Judge Judging

Over at Volokh, Juan has a thought provoking post on the charge that opponents of Bill Pryor's confirmation as a federal appellate judge are anti-Catholic bigots. He writes:

"The real question should not be whether an individual nominee has deeply felt religious beliefs about abortion, homosexuality, the death penalty, or some other controversial issue. Rather, it should be whether a given nominee is capable of separating their personal views from their obligation as a judge."

That might be obvious, but a judge's inclination to separate "personal views" and "obligation" is surely hard to gauge. The Washington Post reports that mathematician Lawrence Sirovich is nevertheless trying. Using information theory, he has developed

"a purely mathematical model to gauge the [Supreme Court Justices'] independence simply by cataloguing how often each one sides with the majority or the minority . . . Sirovich used a scale of 1 to 9, where a score of 9 meant the justices always made decisions without regard to ideological alliances or factions, and a score of 1 demonstrated ideological lockstep. The court scored 4.68."

Thanks to: Don't Be a Hero