Kagan’s “Judicial Hero,” Aharon Barak

nro ^ | May 21, 2010 | Ed Whelan

[george76]

In 2006, Elena Kagan hailed Israeli supreme court justice Aharon Barak as her “judicial hero”:

other folks view him much less favorably than Kagan does—and that she may have a strange view of what “democracy” is and what the “rule of law” entails. Here’s some of what Seventh Circuit judge Richard A. Posner has to say about Barak (in his book How Judges Think, pp. 362-368)*:

" One of the most prominent of the aggressively interventionist foreign judges is Aharon Barak…. [H]is book on judging is Exhibit A for why American judges should be wary about citing foreign judicial decisions…. Although Barak is familiar with the American legal system and supposes himself to be in some sort of sync with liberal American judges, he actually inhabits a completely and, to an American, weirdly different juristic universe.…

[W]ithout a secure constitutional basis, Barak created a degree of judicial power undreamt of by our most aggressive Supreme Court justices…. "

Posner also quotes Judge Bork as writing that Barak “establishes a world record for judicial hubris.”

[fieldmarshaldj]

The ultimate ultraleft judicial activist.

[Nachum]

The list, ping

[nkycincinnatikid]

Jeeze Barack Obama, just cut to the chase and put Israeli Justice Aaron Barack on the court! Why settle for the the understudy?

[MontaniSemperLiberi]

“Barak created a degree of judicial power undreamt of by our most aggressive Supreme Court justices…. Among the rules of Israeli law that Barak’s judicial opinions have been instrumental in creating are that any citizen can ask a court to block illegal action by a government official even if he is not personally affected by it …; that any government action that is “unreasonable” is illegal…; that in the name of “human dignity” a court can order the government to alleviate homelessness and poverty; and that a court can countermand military orders….”

I have not yet found the smoking gun but I strongly think it’s out there somewhere. Kagan appears to be an adherent to Critical Legal Studies. A neo-Marxist legal theory that believes that law is no more than politics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_legal_studies