A Nation of Laws, A Nation of Men

One of the points that's been made several times tonight against the Schiavo bill is that it jeopardizes our status as "a nation of laws, and not of men". That's a common trope, and I think it's the idea that underlies the degree of deference to judge-found facts one sees on the anti- side. And yet the idea itself seems almost quaint, an echo of the days before Legal Realism when we really believed that some Platonic idea of "a nation of laws" was possible. Whatever one thinks of the courts of Florida, does anyone really think that the legal process in this case (or in any case) is somehow cabined off from ordinary human passions and frailties? Are judges not men?


(Steny Hoyer, by the way, is a great speaker. Why, exactly is Nancy Pelosi the Minority Leader again?)