“You have to have not only the intellect to be able to effectively apply the law to cases before you, but you have to be able to stand in somebody else’s shoes and see through their eyes and get a sense of how the law might work or not work in practical day-to-day living.”  So claimed President Obama in an interview carried Saturday on C-SPAN television about what he thinks are the requisite qualities of a Supreme Court justice.

He has also said he wants someone who employs empathy, “understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles.” 

So much for that oath of office, eh?  That one about preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution of the United States.  The one that President Obama had to say twice in order to get it right.

Perhaps the problem is that the oath of office also caveats the President to do these things to “the best of [his] abilities”. 

Since President Obama’s alleged abilities continue to remain just that, alleged, it is little wonder that he fails to understand (or worse, deliberately chooses to avoid) perhaps the most important point about our nation’s system of justice.  It is blind.  Lady Justice is always blindfolded in order to avoid any distraction from the matter at hand.  She is to hear the case, weigh the facts and evidences and only the facts and evidences, and apply the law to them without regard for the individual’s circumstances.  She is utterly impartial and her sword can cut either way to insure it.

It is this blindness that insures no one is above the law and so keeps tyranny at bay.

It is not the job of the Supreme Court to “empathize”, and more particularly their job is not judicial activism.  With extremely limited exception, it is the job of the Supreme Court to uphold the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as an appellate court.  Period.  It is their job to insure that no one manipulates the law for personal gain and therefore to protect the American people as a whole. 

If Justice Souter were not already considered a liberal Supreme Court judge, I would be even more concerned.  But this continuing disregard for the basic tenets of the United States bears continued watching for the day will come that the President will have to nominate another justice to the Supreme Court and it is then that the full force of his progressive perceptions and skewed ideologies will come to bear down hard on American freedoms.  And such dangers will be far more difficult to overcome than his attempts to legislate fascism.

Almost 21 years ago, Ronald Reagan prophetically told a group of lawyers at the 1988 Federalist Society convention, “Yes, some law professors and judges said the courts should save the country from the Constitution.  We said it was time to save the Constitution from them.”

That time has come again.