Least harm principle in social work1/22/2024 ![]() Liberal and conservative judicial approaches are, of course, well established. As a field, the law lacks a satisfying, middle-ground response to the core philosophical question that judges must face: By what legal theory should they decide difficult cases-ones in which the law is unclear and where any ruling risks inflaming division among the American people? Yet to focus on our nation’s dearth of moderate judges is to scratch at the surface of a much deeper problem. Gone are the days of jurists like Sandra Day O’Connor, for whom the middle ground was a good place-not one to avoid for fear of being voted down in the Senate or lampooned as a “ squish.” We have lots of liberal and conservative judges, but few in between. The researchers Adam Bonica, of Stanford, and Maya Sen, of Harvard, have found, for example, that the present ideological distribution of federal judges resembles an inverted bell curve. This absence is most obvious at the Supreme Court, but courts of appeals and district courts suffer from it, too. ![]() In one sense, the problem is simply one of personnel: Precious few judicial moderates serve in America’s federal courts. A ristotle once observed that “the virtue of justice consists in moderation.” By any measure, he would find little to admire in America’s modern judicial landscape. ![]()
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