Let justice be blind, but let it have a pulse

Just for the record, I am not an attorney -- nor do I play one on TV. I am not equipped to judge the fitness of a nominee for the Supreme Court. I have not studied this nominee's judicial record or her speeches; I did not watch the hearings on TV. I am ill-equipped to weigh her qualifications. I would like to leave that discernment to better informed minds, but sadly there don't seem to be many. Just this morning I was reading about our very own Senator Grassley's decision to vote against the current nominee's confirmation. Is his concern that she is not adequately educated or prepared? No. Is it because she has been nominated by the President whose roots are in a different political party? You'll have to ask him. He says no.

What he claims to be afraid of is that her "personal experience could inform court decisions."

OK. So that's bad because...?

As I say, I am not qualified to judge her competence for the office, but I am troubled by this apparent delusion that anyone might come to this office without shaping personal experience that will necessarily inform his/her thinking. As I wrote in a letter to Senator Grassley this morning, "How, I ask, could they NOT? How could your experiences as a farmer not inform your work as a Senator? How could my experiences growing up in Texas not inform all of what I do? Is Clarence Thomas devoid of personal experience -- or any of the other sitting justices?"

"How," I went on to wonder with Senator Grassley, "have we come to this faux slavery to the pursuit of the fiction of 'objectivity.' You and the rest of us are deluding ourselves if we believe that anyone -- judge or otherwise -- can disassociate him/herself from the experiences that make us who we are. Neither this nominee, nor you, nor any future nominee to the Supreme Court is plucked from a sterile laboratory shelf. Thank God we come to our work with real life experiences that inform us. One certainly need not be imprisoned by them -- there are, after all, always more shaping experiences to have unless we determine to recreate that sterile laboratory shelf for the remainder of our days."

Do these life experiences increase the possibility of judicial mistakes? Sure, but aren't there an abundance of forces that stoke the possibilities for error? Surely the sitting justices have made mistakes; if confirmed, this nominee will be no different. Why, even Senator Grassley makes mistakes -- this decision, for example. The word "integrity" derives from the concept of wholeness. In Senator Grassley's pursuit of judicial integrity he seems to be requiring this nominee to sacrifice her own wholeness in the bargain.

Ultimately, the world will not end if this nominee is not confirmed. Surely our nation has plenty of qualified jurists. It's not really her torch that I'm carrying. My concern is for a legal pulse, and the conviction that the way our justice is handled should have one.
A pulse.
Some sign of human vitality.
If jurisprudence necessarily demands absolute, sterile objectivity then a computer could weigh the evidence. Somehow that doesn't sound like a very desirable alternative.

While justice should be blind, our justices shouldn't come empty to the task. I say let's give them permission to be people.