THE CHRONICLE, which ordinarily travels to Rhode Island, Massachusetts, or thereabouts to find candidates for canonization as saints of the high church of the left, today said an ardent and reverential goodbye to homegrown liberal William Wayne Justice -- the Tyler federal judge who never met a judicial mandate he didn't like.
William Wayne Justice was a genuine change agent in a state whose traditional ways of dealing with minorities and prisoners needed changing. Judge Justice transformed Texas, often kicking and screaming, and we are the better for his service.
What about the inherent conflict between Judge Justice's expansive vision of federal judicial power and the quaint notion that Texas is co-sovereign and self-governing?
The Chronicle -- true to its elitist principles, its vision of itself as voice of the clever people -- sniffs dismissively.
Justice's "detached position as a legal voice and mind not subject to the whims of the ballot box . . . uniquely empowered him."
Indeed. And there in a nutshell is the case for rule by philosopher kings -- detached, righteous, armed with good minds, above the fray, indifferent to the whims of democracy. Not unlike a typical Chronicle editorial writer, by the sound of it.
The best defense of Judge Justice is utilitarian, that whether he did what he did in the right way, what he did was right. Like a Barack Obama before his time, it can be said that Judge Justice fundamentally "transformed" Texas and, as the Chronicle avers, for the better.
Well, maybe.
But here's the problem: Just as the case for free speech requires the defense of the right to say ugly and disagreeable things, so the case for democratic self-government requires the tolerance of sometimes ugly and disagreeable public policies.
To say you believe in consent of the governed, but only when you agree with the policies adopted by elected officials, is to say you do not believe in consent of the governed.
And that is the branch of political philosophy on which the Chronicle today perches and always perches, chirping mindlessly about men on white horses who have rescued, and will rescue us, from ourselves.
Texas Attorney General John Hill defended our state against Judge Justice's judicial overreaching in the prison case, Ruiz. This was undoubtedly difficult for him, because he was a good liberal who agreed that the Texas prison system needed reform. Yet he ended his memoir (John Hill For the State of Texas with Ernie Stromberger, recommended) with strong misgivings about what Judge Justice had done.
I never was able to reconcile in my own mind Judge Justice's federal judicial solution to problems I believed our state government was capable of addressing and, given time, should have been allowed to sort out and resolve.
That's the honest response of a man who loved Texas, loved the law, and loved Madisonian self-government -- who would never have thoughtlessly used "whims" and "ballot box" in the same sentence.
Would that our editorial board shared his affections.
UPDATE: Thanks for the link from blogHouston.
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