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You're advocating a system of complete epistemological relativism, Kalman- you'll forgive me if I don't follow you down that path- or at least, you won't be able to discern the difference. vvvvv You just proved my point. And I'm guessing you still won't be able to tell. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Feb 26, 2015 |
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Feb 26, 2015 02:09
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Somewhat, yes. It's a useful viewpoint for both legal theory and practicing lawyers, so I'd recommend actually thinking through the implications for legal systems before dismissing it out of hand. Happy to give you a reading list if you are actually interested.
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Feb 26, 2015 02:12
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Kalman posted:No. I am positing that you are incorrect when you say that they don't maintain a coherent ideology and have instead failed to identify their ideology properly (previous sentence equally true if you replace ideology with politics.). You want to make a distinction between when they decide based on what you think is a legal principle and when they decide based on what you think is a political principle. I am saying that that distinction is meaningless and ultimately incoherent; all legal principles are political principles. I'm not "pretending" anything, I just don't happen to be in your field. I'm also not impressed by appeals to authority or popularity. I'm saying that your expressed belief in this thread that judges are universally free from partisan bias is an assumption that is a) grossly incongruous with pretty much everything we know about decision-making in every practical sense, b) leads to absurd predictions (such as maintaining that Bush v Gore would have been decided in exactly the same way if Gore was the beneficiary instead of Bush, a fact that is immaterial to the legal findings but profoundly pertinent to partisan motivations), and c) being justified by you on grounds that are unfalsifiable and tautological. I would add that attributing such a ridiculous proposition to the legal community as a whole strikes me as improbable at best.
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Feb 26, 2015 03:42
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So wait, are judges partisan political zealots or uncaring ideological automatons?
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Feb 26, 2015 04:08
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Both! Neither! It's all the same/whichever is convenient for my position at this moment in time! vvvv Jesus christ, it's beyond parody. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Feb 26, 2015 |
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Feb 26, 2015 04:10
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Hot Dog Day #91 posted:So wait, are judges partisan political zealots or uncaring ideological automatons? Yes.
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Feb 26, 2015 04:18
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Forever_Peace posted:I'm not "pretending" anything, I just don't happen to be in your field. I'm also not impressed by appeals to authority or popularity. I can tell you have no idea about legal theory or the law by your not giving any weight to something by Chemerinsky. Do you also feel that citing a statement by Kant when challenged that no philosopher feels that way is an improper appeal to authority in philosophical discussions? quote:I'm saying that your expressed belief in this thread that judges are universally free from partisan bias Not what my position is. It's that they are generally non-partisan but that all decisions are political, making the idea of calling any one decision "politically motivated" compared to another one an absurdity. quote:I would add that attributing such a ridiculous proposition to the legal community as a whole strikes me as improbable at best. Again, not what I said. I said that it was an area of theory that's pretty extensively discussed. Many people don't like it! But it's also not exactly a position that is unknown for legal theorists to take, and (to a lesser degree than my own personal opinion) is a fairy accepted piece of jurisprudential theory. But hey, I'm not the one pretending that decisions I like are any less a reflection of the biases of the authors than the ones I dislike. I don't dislike Scalia because of some mythological ideological inconsistency - I dislike him because his ideology is repugnant.
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Feb 26, 2015 04:25
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Feel like we're just going to keep talking past each other, so I'll leave my responses at this so we don't poo poo up the thread.Kalman posted:I can tell you have no idea about legal theory or the law by your not giving any weight to something by Chemerinsky. Do you also feel that citing a statement by Kant when challenged that no philosopher feels that way is an improper appeal to authority in philosophical discussions? I believe you that this person is important in your field, am completely unqualified to determine how successfully you are expressing his ideas, and don't find it relevant to the veracity of your argument. quote:Not what my position is. It's that they are generally non-partisan but that all decisions are political, making the idea of calling any one decision "politically motivated" compared to another one an absurdity. Thought experiment: remove the names and identifying information of the claimants in a case (e.g. in Bush v Gore). What decisions change, and what decisions don't? There is a useful (non-"absurd") distinction between these two motivations. I called the former "bias" and the latter "ideology". I understand that you are tautologically defining these two things to mean the same thing, but as you yourself have repeatedly pointed out, such a definition undermines the utility of both. quote:Again, not what I said. I said that it was an area of theory that's pretty extensively discussed. Many people don't like it! But it's also not exactly a position that is unknown for legal theorists to take, and (to a lesser degree than my own personal opinion) is a fairy accepted piece of jurisprudential theory. What's up with telling people they are "pretending" to do everything under the sun? Is this some kind of argumentative tic? In any case, bias pretty clearly isn't defined to any one political party (or to the policy advocates I "dislike"), and I have overtly stated that I think that every single judge in Bush v Gore would have switched their vote if the beneficiary of a recount was Bush and not Gore. Scalia's 1st amendment decisions are one notorious example of this sort of bias actually occurring, without the need for hypotheticals. And it can be both true that Scalia's ideology is repugnant and that he is influenced by partisan bias.
