We love to hate lawyers because we blame them for many injustices. But no one jokes about judges. Because we hold them in high esteem. Too high, for Boot's taste. Boot, a Wall Street Journal op-ed editor , insists that judges, not lawyers or legislators, are responsible for almost every problem that inflicts our system of justice.
Judges are at fault.
The list of charges is not particularly fresh. Judges have long been preferred targets, especially for politicians. But the tone of Boot's book is illustrative of the recent escalation of vitriol and a disintegration of accepted norms of conduct toward judges. Ideologically driven senators throw the federal courts into crisis by refusing even to vote on highly qualified judicial nominees for years. And for every controversial judicial ruling, it seems, there is a politician prepared to introduce a bill to prevent any judge from ever ruling that way again.