358. Instant evolution’s gonna get you
Judging Crimes:
A few weeks ago, the comic strip Pearls Before Swine - written by a recovering lawyer, Stephen Pastis - featured Pig, Rat and Goat standing behind a table or wall or something, all looking the same way. (In Peanuts, the wall had stones and they rested their elbows on it, but then Schulz hadn’t gone to law school.)
Pig says something like, “My goal in life is to leave every place a little bit better than when I arrived.” Rat says: “You already do that.” Pig (thrilled): “Really?” Rat: “Every time you leave the room, I feel better.” Pig, feeling euphoric, leaves, and Rat says to Goat, “The best insults sound like compliments.”
I thought of that when I read a recent opinion by Judge Stephen Reinhardt, the right wing agent provocateur on the Ninth Circuit, whose career has been devoted to making liberalism look ridiculous. (See post 265.) In an opinion this summer, Reinhardt wrote of his “highly imaginative and creative dissenting colleague”.
Just think how unfunny that Pearls Before Swine cartoon would had been if Rat’s sarcasm had been as crude as that. My point isn’t just that Judge Reinhardt is less intellectually sophisticated than a cartoon rat.
No, I take that back. That is my point. But I have other points, too. In the absurd Pledge of Allegiance case, he wrote one of my favorite fatuities:
It is the highest calling of federal judges to invoke the Constitution to repudiate unlawful majoritarian actions and, when necessary, to strike down statutes that would infringe on fundamental rights, whether such statutes are adopted by legislatures or by popular vote…This is not to say that federal judges should be completely sequestered from the attitudes of the nation we serve, even though our service is accomplished not through channeling popular sentiment but through strict adherence to established constitutional…