Douglas Kmiec, who worked with the Matthew 25 Network during the 2008 election, did an interview for The Economist’s Democracy in America blog, with issues ranging from President Obama’s address at Notre Dame to the upcoming Supreme Court nomination. It’s definitely worth reading. Here are some of the highlights:

[Kmiec:] In campaigning for the presidency, Mr Obama refused to follow the opposition’s consistent ploy of using religious differences as a tool of division. To that end, the president would do well to take a page from the campaign and encourage the graduates to bring their faith into the public square, while being careful not to assume that their religion will always be given preference. 

This is an excellent message… of course we at the Matthew 25 Network believe that our faith should affect our politics. We think that things like working against poverty, opposing needless war, opposing torture, working to heal this nation’s racism and sexism, are moral issues as well as practical ones. At the same time, though, we have to recognize that we’re going into a public square where not everyone shares our religious values – and learn to talk about our political, ethical, and moral beliefs in terms that are accessible to people of any or no faith, not just for people who share our faith traditions.

Mr Obama also said he would look for the quality of empathy in his judicial selections.  The president, I believe, uses the term to convey that justices should be impartial, but not indifferent. Law and adjudication is not just a mental exercise in doctrinal neatness.  An Obama nominee should be capable of understanding the real-life consequences of judicial outcomes, especially for those who are least advantaged.  This is refreshingly attractive and informs Mr Obama’s desire to nominate justices with a broader life experience than one spent largely in a classroom or appellate courtroom.

I couldn’t agree more. While judges should follow the law, President Obama is right in pointing out that laws affect real people – that any judge who is ruling as if the law is some academic construct is missing a key part of the system.

The president of my dear alma mater Fuller Seminary, Richard Mouw, is fond of using this metaphor (originally coined by Japanese-American theologian Kosuke Koyama) about the way we look at God: do we worship a generous God or a stingy God? Is God looking to give, or to withhold?

At the risk of trivializing Drs. Mouw and Koyama’s brilliant observation – and let me be clear that by no means am I equating these things – I think we should look for a Supreme Court nominee who’s energized by seeing the same principle in interpreting the law. I think we should look for a jurist who looks at the grey areas in the law with an eye toward helping out the little guy, toward being compassionate to those who need compassion, toward bringing true justice – someone who sees the law as an opportunity for generosity rather than stinginess. That’s what I hope President Obama means when he talks about wanting a Supreme Court nominee with empathy.

Anyway, the rest of Dr. Kmiec’s interview is here… and Dr. Kmiec talks about the issues in a far more intelligent way than I can. It’s definitely worth a read.

Thanks to the Faith in Public Life newsroom for the link!