I was very interested in Barack Obama’s statement last night about what kind of judge he would appoint to the bench:
If a woman is out there trying to raise a family, trying to support her family, and is being treated unfairly, then the court has to stand up, if nobody else will. And that’s the kind of judge that I want.
The notion that a court should craft a legal remedy if doing so “stands up” to “unfairness” brings to mind the poll about the proper role of the Supreme Court that I linked to a few weeks ago. Recall that Rasmussen Reports conducted a survey of 1,000 likely voters and asked survey respondents the following question:
Should the Supreme Court make decisions based on what’s written in the Constitution and legal precedents or should it be guided mostly by a sense of fairness and justice?
Recall that the responses revealed a sharp difference between the views of McCain supporters and the views of Obama supporters:
While 82% of voters who support McCain believe the justices should rule on what is in the Constitution, just 29% of Barack Obama’s supporters agree. Just 11% of McCain supporters say judges should rule based on the judge’s sense of fairness, while nearly half (49%) of Obama supporters agree.
On this issue, it looks like the candidate and his supporters are very much on the same page.