I’ve found the courts’ use of foreign precedent to be an incredibly outrageous stretch of judicial misbehavior. Apparently Sonia Sotomayor doesn’t see it that way.

Today the Washington Times exposes (not that it was a secret) Sotomayor’s “transnationalist” tendencies…her fondness for the consideration of foreign precedent and thought in the U.S. legal system. They hit a home run here:

…At best, this is muddle-headed thinking. It also is evidence of a lack of self-control.

These statements are muddle-headed because they fail basic tests of logic. Why should “unsettled issues” in the U.S. legal system benefit from “freedom of ideas” as expressed through international law and foreign law? The outcome of legal “issues,” even “unsettled” ones, is determined not by something as nebulous as ideas, but by hard facts, precedent and clear legal reasoning. U.S. law is determined by the consent of the governed through their elected representatives – not by the opinions of foreign nationals about whom American citizens have never heard or for whom they have never voted.

Worse than her muddle-headedness is Judge Sotomayor’s lack of discretion or humility. In the American system, judges are not meant to be philosophers, legislators or diplomats. Their job is to apply the law as written, not to try to achieve some sort of cosmic justice as determined by their own inner ethical gyroscopes.

(Be sure to read the whole thing…)

I have no illusions that any of this will change the attitude of the Senate Judiciary Committee, or the full Senate for that matter, but perhaps it will turn the heads of a) the citizens of the U.S., and b) the Senate GOP, who should at least voice their objection to this World Court wannabe.