Kavanaugh Rules by the Law, Even in Tough Cases

Article 30 of the Massachusetts Constitution, authored by John Adams and adopted in 1780, calls for a “government of laws and not of men.” The principle referred to as “the rule of law” sounds nice in the abstract and fits comfortably in easy situations, but is truly tested in the tough cases.

In the tough cases, a judge’s heart might say something different than the law requires. These cases involve difficult, compelling, or even gut-wrenching facts and put to the test whether the law or the judge must decide the cases that come to court.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has addressed this issue in the context of a Supreme Court nomination. In 2009, he served on the Judiciary Committee during the confirmation hearing for Sonia Sotomayor, who was a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals. Schumer noted that, even in “hot-button cases,” she “hewed carefully to the text of statutes, even when doing so results in rulings that go against so-called sympathetic litigants.”

Sotomayor herself embraced this principle, saying: “Whether I’ve agreed with a party or not, found them sympathetic or not, in every case I have decided I have done what the law requires.” Whether a party position is “sympathetic or not,” she explained, she must reach “the result [that] is commanded by law.”

In other words, a judge must approach the tough and the easy cases the same way.

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