Not that they don't legislate from the bench all the time. :)

You can disagree with what the courts do without believing that they are participating in "slaughter," as Pryor does. Seeing it from Pryor's perspective, if he's serious about his unambiguous moral opposition to abortion, why participate in an institution that perpetuates and safeguards the practice?

With regards to Pryor, especially if he claims allegiance to the theory of law that Republicans profess to have ("follow the law" and no "legislating from the bench"), then Dems are at least entitled to wonder how will be able to hold to that view, since he is someone with a strongly held view that part of the law is evil .

Bret,

Then no one who has strong pro-life views should be allowed to sit on the bench, by that logic.

Depends on the strong pro-life view. If someone really believes that God prohibits abortions, then he probably shouldn't be on the bench, at least if there is a doubt about his willingness to hold to secular law over religious commands, and at least if he professes to take the conservative approach to judging. As I note elsewhere, Scalia had no problem making this point with respect to the death penalty. This is not to say that religious anti-abortionists shouldn't be legislators, of course.

And after all, Reps would hardly be defending him if Pryor said that the current Catholic teaching on the death penalty was his personal belief, and that the death penalty was morally prohibited.

While I take your point on the death penalty, I think it is a red herring in this case, as I am not making an argument based on anti-Catholicism.

However, the idea that one ought be banned from the bench because one has deeply held views that derive from a religous belief strikes me as trying to construct a religious test for the bench, which is, of course, blatantly unconstitutional.

Hey Steven:

I still think it depends on the view. If a person believes that a current policy, which he or she would be bound to enforce as a judge by giving a fair reading to legislative intent and binding precedent, amounts to "slaughter," there's going to be a tension in that person's approach to judging, no? It just so happens that religious beliefs provide reasons for strong moral condemnations like the word "slaughter." The problem is even more acute for Pryor because he is tapping into (Republican) criticisms of judges who can't leave their own views at the courthouse door and instead "legislate from the bench." Examples where Reps don't push the point (like the death penalty, which "good catholics," on one reading of "good," should be against) help to highlight the precarious nature of the Republican charges here.

-- your friendly, Catholic-educated interlocutor (I went to Marianapolis Prep in Thompson, CT, for high school and learned all the algebra I know from an octogenarian Marian father from Lithuania.)

However, religion isn't the only source of strongly held beliefs, and there are many liberals, for example, who are passionate about affirmative action, or social justice for the poor. Should they, too, be denied the bench?

Are you advocating only appointing persons who have shallow, or illdefined views to the bench?

Unless you want to just be straight forward and admit, all this dancing about Catholics, religion, "deeply held beliefs," the death penalty and whatnot really is secondary, and the bottom line of the entire debate, as I have noted before, is simply abortion.