"The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience. The felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories, intuitions of public policy, avowed or unconscious, even the prejudices which judges share with their fellow men, have had a good deal more to do than the syllogism in determining the rules by which men should be governed. The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics."

From the first of twelve Lowell Lectures delivered by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. on November 23, 1880, which were the basis for The Common Law.

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I do agree wholeheartedly with what Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote. However, it has NO place in this discussion.

Law SHOULD be made by those of tempered experience, wisdom and yes, even empathy... but in the legislature, which should be the sole province of law-making. NOT the judiciary, whose ONLY role is determining the constitutionality of those laws.

Nice try though.

To argue that the sole function of the judiciary is to rule on the constitutionality of laws is, quite simply, insane.

I do recognize that it is a belief widely held in some circles. Those who believe it clearly know nothing of what happens in reality.

In reality, the judicial process involves ruling on relevance of information, reviewing the probative value of evidence, evaluating the relevance of various statutes and many, many other things.

Oh I'm sure nothing could possibly go wrong by setting up empathy as the MOST IMPORTANT criteria of a judge. The author quickly skips over the blatant absurdity of such a notion themselves by saying Obama MAY be wrong (!LOL) in saying that it's the most important quality. It's absurd is what it is, and an obvious, transparent example of positioning during the campaign to appear profound and progressive with standards that mean nothing and say less.

The only other possible option to empathy being THE MOST IMPORTANT quality (as Obama SAID, let's not forget, before we, as the author apparently desires, change the subject to something else) isn't that of an infallible computer.

This ongoing, blatant, pathetic attempt to make everything Obama says sound like scripture -- even quoting from his holy books to validate his own point (?) -- is delusional groupthink.

It was a meaningless campaign tactic, like everything else about his posturing. Recognize that and move on. Empathy, as was properly said by the person who the author tries to absurdly mock as exhibiting a Freudian slip, is in fact meaningless and so of course someone would say they don't know what it means: they mean they don't what it means in terms of jurisprudence which is, we apparently have to keep reminding, the entire subject under discussion. It means nothing.

Oh yeah, and in practice the biggest danger of such an absurd proposition (and the reason, by the way, that conservatives are up in arms for the author who seems completely confused about this, is that it personalizes jurisprudence.

Read that again.

The entire notion is that the law takes into account empathy in its having been crafted and if not then it should be rewritten; otherwise, you end up with dispensations by individual judges that makes everything personal and idiosyncatic and that's what is meant by Sean Hannity's objection and as such, it is part and parcel of this cult of Obama that dangerously sees things as being properly overriden by personal traits, charisma, etc.

The role of a judge isn't to be Solomon. There are laws on the books for that, it isn't supposed to be a case of individual tribes deciding a la carte what seems 'reasonable' appropos of nothing but a cursory review of the stuffy 'law' to be trumped by empathy.

Wake up.