Judicial Independence

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is spending her first post-Court year traveling around the country (including a stop at NYU) speaking about the importance of judicial independence. She's got lots of scary stories about how political actors threaten judges who decide politically charged cases. Her conclusion is that we need to make sure that judges are independent of politics.

I think Justice O'Connor's argument is too simple. It's easy to say that we need judicial independence after a litigant murders a judge's father and husband because she ruled against him. But how independent do we want judges to be? We don't want them choosing their judicial philosophy at random. What's the proper role of politics in vetting the judicial philosophies that make it to the bench?