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Feb 26, 2015 05:03
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SCOTUS Thread OT: At least we all agree Scalia is a shitheel.
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Feb 26, 2015 05:33
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Forever_Peace posted:Feel like we're just going to keep talking past each other, so I'll leave my responses at this so we don't poo poo up the thread. I'm sorry, you're actually taking stupid positions, not pretending to. "Pretending" is a rhetorical flourish used to convey the idea that the only way someone can actually take the position you're taking is to pretend to believe it because it's just that dumb. If you aren't qualified to evaluate Chemerinsky's article, why the hell should I think you're qualified to evaluate anything in this thread? He's a pretty easy writer to understand. Or did you not bother even taking a look at it? He's not even a crit (the branch of theory I'm drawing from here) and he's still sitting there saying "Bush v Gore wasn't partisan." (And saying "bias" and "ideology" are the same undermines the utility of the terms, but does so in a way that is more useful in evaluating the law than those terms are in themselves. I do it intentionally - not to make a silly tautological point but because recognizing that they are in fact the same thing is a perspective that is necessary in understanding how law and politics interact.)
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Feb 26, 2015 05:50
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Hasn't this thread been over subjects like "Scalia votes according to his judicial theory until it would compromise his politics" several times?
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Feb 26, 2015 06:34
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:Hasn't this thread been over subjects like "Scalia votes according to his judicial theory until it would compromise his politics" several times? That is where the thread is wrong. Scalia ALWAYS votes according to his politics. He just has a judicial theory he uses as the back-rationale to do so more often than not. When he can't, he finds a different one. Thomas also always votes according to his politics. He just has a political view that's more oriented to a particular legal structure than to a traditional political party, so people don't accuse him of political voting (well, people do, but they do so wrongly by saying he's a Republican shill.)
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Feb 26, 2015 06:37
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I've got a soft spot for Clarence Thomas. Sure he is a bad justice, but you have to admit he is a real character with an idiosyncratic legal philosophy. I think he is one people will be talking about in 100 years, notorious in the McReynolds way. Don't like him as a justice pragmatically, but I think he is impressive in an aesthetic sense, as a mythic character.
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Feb 26, 2015 06:38
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Deep down I am hoping Thomas writes an opinion on the ACA case and just says something about how the ACA exceeds constitutionality by failing to remain within the boundaries of late 18th century medicine.
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Feb 26, 2015 07:32
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Kalman posted:Correlation is not causation, you twit. You seem to be using a strange and restricted definition of partisanship. Obviously, Scalia doesn't call up the RNC and do whatever they say even if he disagrees. Partisanship doesn't mean that you follow the party regardless of your personal opinions (it can mean that, but there's more to it). Take Scalia's position on religious freedom. Republicans have a very strong defense of free exercise for Christians and they support all sorts of exceptions to laws for Christians. This also coincides with Scalia's judicial philosophy because he believes that the First Amendment grants wide protections to practice and display of religion. So when a case comes up involving Christians, there's no conflict. But then, look at what happens when Native Americans bring a suit against state laws that criminalize peyote in religious ceremonies. Well now there's a conflict. A consistent application of Scalia's legal philosophy would put religious expression first. But to Republicans drugs are bad, and Native American beliefs aren't "real" religions, it's just a bunch of primitive claptrap that should be stamped out. So Scalia goes "gently caress consistency" and comes up with some tortured reasoning for why it's okay to ban religions he doesn't like. He doesn't do this because it's what the RNC wants. He does this because that's what he wants, and why he is a Republican. And this is naked partisanship because he lets his desired political outcome override the his legal philosophy. It's one thing to have a legal philosophy even if the choice of it is influenced or determined by preexisting political beliefs. But it's another thing entirely to reason backwards from a politically desired outcome and rule with that in mind regardless of whether it agrees or conflicts with the legal principles you use to decide other cases.
