Define: Empathy
The waiting game continues. President Obama has not yet announced his pick for the Supreme Court and various press reports have indicated that he is still in the process of making a decision. So, the national dialogue continues about what qualities and qualifications are necessary in a Supreme Court Justice. One of the most provocative (and interesting) conversations has been about President Obama's insistence that empathy is an essential characteristic that he will look for in the next Supreme Court Justice. This statement sparked a debate that not only questions whether the ability to empathize should be valued but also struggles to define empathy and identify its connotations.
The dictionary.com definition of "empathy" is "the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another." In other words, the ability to stand in someone else's shoes.
Seems innocent enough, right? But, critics wonder whether "empathy" is simply a codeword for sympathy, partiality, or even judicial activism. And, they argue that emphasizing empathy jeopardizes the selection of a highly qualified and intellectually rigorous jurist, dedicated to the rule of law.
Wendy Long of the Judicial Confirmation Network, a conservative activist group on the courts, summed up the critical viewpoint recently when she declared "Lady Justice doesn't have empathy for anyone. She rules strictly based upon the law and that's really the only way that our system can function properly under the Constitution."
However, others are defending President Obama's high valuation of empathy, praising his desire to find a Justice who can understand how his or her decisions will affect different individuals and groups of people. Dahlia Lithwick, of Slate, explains, "Empathy in a judge does not mean stopping midtrial to tenderly clutch the defendant to your heart and weep. It doesn't mean reflexively giving one class of people an advantage over another because their lives are sad or difficult. When the president talks about empathy, he talks not of legal outcomes but of an intellectual and ethical process: the ability to think about the law from more than one perspective."
Some have underscored the need for an empathetic Justice by highlighting cases where they believe the Roberts Court lacked empathy. Most frequently, they hold up the Lily Ledbetter case, saying that the Justices were unable to stand in the shoes of women across the country who are paid less than men and unable to stand in the shoes of Congress to determine the true intent of the law that they had created to protect women from pay discrimination.
It seems that acceptance or rejection of the need for "empathy" is largely determined by how one understands its definition. So, it's a battle of rhetoric--and, unfortunately, it's a battle that could follow us through the entire nominations process.
What do you think? How do you define empathy? Is empathy a quality that you hope to see in the next Supreme Court Justice? Can empathy go hand-in-hand with adherence to Constitutional values and the rule of law?