A Slight Victory is Still a Victory

Common sense scored a point today in the Supreme Court.  The denial of the well-earned promotions of white firefighters on account of a lack of African Americans and severe minority of Hispanics similarly being promoted has gained national notoriety over the past several months.  Ricci v. DeStefano was decided today in favor of the plaintiffs, men who worked hard and ought to have been, and now will be, given their due.  This is indeed the function of justice, the purpose and necessity of the court system; yet there exists a sign of how grossly it is abused, even in a victory for common sense such as this.  As is the usual case, the court was split down the party lines, with Kennedy flopping down on the right (momentarily – there is no telling where he will go next).

Of further significance is that this case was one previously ruled upon to the contrary by Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, in the 2nd Circuit.  No written opinion was delivered by the judges of the 2nd Circuit, which sided instead with the previous ruling of Judge Janet Bond Arterton, who dismissed the case without even hearing it in court, issuing a 47 page decision which sided with the city even though the supposed flaws of the test in question could not be identified.

It is poignant, in this judicially-maligned country, to recall the words of Aristotle, in his Nicomachean Ethics, Book V, 1132a20:

“For this reason too, whenever people have a dispute, they appeal to a judge, and going to a judge is going to justice, for the judge is meant to be a sort of ensouled justice, and people seek out a judge as a mean, and some people call them mediators, on the grounds that, if they hit the mean, they will hit upon what is just.  Therefore what i sjust is a certain kind of mean, if the judge is.”

It can only be speculated as to whether or not the men and women of the courts of America are intending upon the mean of justice, upon the good of each having his due.  It can be hoped that many of them are; but unfortunately, regardless of whether or not their intentions are good, the misapprehension as to what the due of each is, sorely and painfully disrupts not only the distribution of justice (which, supposedly the task of the legislative branch, has been annexed unlawfully again and again by ideological judges of the left), but its restoration.  In this way, many judges, such as Sotomayor, may indeed have the intention of justice – but no concept of what justice itself is, for a lack of understanding of human nature, of the rights to which every man truly is entitled the protection thereof, and are thus naught but the ensoulment of  unreasonable ideological tyranny.

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Update: Shocking news, the White House disagrees!  Of course the White House disagrees, and in ridiculous fashion; following precedent does not exempt one from bias, and following bad precedent most certainly confirms one’s stupidity.  Following precedent made men bigots in the 19th and 20th centuries; now it makes women heroic.