Reading the french fries

In an early post, I describe my growing squishyness on John Roberts.  There is one thing in his judicial record that is keeping me from jumping off the boat, and that is the french fry case.  To the uninitiated, my support of his decision to uphold the arrest of a girl who ate a french fry on a train in Washington D.C. makes me look like an ogre, but if one understands the role of lawmakers, police, and judges, then it becomes hard to say he made the wrong decision.

 

If you are unfamiliar with the case, here’s a brief synopsis.  It is illegal to eat food on the Metro in Washington D.C.  When the girl ate her french fry, she was cuffed and put into jail.  Clearly, lawmakers passed a bad law.  And law enforcement officials fulfilled their duty under that bad law, although they showed a little bad judgement as well.  So this case ends up in front of Roberts’ court.  As a judge, it is not his responsibility to right the wrongs that may have been committed against this girl.  It is his job to apply the law, and that is what he did.  This is hopefully a telling sign of the kind of Justice Roberts would be.  He did what a judge is supposed to do-he applied the law.  He did not go looking for a reason to right a wrong.  While it is admirable for someone to try to right a wrong, it is not the job of the judiciary.  Justice is not something applied from the heart, but rather from the laws on the book.  Sometimes justice is not just, but in those instances the pressure belongs on lawmakers to improve the laws that they have passed, not on judges.