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Feb 26, 2015 07:53
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Except the latter is what all judges do, always. You just don't see it when you like the outcome or think it fits with their usual approach.
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Feb 26, 2015 08:42
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:Hasn't this thread been over subjects like "Scalia votes according to his judicial theory until it would compromise his politics" several times? As far as I can tell, Kalman's argument is that this is incorrect, because there is no difference between a judicial theory and a political outlook. Both for Scalia and all other justices.
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Feb 26, 2015 08:47
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Bob Ojeda posted:As far as I can tell, Kalman's argument is that this is incorrect, because there is no difference between a judicial theory and a political outlook. Both for Scalia and all other justices. Correct. Y'all might be getting confused by the word political here; policy preference would be an alternative formulation and equally correct. To put it another way: why aren't any of you asking if Scalia is engaging in backwards reasoning when he rules consistently with his more usual theory? Is it so hard to imagine that it's his usual theory just because it's the one that is most often useful in reaching his desired outcome? In fact, if you're willing to accept that he does it at least some of the time, why wouldn't you believe he always does it? Politicization of judicial rulings is a meaningless critique. All judges essentially always rule according to their policy preferences. The experience of it being illegitimate is simply when they have a preference you perceive as out of line with their other preferences, not when they've suddenly departed from the general program of ruling based on policy preference. (Partisanship is a different issue, where a judge goes against their personal beliefs to reward a party's desires - I have sincere doubts that non-elected judges do this. Elected judges are a different story.) And the thing is - there's really nothing wrong with the fact that it's all political. Scalia reaching his preferred policy by a valid legal reasoning is no different than Sotomayor doing the same, except insofar as Sotomayor has the benefit of her years and will rule more wisely as a result. It just requires abandoning the belief that there is such a thing as a single correct decision to be reached. Generally, there are multiple potential outcomes of equal legal validity (the indeterminacy critique of legal reasoning.). Understanding this, the explanation for judicial decisionmaking is conscious or unconscious rationalization of preferences. As I've said repeatedly - all decisions are essentially political in that they are determined by the judge's policy preferences and biases. The point of disagreement between me and you isn't that I'm saying Scalia isn't making decisions based on his personal preferences in the cases you identify; it's the notion that that's not what's going on in every other case in front of every other judge, or that it's somehow legally problematic. When I say Bush v Gore wasn't partisan, it's because of two things: first, that I suspect that the vast majority of the time the translation from preference to ruling is subconscious, operating by making the arguments that favor the judges preferred position seem more convincing to them (Chemerinsky's point about an honest belief in what the law requires.). And second, that partisan implies that it's done out of loyalty to party rather than to a personal belief; as much as I dislike Scalia, I don't think he was partisan in Bush v Gore, or the peyote case, or Morrison or elsewhere - he ruled in accordance with his belief in what the law requires, influenced by his own preferences and biases. (Also, just generally the rejection of the idea that judicial decisions are ever non-political seems to be a point of disagreement, because people keep pointing to Scalia's "normal" decisions as evidence that he breaks his own rules when he wants to instead of understanding his normal decisions as simply the ones where what he wants most frequently share a justification.)
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Feb 26, 2015 09:06
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You are the bad stereotype of critical theory my rhetoric colleagues labor to get out from under every day.
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Feb 26, 2015 09:18
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Discendo Vox posted:You are the bad stereotype of critical theory my rhetoric colleagues labor to get out from under every day. Yes, I said its a critical theory argument. I'm sorry your colleagues don't actually understand how to apply critical theory to law, I guess, and haven't bothered to read any of the reams of articles out there on doing so.
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Feb 26, 2015 09:20
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I personally believe all legal decisions come about due to the dread machinations of the reptilians.
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Feb 26, 2015 10:13
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FAUXTON posted:I think this is a dying phenomenon, though, for the reasons I've been rambling about - the polarization assisted (but not necessarily caused) by partisan redistricting means government becomes a tug of war, with the judiciary being one of few ways to anchor one's legacy. That ideological anchor needs to be more and more firmly rooted as the tidal forces increase. Simple deliberate thoughtfulness won't do it, a president is going to need to be drat sure they're nominating someone who has an ideology that compels them to doggedly defend the president's political achievements. If they're feeling especially froggy, they nominate someone who thinks all this women's lib/civil rights/campaign finance restrictions stuff is the devil. Scalia is a picture of things to come, if anything. And yet on issues of fourth amendment Scalia has been consistently on the side of the aclu...
