Our federal judges are supposed to be appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. It has been that way for most of the United States of America’s history. Sometimes, the process has failed for a variety of reasons such as political maneuvers meant to thwart the seating of the President’s nominees – as Mitch McConnell has demonstrated in his procedural hardball ploys. At other times it is the use of the arcane blue slip maneuver used to block a judicial nominee.
Sometimes, a President offers nominees who are frankly unqualified for the federal bench – individuals who have never tried a court case or heard legal arguments as a judge but whose ideologies align with those of the President and Senate majority. Such sychophantic nominees are political actors of little or no jurisprudential merit. The worst of these travesties are appointments to the federal bench who treat their confirmation as an anointment rather than an appointment.
These persons are not of the ilk of Thomas Beckett who used his appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury to defend the faith rather than the crown – unbeknownst to Henry II, Beckett had indeed been anointed not by the crown, but by his faith.
These judges do not defend either the constitution or the interests of the citizens but rather the wishes of those who appointed them to the bench – the President, the Senators and the political actors who fund the corruption of a government meant to be for the people and of the people. Sigh.
These individuals behave as if their appointment to a seat on the federal bench means that they are the Chosen. Quite simply, they behave as if they believe that their judicial opinions, unassailable pronouncements, regardless of how moronic, clueless and overtly unconstitutional, are beyond question because they have been not just appointed but also anointed and their shit doesn’t stink.
I give you Supreme Court Justices Alito, Thomas, Comey Barrett and Kavanaugh as exemplars of the “my shit don’t stink because I have been anointed,” mentality. I would add judge Mathew Kaczmarek of the Northern District of Texas as an anointed judge of lower stature who also believes his excrement to be odorless because – Jesus.
To paraphrase King Henry II, “Will no one rid me of these troublesome judges?”