I can't and won't answer this question with either "liberal" or "conservative," because IMO the only correct answer should be "objective." Either a liberal, a conservative, or a moderate can be objective so long as they choose to be. We don't need any more Ruth B. Ginsburgs or more Antonin Scalias on the Supreme Court. We surely don't need any more moderates like Anthony Kennedy. We need people on the Supreme Court who are dedicated to objectivity, like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Benjamin Cardozo, Hugo Black, and Learned Hand.
Oliver Wendell Holmes: "[T]he accident of our finding certain opinions natural and familiar or novel and even shocking ought not to conclude our judgment upon the question whether statutes embodying them conflict with the Constitution of the United States." (From Holmes's dissenting opinion in
Lochner v. New York, 1905.)
Benjamin Cardozo: "The traditions of our jurisprudence commit us to objective standards. I do not mean, of course, that this ideal of objective vision is ever perfectly attained. We cannot transcend the limitations of the ego and see the everything as it really is. None the less, the ideal is one to be striven for within the limits of our capacity. ...
"The judge, even when he is free, is still not wholly free. He is not to innovate at pleasure. He is not a knight-errant roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or of goodness. He is not to yield to spasmodic sentiment, to vague and unregulated benevolence. He is to exercise discretion informed by tradition, methodized by analogy, disciplined by system, and subordinated to the primordial necessity of order in the social life." (From "The Nature of the Judicial Process," published in 1921.)
Hugo Black: "I repeat, so as not to be misunderstood, that this Court does have power, which it should exercise, to hold laws unconstitutional where they are forbidden by the Federal Constitution. My point is that there is no provision of the Constitution which either expressly or impliedly vests power in this Court to sit as a supervisory agency over acts of duly constituted legislative bodies and set aside their laws because of the Court's belief that the legislative policies adopted are unreasonable, unwise, arbitrary, capricious or irrational. The adoption of such a loose flexible. uncontrolled standard for holding laws unconstitutional, if ever it is finally achieved, will amount to a great unconstitutional shift of power to the courts which I believe and am constrained to say will be bad for the courts, and worse for the country. Subjecting federal and state laws to such an unrestrained and unrestrainable judicial control as to the wisdom of legislative enactments would, I fear, jeopardize the separation of governmental powers that the Framers set up, and, at the same time, threaten to take away much of the power of States to govern themselves which the Constitution plainly intended them to have." (From Black's dissenting opinion in
Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965.)
Judge Learned Hand:
http://mtweb.mtsu.edu/cewillis/Hermeneutics/Hand%20How%20Free%20is%20a%20Judge.pdf
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