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Feb 26, 2015 13:03
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Yeah, I'd have gone with Alito or Kagan, myself.
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Feb 26, 2015 13:40
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Pedantry, name-calling, and undefended assertions: my idea of "rhetorical flourishes" that will effectively persuade people.  In more interesting news, the decision on Board of Dental Examiners vs. FTC is in. State licensing boards don't get immunity from antitrust laws (like government municipalities do) even if the licensing board is designated responsibilities by state government. quote:The Court’s opinion explains that even though the dental board is an agency of the state, its actions must still be supervised by the state in order to enjoy antitrust immunity. The “formal designation given by the States” does not itself create immunity. Here, the board is controlled by market participants in the same occupation that the board regulates. “When a State empowers a group of active market participants to decide who can participate in its market, and on what terms, the need for supervision is manifest.” The decision also seems to clarify some implications for bar associations. quote:Bar associations in particular have been a source of litigation over the doctrine of state action immunity. Today’s opinion cites three important cases concerning regulation of lawyers by state bar associations. The Court’s descriptions of the cases suggest that those cases should be interpreted to mean that only the specific actions of a bar that are actively supervised by the state (e.g., a state supreme court) get antitrust immunity. The rest of a bar association’s activities likely have no such immunity. - See more at: http://www.scotusblog.com/2015/02/opinion-analysis-no-antitrust-immunity-for-professional-licensing-boards/#sthash.MfidEf64.dpuf The test for antitrust immunity seems to be "controlled or actively supervised by the state".
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Feb 26, 2015 14:28
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Oh, and Nature has an article this week on the cottage industry that's popping up around the use of brain scans in civil cases. It's pretty bad.quote:A main criticism of the various techniques being used in civil suits is the paucity of publications to validate them. Hirsch has not published anything on her method, but says that she does not think it is necessary. The way in which different body parts are represented in the brain has been well mapped, she says, and the scans she has done provide no further insight than answering whether or not the person was in pain. There's a recurring tendency for civil lawyers to reach for neuroscientific data because it is so persuasive to jurors, but this particular use is so irresponsible given our present understanding, it would be laughable if it wasn't so terrible.
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Feb 26, 2015 14:55
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Kalman posted:If you aren't qualified to evaluate Chemerinsky's article, why the hell should I think you're qualified to evaluate anything in this thread? He's a pretty easy writer to understand. Or did you not bother even taking a look at it? He's not even a crit (the branch of theory I'm drawing from here) and he's still sitting there saying "Bush v Gore wasn't partisan." He's wrong. The fundamental problem with your argument is that you believe it's silly to accept some motivations to decide a case one way and not others: essentially, you think that the distinction between ideology and partisanship is irrelevant. I think that's ludicrous. I view distinguishing between decisions motivated by ideology and decisions motivated by partisanship as just as reasonable as distinguishing between decisions caused by racial animus or bribery. The reasons for the motivations matter, and I find nothing problematic about challenging Scalia as a blatant partisan while saying that Thomas, while I disagree with his ideology, is at least honest about what he does and judges appropriately. Critical legal theory has a lot of use in stripping away our illusions about what judges are actually doing. It does not have a lot of use in determining how we should judge judges: knowing that judges are biased is not the same as accepting bias as legitimate. It's one thing to agree that judges are currently making partisan decisions, it is another to accept that as legitimate. Chermerinsky's article does very little to challenge that Bush v. Gore was an overtly political decision, and merely attempts to reframe it as the product of judges biases. Sure, I suppose: they were biased towards appointing a Republican because they're Republicans. The thin veneer between that and just openly saying that's what they're doing is not terribly relevant or useful to me.
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Feb 26, 2015 15:09
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Kalman, I'd be somewhat more inclined to believe your theory of Bush v. Gore if, per Toobin's The Nine, Justice Souter hadn't almost resigned on the grounds of "this is some bullshit/I can't believe the Court actually did this." I think it's important to remember that "the appearance and reality of an independent, above-the-fray judiciary" is itself a policy preference that jurists can be biased towards.
