On Empathy
Type “empathy” into your search engine these days and many of the top results will surely relate to judicial appointments.
President Obama has been excoriated by the right for expressing his preference for empathetic judges. Even the left has been wary of wholly embracing the term in this context.
Here is the definition of empathy.
empathy
Noun
the ability to sense and understand someone else’s feelings as if they were one’s own [Greek, empatheia-- affection, passion]
Collins Essential English Dictionary 2nd Edition 2006 © HarperCollins Publishers 2004, 2006
How can this be such a terrible quality for a judge to possess?
2 Comments
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If lady justice really is supposed to be totally blindfolded and devoid of empathy, operating only on the basis of the law — then we need better laws!
I see what critics mean by calling for impartiality, and ultimately that is what is demanded of a judge. But I don’t think empathy in a judge is a bad thing (is it even possible to be totally human if you are devoid of it?), especially when operating in an imperfect system.
I agree–I don’t believe any of us can be entirely detached from our own life experiences and our understanding of others, and it seems a strange standard to strive for. Judges should be impartial, but not robotic.