ACS Blog - ACS Event Video: Examining the Nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court - "During a recent ACS event examining the nomination of Solicitor
General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, Walter Dellinger, a
constitutional law expert, took issue with conservatives' rejection of
the so-called "empathy standard." Dellinger, chair of O'Melveny &
Meyers' Appellate Practice and former Acting Solicitor General during
the Clinton administration, said, "I feel really sorry for empathy.
Empathy has been thrown under the bus. I think that's too bad. What the
president was intending to convey, I would embrace the ‘e' word
fearlessly. In some sense, it is nothing more than what Oliver Wendell
Holmes said, the life of the law has not been logic, it has been
experience. And the whole notion of balls and strikes and judges as
umpires presents a view of the Constitution that in some ways
delegitimizes parts of our constitutional text and constitutional
tradition."
"The panel discussion moderated by Amanda Frost, a law professor at American University, included Rachel Brand, former assistant attorney general for legal policy in the George W. Bush administration, and Thomas Wilner, who represented Guantanamo Bay prisoners in the cases Rasul v. Bush and Boumediene v. Bush. Watch the entire event by clicking here or on the picture."