Obama's Judicial Philosophy Still a Puzzle
Does the consitutional law lecturer and Harvard Law graduate (let alone President of the Harvard Law Review) know that the Constituiton states that the President has the duty "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed"?
Then again, there is no legal writing with his own name on it and he has been faulted before for his misteps in understanding our laws. (Obama's Constitution). The again..he has a very spacey view of the Constitution and his view on appointing judges to the federal bench are radical and at odds with all historical and legal precedent. (see below).
Who Would Barack Obama Nominate to the Supreme Court?: When asked back in a November primary debate to say what kind of Justice he would want to nominate to the Supreme Court, Barack Obama responded:
Does anyone know of additional statements Obama has made in response to the same question (or similar ones) before or since? Obama made some statements about these issues when he announced his decisions to vote against the confirmation of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, but I don't know how much else is out there.
. . . [S]ometimes we're only looking at academics or people who've been in the [lower] court. If we can find people who have life experience and they understand what it means to be on the outside, what it means to have the system not work for them, that's the kind of person I want on the Supreme Court.
UPDATE: Here's another statement Obama made:
We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting my judges