Identity politics collide with the court

Last week, Justice Stephen Breyer officially announced his retirement from the U.S. Supreme Court after nearly three decades on the bench.

Rather than highlighting the important qualifications of the next appointee, many on the left are fixated on the hope of the fulfillment of President Joe Biden’s campaign promise to appoint a black woman. 

“As a black woman,” said journalist Sophia Nelson on MSNBC, “it’s exciting to see someone who is going to look like me on the court.” Nelson continued, “I think that each person who comes with their unique diversity … they bring a lens of experience, they bring a different and unique perspective” when deciding which cases to take and how to rule on them. 

This intersectionality-driven, identity-focused approach by progressives—and, at times, even Republican presidents—is not surprising, but it is concerning. The role of the Supreme Court is to interpret the law and apply the U.S. Constitution. While conservative and liberal philosophies have always diverged on these interpretations and applications, the “lived experience” or subjective perspectives earned by someone’s skin color or gender are not relevant when it comes to interpreting the law of the land. In fact, they can be downright hostile to the very definition of justice.

There is no better (or other) arbiter of justice than the perfectly just God who created it. The West in general, and the United States specifically, were built on such a notion—that the God of the Bible is the original Law Giver, and from God alone do men and women derive their equal value and rights. Many of the guarantees in the Bill of Rights—the right to due process, for example—are founded in God’s law-giving to ancient Israel.

In these laws, God demonstrates at least three main characteristics of true justice: It is truthful, proportional, and impartial.

Exodus 23:1–2 underscores the importance of truth to God’s idea of justice, forbidding false testimonies. Deuteronomy 19:15–19 requires the testimonies of two or three witnesses to convict a person and orders that a false witness be subject to the same punishment as the person about whom he lied would have endured if found guilty. Deuteronomy 19:21 speaks to the importance of proportionality in criminal punishment. Exodus 23:3 condemns showing bias toward poor people in a lawsuit. Leviticus 19:15 commands impartiality, condemning showing favoritism either “to the poor” or “to the great.” 

While all three characteristics are necessary for justice, God seems to take special care to emphasize his disdain for partiality, which can be defined as an unreasonable, unfair preferential treatment toward a person or people. Acts 10:34 says, “God shows no partiality.” James 2:8–9 asserts that showing partiality toward people is completely incongruent with love.

Partiality is injustice, and President Biden is promising to employ it in his decision-making for the court that is supposed to represent justice for the nation. Rather than choosing a candidate based on his or her ability to understand, interpret, and apply the Constitution, he is deliberately excluding qualified individuals because they are Hispanic, Asian, white, and/or a man.

Not only that, but Biden and many of his supporters are hoping that this justice uses her skin color and gender—not simply the facts of the case or precedent or constitutional law—to decide her rulings. This contradicts all three characteristics of justice God outlines in His Word.

And this may be an even higher priority than finding an appointee who ticks the racial and gender boxes. Considering there is some reason to doubt liberals in the media are interested in the “unique” views of Clarence Thomas, the second black justice ever named to the Supreme Court, or those of the fifth woman to sit on the court, Amy Coney Barrett, it is difficult to take seriously their celebration of “representation.” It seems they are looking for an ideologue who is willing to forgo objectivity in favor of identity politics. That is not justice. It may actually be the opposite.

While the first person from a particular category can certainly be worth celebrating, especially when the person comes from a group with a history of discrimination, the celebration should not primarily be because of his or her representation, but because of his or her qualifications. 

A qualified justice who is committed to true, impartial justice is a blessing to the country, no matter the person’s ethnicity or gender. But the opposite is also true: a person placed on the highest court of the land who is committed not to justice but to the advancement of a progressive, identity-obsessed agenda, will surely wreak havoc. The abandonment of God’s definitions of justice always does.