Judge Posner's Challenge to the Philosophy of Law Essay

Under the U.S. Constitution, this appointment is a lifelong position that will only be nullified if the judge resigns their post or dies in office. This creates serious contests within the partisan political environment found among federal representatives, for any candidate appointed to this post helps define the direction of the Supreme Court for the rest of their life. Thus, it is frequently believed that a president who appoints a judge to the Supreme Court is creating a legacy, helping to shape the direction of the laws for the country for a time long after their presidency has expired. This makes the selection of a judge a hotly contested process.

Based on the research of Justice Alito, he was appointed by former president Gorge W. Bush as one of the Supreme Court Justices on January 31, 2006 and is currently a Republican Party federal justice. His approaches to things are very unpredictable and distinctive from what he is viewed as. However, his conservative standpoint is still a part of his image. This paper will include: the background of the justice, the judicial philosophy he approaches, and his opinion on a dispute.

Each state within the United States of America (USA) has its own unique judicial selection process within its court system. The judicial processes vary from court to court depending on a particular state. This paper analyses these processes, the qualifications for selecting the judges and the steps for removing judges from office, as it applies in the USA states of New York and Texas.

A judge or court engages in a policy of judicial restraint, by contrast, may have a history of the defense of the laws as written, and adherence to precedent. The political composition of a restraint-based court should have little effect on decisions, because the judges will

Outlined in the American Constitution is the position that the Supreme Court takes within the federal judicial system. Article III clearly states this position: [Section 1]: “The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” However, its role as an institution is under constant scrutiny. It was established by the Founding Fathers to be a judicial institution which was totally ‘independent of political pressure’. However, over time this original aim has lost significance in the operation of the court as it becomes a politically driven body. A number of catalysts caused this shift in the nature of the Court’s operation, including the way in which Justices are appointed; particularly the role of the President in the appointment, and the way in which the decisions of the Supreme Court Justices are questioned. These factors continue to operate together in order to make the Supreme Court a politically driven body.

Considering that Supreme Court Judges are appointed by the president, and subject to approval by the Senate, one would foresee scenarios where the president influences the Supreme Court by threatening the tenure of specific justices. In other words, the lifetime service, guards judges against retribution, based on decisions made against the views of the appointing authority. The term therefore echoes the words of Alexander Hamilton who emphasized permanency in office and the independency of office bearers (Cossack, 2000). A change of this policy would therefore be against the will of the founders of the nation and the country’s tradition that has been successful for the last two centuries.

According to the findings of the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes, 86.7 percent of respondents indicate that judicial impartiality is an essential or very important quality for the judiciary. However, Judges began to be seen less as the impersonal agent of a system and more as a human being responsible for failure of the losing party. This bias may be caused by political and sociological movement against judges’ power. In fact, judicial impartiality is not equivalent to passiveness or detachment of judges. Active judicial conduct is necessary for judicial impartiality. This opinion is supported by Mack and Anleu (2012) .

The judicial power of the United States, shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behaviour, and shall, at stated times, receive for their services, a compensation, which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office.

Judges trying to perfect the Constitution and tackling the social issues we face head on. However, judicial restraint is not one of its qualities. Rather, “perhaps more than any other cosmic constitutional theory, living constitutionalism, both in theory and in practice, has elevated judicial hubris over humility, boldness over modesty, and intervention over restraint.” Moreover, the Constitution belongs to the people and all three branch’s of the government equally. Therefore, when a unelected judges take it upon themselves to makes sweeping changes to the Constitution it violates the limitation of the judicial branch and its anti-democratic.

The authors went about investigating their hypotheses by creating an experiment that abstracted from and manipulated aspects of a contemporary controversy over the impartiality of a justice in the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. The experiment’s vignette, or a short descriptive account, was modeled after Caperton v. Massey (2009) and the failure of Justice Brent Benjamin to withdraw from the case involving Massey Coal Company whose CEO, Don L. Blankenship, spent over three million dollars to get Benjamin elected onto the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals. By abstracting from and manipulating aspects of this real world dispute in Caperton v. Massey over judicial impartiality the authors created their vignette which was concerned with “whether the failure of a judge to withdraw from a case involving a party who expended considerable resources in getting that judge elected to the bench creates the appearance of bias and partiality, thereby undermining public confidence in the judiciary” (). The benefit of using such a vignette instead of a real case is that it allows the authors to manipulate elements of the dispute and test hypotheses concerning how citizens judgements of fairness and

We present results involving civil and criminal cases reviewed by over 2,200 judges, including federal district judges, federal magistrate judges, federal bankruptcy judges, trial judges from nine states, and judges from multiple states attending national conferences. Our results suggest that politics has only a modest influence on trial judges. We find that politics has an impact on judges’ decisions in only a few of our hypothetical cases, but when we aggregate across scenarios (as political scientists do in their research), we do find a pattern of political influence. Although we conclude that political attitudes influence judges, the effect of political influence is sufficiently small that trial judges likely do not notice it in their day-to-day decision making. (Jeffrey J. Rachlinski Andrew J. Wistrich Chris Guthrie, 2017). In my opinion there is no way that a Judge can be appointed without politics coming into play. The lower court’s Judges are elected by the public. They are part of the Democratic Party or the Republican

Judgeships, as they were first instituted, were not supposed to have policy making power. However, as time went on, the judicial power evolved to actually create policy that governs citizens. With this evolved power, judges now have aspects to consider when creating policy, and the decision to make it a political choice.

The police force has been observed by their respective communities on a small scale, however, the NYPD has recently fell under the spotlight of mass media and the general public due to the unfair treatment of minorities and the lack of discipline many of these officers have. Although it is obvious that policemen suffer a great deal of pressure as well as the threat of danger, policemen should be able to keep their heads on straight when dealing with everyday situations. There are a number of factors involved in this congested discourse. It also leads us to inquire whether there is a lack of training administered by the police department or if the current training is too harsh.

Through this, we can determine that justices rely more so on their own attitudes than solely on precedent and other legal factors, though they are still important. With this, it is safe to assume that regional and psychological influences, such as political socialization, influence judicial attitudes and have a key role in influencing judicial decisions.

Paul has used the law in many circumstances throughout his epistles. He also discusses the implications of the law and its relation to believers. Paul’s view on the law has been a conversation held by many New Testament scholars. Some suggest that Paul’s views on the law is inconsistent throughout the epistles but by a careful analysis will show that his views are complementary rather than inconsistent. A main issue that Paul argued was that we are justified by faith in Christ and not by doing the works of the law. Paul view of the law was that nobody can be saved by obedience to the law but only by faith in Christ can one be saved.