Baptist Joint Committee Executive Director J. Brent Walker is a panelist for The Washington Post/ Newsweek online conversation, "On Faith." Each week panelists have the opportunity to answer a question posed by Jon Meacham and Sally Quinn, the moderators of the site.
This week's question was this: No religion, gender or ethnicity disqualifies a person from becoming a Supreme Court justice, but how should a particular judge's life experiences — including faith, gender or ethnicity — inform his or her judicial rulings?
Walker responded:
A justice's faith, gender and ethnicity–and life experience generally–will influence his or her view of the world and the law. But these should not dictate a justice's decisions and reasoning when interpreting and applying the grand precepts outlined in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Inform, yes; determine, no.
Justices should make every effort to decide cases based on constitutional and statutory language, historical context, court precedent, and the facts of the case. But original intent is always elusive and language is not self-defining. What does "due process" mean? How about "cruel and unusual punishment?" The Court grapples almost every term with the meaning of "establishment of religion." The nine justices proceeding in good faith and trying to be fair will often split 5-4 and sometimes write eight or nine opinions disagreeing over reasoning.
Read the rest of the post here.
