I wrote:
> > As long as we have non-robotic judges, the
> > subjective moral visions of
> > judges will play a role.
JKS:
> Of course. As I know better than you!
It's likely, but personal experience isn't always better than theoretical understanding, since personal experience is on the level of anecdotes: it can give one a vision of the trees without an understanding of the forest. (Of course, theoretical understsnding can be wrong, too.)
> > the legislature's one of the major reasons why the
> > balance of political and
> > economic power is reflected in the character of the
> > law and its enforcement.
> Yes, and?
My view is that we shouldn't rely on the current legal system or the politicians -- but instead should figure out how to change the balance of power (favoring the "good guys" of course).
> > I don't see why the legal system shouldn't reflect
> > general moral principles.
> Me neither. My point is just that imposing them isn't
> the judge's proper role, even if it inevitably happens
> in the interstices.
But I wasn't advocating the taking of moral stands by individual judges. Maybe I might, but I haven't thought about it enough.
> > Maybe we could disagree about _which_ moral
> > principles should apply, but you
> > seem to be arguing in favor of amorality.
> Ni, just judicial restriant. The judge's moral preferences oughn't to be determinative. In this case,
> if the 14th amendment equal protection clause doesn't mandate color-blindness, in view of the plain
> language, the legislative history, and precedent -- and it doesn't -- then it is lawless of judges to
> impose that interpreattion merely because they think
> that color-blindness is morally required -- even if they are right
This is way off the subject under discussion (or at least what I was talking about, i.e., the contradiction between morality and the current judicial system).
> > The folks who oppose AA invoke issues of individual "merit" (SATs and the
> > whole pile of "no child left behind" testing BS). The AA for alumni
> > children and athletes goes against the principles of merit that these folks
> > pretend to endorse.
> Oh yeah, they're hypocrites.
as a an ethicist friend of mine says, one of the strongest (and easiest) moral cases one can make is by pointing to the contradiction between moral theory and actual practice (i.e., hypocrisy), because there's no need to develop basic moral principles (which some say is impossible). (According to Cornell West's dissertation, Marx's ethics ended up focussing precisely on this contraecitions.)
Jim
