The Fourth Circuit -- Love and Harmony

by publius

Judge Wilkinson is considered the conservative intellectual heavyweight on the 4th Circuit.  He's tried to soften his edges in recent years, hoping for a Bush appointment.  But make no mistake -- he was as aggressively and ideologically conservative as they come, sitting on what has been the most aggressively ideological circuit in the country.

That's why today's op-ed is so unintentionally funny (and vaguely hallucinogenic).  Wilkinson writes:

The 4th Circuit has never prided itself on ideology but on the collegiality that takes minds out of concrete and prevents personal animosities from clouding and distorting the essential act of judgment.

For anyone interested, there's a great 2003 NYT Magazine article on the 4th Circuit, documenting in detail both its (relative) extremism and the personal animosities that existed.  It's worth a read.  Here's a taste:

Judges on the Fourth Circuit say that they just follow the Supreme Court's lead. And it is true that the Fourth Circuit is the appellate court closest in thinking to the Rehnquist Court. But the relationship is symbiotic: the Fourth Circuit does not just imitate; it also initiates. It pushes the envelope, testing the boundaries of conservative doctrine in the area of, say, reasserting states rights over big government. Sometimes, the Supreme Court reins in the Fourth Circuit, reversing its more experimental decisions, but it also upholds them or leaves them alone to become the law of the land.

Needless to say, Obama should -- with 59 Senators -- fill every single vacancy on the courts of appeals, and that right soon.

Comments

[mythago]

What's especially telling is his last paragraph - referring to a "polarized" Fourth Circuit. In other words, the problem is that Obama might actually put some liberal judges on the bench. The fact that liberal judges might be just as capable of putting aside their ideology as he claims to be doesn't seem to occur to Wilkinson.

[woody]

Why does anyone think he'll be ABLE to put more liberal candidates on the 4th Circuit bench?

Who thinks he even wants to?

He'll be constrained in his nominations by the 'necessity' of not causing any--or at least the barest minimum--unruliness or dissent from the Right (fuck the Left, but you knew that already)...

[hambone]

A close relative of mine worked for the 4th circuit for many years in the 80s and 90s. Said person told me s/he had to be very careful not to reveal their lifelong Democrat registration. I can only imagine the atmosphere now; half the judges are probably fantasizing about riding into battle against the Northern interlopers.

(The atmospherics are telling: there are giant statues of Confederate generals, all facing north, in many of Richmond's major intersections, while the 4th Circuit's courthouse is as magnificent a pile of antebellum marble as you'll ever hope to see.)