely disfavored and as\u00a0needing special protection\u00a0from and intervention by the state.<\/p>\n

But,\u00a0more fundamentally,\u00a0it calls into\u00a0question\u00a0adherence to Ed’s formulation of what\u00a0constitutes legitimate consitutional decision-making. \u00a0If empathy is defined as a concern for a particular result in the matter at hand, the logical application of first principles, structure, and prior decisions is threatened. If empathy is defined as one tool in the interpretive process, the devil is in the details, and it is here that we arrive at what I think is the second point raised by Ed’s post.<\/p>\n

Much of the disagreement in constitutional interpretation has to do with how one discerns first principles and constitutional structure. An unfair caricature of the “conservative\/restraintist” view, recently indulged by\u00a0the formerly conservative Doug Kmiec, is that public meaning\u00a0“virtually delivers itself like the morning paper<\/a>.” I know of almost\u00a0no one who believes that. An unfair caricature of the “liberal\/activist view” is that it can be anything. I know of almost\u00a0no one who believes that.<\/p>\n

But, as unfair as these caricatures may be, they do suggest something about\u00a0the difference of opinion between those who advocate more or less restrained interpretive philosophies, and that difference\u00a0itself bears upon the\u00a0role of “empathy” in judicial decisionmaking. The more elastic these first principles are thought to be or the more discretion is recognized\u00a0in the ways in which they are discerned, the greater will be the role of empathy and the political and policy choices that are necessary to translate empathy into action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I might have commented on Ed Fallone’s post regarding the role of logic in Supreme Court decisions, but there is nothing in the post with which I disagree. But I do think that it raises two additional issues, one of which has been the subject of much recent popular conversation. President Obama’s stated preference for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-constitutional-interpretation","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}