“Obama judges”? Pretty Much
22nd November 2018
Paul Mirengoff of Powerline pushes back.
I like and respect Chief Justice Roberts, but I disagree with him. I believe we have too many federal judges who are doing their level best to assist the left in resisting President Trump. And while I would never refer to a judge as an Obama judge, it’s more than fair to refer to one as an Obama-appointed judge. This may well have been what Trump meant.
The questions of whether it matters who appointed a federal judge and whether such judges view litigants, including President Trump, with equal regard in any meaningful sense are empirical ones. If one can predict with a high degree of accuracy how a judge will rule in a highly controversial case, or in a case challenging a Trump edict the left doesn’t like, just by knowing which president appointed that judge, then Roberts’ defense of the federal judiciary fails.