American Legal System Is Corrupt Beyond Recognition, Judge Tells Harvard Law School

Judge Edith Jones of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit details the massive problems in the US legal system. I'll leave out the scary parts but include this snippet.

"Throughout my professional life, American legal education has been ruled by theories like positivism, the residue of legal realism, critical legal studies, post-modernism and other philosophical fashions," said Jones. "Each of these theories has a lot to say about the 'is' of law, but none of them addresses the 'ought,' the moral foundation or direction of law."

Jones quoted Roger C. Cramton, a law professor at Cornell University, who wrote in the 1970s that "the ordinary religion of the law school classroom" is "a moral relativism tending toward nihilism, a pragmatism tending toward an amoral instrumentalism, a realism tending toward cynicism, an individualism tending toward atomism, and a faith in reason and democratic processes tending toward mere credulity and idolatry."

She'd make a great judge on the Supreme Court in spite of her misgivings.

Judge Edith Jones has been mentioned as a potential nominee to the Supreme Court in the Bush administration, but does not relish the idea.

"Have you looked at what people have to go through who are nominated for federal appointments? They have to answer questions like, 'Did you pay your nanny taxes?' 'Is your yard man illegal?'

"In those circumstances, who is going to go out to be a federal judge?"

Call Bush and get her on the short list.