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Feb 26, 2015 15:22
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evilweasel posted:Chermerinsky's article does very little to challenge that Bush v. Gore was an overtly political decision, and merely attempts to reframe it as the product of judges biases. Sure, I suppose: they were biased towards appointing a Republican because they're Republicans. The thin veneer between that and just openly saying that's what they're doing is not terribly relevant or useful to me. The problem here, is your point presumes that the statement Bush v. Gore was wrongly decided is an absolute truth. There are many who disagree with that point. http://www.law.gmu.edu/assets/files/publications/working_papers/01-17.pdf to flip the analysis somewhat, did Justice Kagan only vote in favor of the Affordable Care Act because she "owed Obama?" Even though I am not a fan of the law, and I think the case was wrongly decided, I have more respect for Justice Kagan's integrity as a jurist to believe that. I really don't see this as partisanship so much as jurists with fundamentally different views on the law being appointed by parties who are looking at a judge's record and guessing that they will vote in ways favorable to that party. Again, I would note that Scalia is almost always on the side of the defendant in matters of fourth amendment. Scalia likewise dissented in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld in direct opposition to the Bush Administration on the question of indefinite detention of US citizens. He was joined in his dissent by, of all people, Stevens.
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Feb 26, 2015 15:31
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Kalman posted:Except the latter is what all judges do, always. You just don't see it when you like the outcome or think it fits with their usual approach. It's one thing to argue there isn't a difference, but here you seem to be making a statement about the contents of justices' minds.
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Feb 26, 2015 16:16
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Forever_Peace posted:Oh, and Nature has an article this week on the cottage industry that's popping up around the use of brain scans in civil cases. It's pretty bad. I've written on this a bit- it's not as bad as it once was, although scans remain a hot (and frequently spurious) method in scientific research in general. It's ironic that Nature would complain of this, since they're one of the outlets that popularized the "FMRIs for everyone/thing!" approach in the past.
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Feb 26, 2015 16:50
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ActusRhesus posted:The problem here, is your point presumes that the statement Bush v. Gore was wrongly decided is an absolute truth. I don't know what you mean by an "absolute truth" which is an odd statement to put in there. That said, I don't consider the fact that people disagree with my view of the decision all that relevant: I know for a fact that there were five people at that point in time who thought it was "rightly" decided merely by the fact of the decision having been made. You don't get unanimity for anything, even the most trivially true things like "the earth revolves around the sun". There are a lot of cases where judges vote ideologically rather than on partisan grounds. Even the most partisan justices are not partisan all the time - like you point out, Scalia did not support the Bush Administration's terrorism policies. But there's situations where the vote can only be really well explained through partisan considerations rather than ideological considerations: one of the strongest points against the Bush v. Gore decision is that the conservative justices have a strong break with the ideologies they normally espouse, which is made significantly more obvious by their "this decision has no precedential value" footnote. That's the fundamental charge against Bush v. Gore: not that the decision itself is poorly reasoned (though it is), but that the Court very, very obviously picked the result it wanted then worked its way there. Maybe their definition of equal protection is the right one: but they don't believe it is, and attempted to make sure they couldn't get stuck with it in the future. Or to put it another way just because a judge was bribed to rule X doesn't mean X is wrong, but that doesn't excuse the judge even if X is right.
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Feb 26, 2015 16:52
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or maybe they recognized that the holding was so specific to the facts of that case that are almost certainly never going to be recreated that it's worthless as precedent? We get that a lot here. It's not as obvious as a footnote, but there are tells the Court puts in to say "this is because of the facts in this specific case. Do not read this as a general rule." My initial statement was admittedly a little vaguely worded. Basically the absolute statement "Justice x only voted this way because of partisanship" (in any case, not just Gore) is only true if you can rule out any coherent legal argument (even one with which you disagree) that justifies their decision. The article I linked lays out quite a few justifications. Now, you may disagree with them. I don't even agree with all of them. But the fact there is a legal argument to be made, in my mind, means that claiming they only voted that way because of partisanship is perhaps a little too cynical. I have a hard time believing that a Justice, appointed for life, feels any need to "take care of" anyone. What's the consequence? They won't retire as a Justice of the Supreme Court? Unlikely. They are pretty much beyond consequence at that point, and generally give zero fucks. (Incidentally why I don't like elected judges at the lower levels.) Which is why I bring up the Kagan example, because it's kind of the filp side. People on the right screamed that she couldn't possibly be neutral and was just an Obama shill. I don't think that's the case at all. I think she voted based on her view of the law. I disagree with her decision, but I don't think for one minute it was based on party loyalty.
