As John Adams put it in the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights: "It is essential to the preservation of the rights

    of  every individual, his life, liberty, property and character, that there be an impartial interpretation of the laws, and

    administration of justice. It is the right of every citizen to be tried by judges as free, impartial and independent as

    the lot of humanity will admit."

      The Founders well understood how essential it would be to find judges who could live up to the promises contained

    in the judicial oath that every federal judge has taken since the early years of the republic: to "administer justice

    without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and … impartially discharge and perform

    all the duties incumbent on me…under the Constitution and laws of the United States."

  The Founders, with their realistic views of human nature, would not have been surprised to see judges who

sometimes faltered in their ability to live up to those high ideals. What would have surprised them, though,

would be the appearance of a breed of judges who seem to disagree with the principles they pledged to uphold,

judges who seem to have adopted a new oath for themselves that goes something like this: "I do solemnly swear

to administer justice with close attention to the individual characteristics of the parties, to show compassion to

those I deem deserving, and to discharge my duties according to my personal understanding of the Constitution,

the laws of the United States, and such higher laws as have been revealed to me."