A Heterodox Catechism

Abstract

What did Judge Ginsburg promise the assembled multitudes? That she would judge rather than legislate; that her views on all matters pertaining to the meaning of the Constitution would not affect her views concerning the Constitution's meaning; that this paradoxical task was not only possible but indeed a sacred trust best illustrated by the restrained judicial activism manifested in the constitutional jurisprudence of that Nietzchian Christian, or pacific warrior, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and that she was not liberal nor conservative but would be both or neither, as her oath of service to the law required. What reaction did these promises elicit? Universal cries of hallelujah, unto us a judge is given. Is it possible to enumerate the sources of this splendid unanimity? Such sources included, but were not limited to, the judge's gender, which elicited from that mostly male consortium a chivalrous reserve reminiscent of bygone days of errantry; the stillfresh recollection of similar proceedings involving ~hen-Judge now-Justice Clarence Thomas and then-Professor now-Saint Anita Hill, and the concomitant unhappiness which resulted from that less than optimal display of what might charitably be characterized as the tangled passions of a human heart, and the feminine reticence or even revulsion with which that display was