Media Tip Sheets

All judges are political, except for the ones we like

Wednesday, June 12, 2024, By Ellen Mbuqe
Reporters you are looking for an expert to discuss the issues facing Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, especially recent comments there were captured during a private function, please see comments from Syracuse University Law Professor Keith Bybee, the author of “All Judges are Political, Except When They are Not.”
  • “The new recordings of Justice Alito and his wife will not really change the debate over the propriety or trustworthiness of the Supreme Court. Critics of Alito will emphasize the Justice’s agreement with the claim that people need to fight ‘to return our country to a place of godliness.’ Defenders of Alito will re-direct attention by criticizing the means by which the recordings were obtained and by lambasting the media for publishing the recordings’ content. Defenders will also argue that much of what Alito said is unobjectionable, noting, for example, that Alito’s characterization of the Court’s work (‘It’s our job to decide cases as best we can,’) is very conventional. Rather than decisively changing the debate, the disagreement between critics and defenders will simply provide another opportunity to do what Americans have long done: to defend the Justices we like as being impartial arbiters of law and to criticize the Justices we don’t like as being politicians in robes. It is by selectively criticizing the Justices for being political and praising the Justices for being legal that we maintain the Court’s position as a powerful actor in public affairs,” said Bybee.
Reporters who want to interview Professor Bybee, please contact Ellen James Mbuqe, executive director of media relations at ejmbuqe@syr.edu.