{"id":5783,"date":"2022-02-01T10:48:41","date_gmt":"2022-02-01T18:48:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=5783"},"modified":"2022-02-01T10:48:41","modified_gmt":"2022-02-01T18:48:41","slug":"choosing-optics-over-competence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=5783","title":{"rendered":"Choosing Optics Over Competence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imagine your five-year-old daughter was being wheeled into surgery to have a defective heart valve replaced.\u00a0 What would be the most important qualification for the surgeon about to cut her open?\u00a0 Would it be the doctor’s race or gender? \u00a0 When the hospital’s chief administrator decided that it was more important that the members of surgical staff “looked like the community” than their level of competence, he put your daughter’s life at risk.\u00a0 As a parent, if I suspected that this was the case, I would choose a different hospital.\u00a0 The U.S. Supreme Court is the last word on what constitutes law in our country.\u00a0 The exercise of this sweeping power has and will continue to have life-altering consequences on the millions of people who live in America.\u00a0 What then, should be the most important qualification for the selection of a Supreme Court Justice?\u00a0 Heather MacDonald’s compelling piece<\/a> in the City Journal exposes the absurdity of elevating race, gender or any other criteria beyond competence, integrity and temperament governing the selection for membership on the nation’s highest court.\u00a0 By limiting the selection of the next justice to a black woman, MacDonald notes that President Biden is “rendering 98 percent of all possible candidates beyond consideration because they lack `qualifications’ that have nothing to do with judging.”<\/p>\n

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“The quality of our jurisprudence matters. The race, sex, and `gender identity’ of judges do not. Private parties rely on an opinion\u2019s clarity of reasoning to predict the outcomes of legal disputes. Some of the nation\u2019s most complex moral and political questions have been addressed through the medium of legal decisions, especially from the Supreme Court. The quality of those decisions can strengthen or undermine the legitimacy of the law and of our constitutional order. Commercial matters can be nearly as complex, requiring the reconciling of competing statutes and regulations.<\/p>\n

The law is not just about outcomes, contrary to contemporary discourse, which focuses exclusively on whether this or that justice will tip the balance on this or that policy. Under that contemporary perspective, the fact that Biden\u2019s first Supreme Court pick will likely not change the overall ideological tenor of the court in the short term is viewed as more noteworthy than the fact that the new justice will help shape our jurisprudence for decades to come. Half of Biden\u2019s picks for seats on the influential federal appeals courts\u2014eight of 16 new appellate judges\u2014have already been black females, presumably by virtue of the same irrelevant search restrictions. By making race and sex the paramount considerations for his Supreme Court nomination, Biden will likely deal another blow to the quality of our most important institutions\u2014and with it our capacity to achieve excellence as a country and a civilization.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Imagine your five-year-old daughter was being wheeled into surgery to have a defective heart valve replaced.\u00a0 What would be the most important qualification for the surgeon about to cut her open?\u00a0 Would it be the doctor’s race or gender? \u00a0 When the hospital’s chief administrator decided that it was more important that the members of surgical staff “looked like the community” than their level of competence, he put your daughter’s life at risk.\u00a0 As a parent, if I suspected that this was the case, I would choose a different hospital.\u00a0 The U.S. Supreme Court is the last word on what constitutes law in our country.\u00a0 The exercise of this sweeping power has and will continue to have life-altering consequences on the millions of people who live in America.\u00a0 What then, should be the most important qualification for the selection of a Supreme Court Justice?\u00a0 Heather MacDonald’s compelling piece in the City Journal exposes the absurdity of elevating race, gender or any other criteria beyond competence, integrity and temperament governing the selection for membership on the nation’s highest court.\u00a0 By limiting the selection of the next justice to a black woman, MacDonald notes that President Biden is “rendering 98 percent of all possible candidates beyond consideration because they lack `qualifications’ that have nothing to do with judging.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"yoast_head":"\nChoosing Optics Over Competence - Crime & Consequences<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=5783\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Choosing Optics Over Competence - Crime & Consequences\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Imagine your five-year-old daughter was being wheeled into surgery to have a defective heart valve replaced.\u00a0 What would be the most important qualification for the surgeon about to cut her open?\u00a0 Would it be the doctor’s race or gender? 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