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As a non american, the way people describe american judges by their partisan leanings seems really messsed up to me. I would describe that as not how a judicary should work.


Only the partisans describe judges likes that. Judges do have leanings, but it's mostly about jurisprudence, like more originalism, or believing the interpretation should consider the intent of the legislator, or lean towards where society in general is leaning.

These are unavoidable aspects of being a supreme court judge, since you are also deciding what the law means and entails.


There was literally a media freak out over the apointment of Amy Barrett because people thought trump was stacking the court in his favour. I don't know how true that is, but its clear that a significant portion of americans believe it (belief that the court is political is damaging in itself even if it wasn't true).


If court picks weren't political, political parties wouldn't fight to their last breath for them.


Most judges actually are non-partisan-decide-based-on-law type. But they simply are not favoured.

Consider that sanders made it a litmus test for his supreme court nominees to overrule an unpopular court decision. Most judges would avoid at a politician demanding this, as it defeats the purpose of a judiciary.


People describe the judges that way, but in reality at least ones at the Supreme Court level tend to be apolitical.

They may have very strong views on what framework a judge should use to interpret the law, but they usually will not push their own political agenda.


If that were true, there would not be such huge political fights over judges. As it stands, conservative judges tend to vote one way, liberal judges tend to vote another.


That is not the impression my reading about various cases has left me with.

I can't point you to specific cases - I can only say that what has really stood out to me is that the justices do mostly seem to have well-defined interpretive frameworks, and that they work from those.

I can think of an exception, but my experience has generally been that it's the case.


Read up on Italian courts and prosecutors for some perspective.


I'm not particularly familar with italy's judiciary and nothing popped out in a quick skim of the wikipedia article, but if you're saying that there are countries that are worse, i don't doubt it. Being not the worst is not the same as being good or being ok.


Italian here.

Could you explain what you actually mean?

Our justice system is a sovereign power and doesn't depend on executive power, but is completely independent from it.




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