Dahlia Lithwick recently wrote a column for Slate.com, purporting to explain what liberals mean when they say that they want more female judges on the bench.  This was an incredibly lucid and truthful article.  Essentially, what they mean when they say that they want more female justices is not that we need another Janice Rogers Brown or that Ann Coulter should really consider throwing her hat in the ring for a district court slot.

Instead, Ms. Lithwick explains that feminists often support the "different voice" theory of judging:

Men, the theory goes, prefer their law with rigid rules, clear lines, and neutral principles; women, meanwhile, want to look at the totality of the circumstances and apply broad discretion, preferring what Gilligan calls an "ethic of care" to an "ethic of rights."

I, for one, am all for an "ethic of care."  If we weren't meant be governed by an "ethic of care," then why did the Founders set forth a Bill of Care in the Constitution?  And all of this nonsense about "clear lines" and "neutrality."  Who really needs that when you can have confusing standards, arbitrary rulings, and a biased judiciary? 

Honestly, after reading Ms. Lithwick's article, I am not sure which appalled me more: the idea that liberals are finally emboldened enough about their desire to pack the judiciary with a bunch of arbitrary, biased jurists--or the fact that liberals are finally emboldened enough to state that they believe all or most women would choose to abuse judicial power so blatantly.  I suppost the first idea is ever so slightly more disgusting: it's downright misanthropic; whereas the second idea is merely misogynistic (and thus only insulting to half of the population, rather than all of the population).

Yet, liberals don't have to limit themselves to women in order to take over the judiciary.  We have but to look to one Harold Koh, Obama's nominee for State Department Legal Advisor, to see the dangers that men can wreak in the legal profession.  There are a lot of weird rumors swirling around Koh, such as the now-debunked claim that he would support the use of sharia (Islamic) law in U.S. courts.  Although Koh's philosophy would allow for the possibility of sharia in U.S. courts, Koh has probably never said as much publicly. 

That is not to say that Koh is anything other than a dangerous elitist.  Koh is a leading advocate of a legal philosophy known as "transnationalism."  According to Ed Whelan at The Corner blog, "Transnationalists aim in particular to use American courts to import international law to override the policies adopted through the processes of representative government."  This, in and of itself, isn't too unusual.  We have but to consider our sleepy friend Justice Ruth Ginsberg to find an influential advocate of using international law in U.S. courts.

However, Koh is a special kind of transnationalist.  He advocates a system in international elites, rather than state practice, generate the norms of new international law and in which those norms supposedly are binding as federal common law.  So, in order to learn our rights, instead of looking to the Constitution, or even looking to the majority of other countries' laws, we would look to . . . the opinions of Koh and his buddies.  Wow, nothing could ever go wrong with that system.  Representative government is so overrated!

The people that liberals seek to place in positions of legal power are incredibly dangerous.  Progressives are now openly stating what they want: arbitratry, biased, elites overriding our legislature and even our Constitution.  We simply cannot allow this to happen.