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Feb 26, 2015 17:00
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ActusRhesus posted:Basically the absolute statement "Justice x only voted this way because of partisanship" (in any case, not just Gore) is only true if you can rule out any coherent legal argument (even one with which you disagree) that justifies their decision. But this isn't true at all - a Justice may disagree with the coherent legal argument intensely but still vote accordingly because of partisanship, there's nothing that inherently prioritizes a coherent legal argument motivation over a partisanship motivation. Justice Souter believed it was partisanship at work. Your statement may be a suggested shorthand for judging motivations (partisanship should only be looked at as a motivation when all coherent non-partisan justifications have been exhausted) but that's a value-oriented process, not a truth-oriented process. Partisanship should also be distinguished from patronage: it's not a quid pro quo issue, where a partisan decision is made to "take care" of the same side, but because they genuinely favor the outcome that results from that decision. In practice it's kind of moot, since consciously or subconsciously a judge is likely to find themselves agreeing with a view of the law that results in their policy preferences. The Warszawa fucked around with this message at 17:10 on Feb 26, 2015 |
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Feb 26, 2015 17:08
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The Warszawa posted:In practice it's kind of moot, since consciously or subconsciously a judge is likely to find themselves agreeing with a view of the law that results in their policy preferences. Pretty much true of everyone. I just have a hard time believing that a Justice of the Supreme Court, any Justice, approaches a case with the conscious objective of "Let's make sure the R's/D's are happy." to me the term "partisanship" implies party preference. If that's not what's meant here, I apologize.
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Feb 26, 2015 17:11
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Discendo Vox posted:I've written on this a bit- it's not as bad as it once was, although scans remain a hot (and frequently spurious) method in scientific research in general. It's ironic that Nature would complain of this, since they're one of the outlets that popularized the "FMRIs for everyone/thing!" approach in the past. I actually happen to be a cognitive neuroscientist. In my opinion, the problem in this case isn't that neuroscience is hot or even that it is frequently spurious (which it is!). The problem in this case is that many of the proponents (such as those I bolded) are appropriating the language of science without actually doing science, and that people (such as the judge in the article) are being duped by it.
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Feb 26, 2015 17:12
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ActusRhesus posted:Pretty much true of everyone. That's the extreme, only-a-briefcase-full-of-cash-with-an-explicit-deal-to-vote-a-certain-way-is-bribery construction of partisanship, though. Party preference and partisanship is broader than that. Chief Justice Rehnquist probably did not feel like he owed the Republican Party anything and probably did not consciously want to "make sure the Rs are happy." However, the Chief Justice likely had a strong preference for which party won the White House in 2000. Also, why would this be limited to conscious partisanship? The Warszawa fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Feb 26, 2015 |
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Feb 26, 2015 17:12
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ActusRhesus posted:Pretty much true of everyone. I agree with you, but can you clarify whether it's common among lawyers to believe that bias is only relevant if it is overt and malicious? Because there happens to be an awfully large literature on the measurement and influence of implicit bias. Like, it is still perfectly capable of being distinguished from other motivations. Edit: what warzsawa said
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Feb 26, 2015 17:15
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Forever_Peace posted:I agree with you, but can you clarify whether it's common among lawyers to believe that bias is only relevant if it is overt and malicious? No. I think you can look to a lot of the cases on jury selection for the counter argument to that. Subjective bias is definitely a thing. As is appearance of bias. For example, I can say until I am blue in the face that I can be a fair and impartial juror (and I believe I can)...but no criminal defense attorney will ever seat me on a jury based on my professional experience. (And to clarify, I hope nothing I said suggests I don't think judges have bias...of course they do. people do. I think we're just having a semantics disagreement over the term "partisan")
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Feb 26, 2015 17:18
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ActusRhesus posted:No. I think you can look to a lot of the cases on jury selection for the counter argument to that. Subjective bias is definitely a thing. As is appearance of bias. For example, I can say until I am blue in the face that I can be a fair and impartial juror (and I believe I can)...but no criminal defense attorney will ever seat me on a jury based on my professional experience. (And to clarify, I hope nothing I said suggests I don't think judges have bias...of course they do. people do. I think we're just having a semantics disagreement over the term "partisan") Ok, I was just confused by your use of" conscious objective"
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Feb 26, 2015 17:20
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Forever_Peace posted:Ok, I was just confused by your use of" conscious objective" semantics disagreement over the word "partisan" to me, the term suggest a level of conscious preference. words. they are tricky.
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Feb 26, 2015 17:21
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