So I'm reading all this stuff about the Hobby Lobby case in which the Supreme Court will have to decide if it infringes on a company's religious freedom to have to offer its employees a health plan that includes access to contraception. I don't see anyone anticipating a decision based on unbiased principle. Everyone's expecting that the Conservative justices will find some way to justify slapping down Obamacare on this while the Liberals on the bench will figure out a way to justify supporting it…and the swing votes, to the extent there are any, will act out of self-interest. Remember the good ol' days when a judge interpreted the law as written, even when it led him to a conclusion he might have personally wished was otherwise?
Years ago, I was involved in a Writers Guild matter that involved the National Labor Relations Board. This was about the time that Reagan appointees were beginning to dominate it and they were unashamedly anti-union. I had occasion one evening to sit and talk with a man named Roger Goubeaux, who was the director of the local N.L.R.B. office. He was a nice man — a dead-ringer for Wilford Brimley — who had devoted his life to labor law. He was not happy with the Reagan appointees or the whole tone of Washington.
I did not record our conversation — which was personal, not official — but he said something that has stayed with me to this day. It went pretty much like this…
If they want to rule against you, they'll rule against you. Everyone in Washington these days works backwards from the desired result. They decide what they want the outcome to be and then the written law has to be twisted and turned to get to that outcome. It's like if a union wants to paint their meeting place green and management for some reason doesn't want them to be able to paint their meeting place green. The people who have to rule on this now…they're pro-management. So they look at the law and it says, "A union may paint their place of meeting any color of their choosing." Then they hand the law to some clerk in the office and say, "Here, write a brief that explains how this law says they can't paint the place green" and that's how they rule.
He said that to me in the early eighties. I wonder what he'd say today.
Can anyone point me to a recent case where someone prominent, be they pundit or politician, has ever done this? A judge or court rules against them — gives them an outcome that is contrary to their wishes — and they say, "Well, that's what the law says. It shouldn't say that but it does."