CAP Debate - Debating Our Judiciary

The Center for American Progress, Politico, and American Action Forum sponsored this debate at George Washington University between former Clinton administration acting Solicitor General Walter Delinger and former Bush administration Assistant Attorney General Rachel Brand. There was a cocktail reception beforehand with some pass arounds that was cool.

Debate was excellent. Delinger really expresses himself well, in my mind making a mockery of the idea that judges should be selected on principles divorced from their ideology. Essentially saying it is not possible, and even if it was, the point of leaving many passages of the constitution open to interpretation was so that modern judges could actually apply modern standards. Brand's attempt to discredit this approach did not really make any sense.

I was pretty tired when I was heading over to this event, but it was engaging and humorous. Delinger has a great zonger comparing a line in a Chief Justice John Robert's brief to an inability to learn the first lesson of Sesame Street, an inability to distinguish that one of these things is not like another.