| On May 24 Chief Justice John Roberts went to the 100th annual meeting of the American Law Institute to receive its Henry Friendly Medal. The ALI website says that the medal recognizes “contributions to the law in the tradition of Judge Friendly.” |
| As Justice Elena Kagan said in introducing Roberts, that tradition valorizes the “judicial craftsman,” the “lawyer’s mind,” and the ability to “make sense of legal materials.” Kagan also called Roberts someone who is “careful, restrained, and principled” and who has never written “a bad sentence.” |
| But there was a conspicuous absence in Kagan’s remarks—not a word about Roberts’s understanding of, or concern about, the people whose lives his carefully crafted sentences would unalterably change. She said nothing to suggest that Roberts is interested in the litigants and others whose legal disputes emerge from pain, suffering, and legitimate grievance. |
| Kagan made no mention of the simple human and judicial virtue of empathy. But, in a subtle dig, she reminded her audience that the Court’s rulings “matter in people’s lives and that shouldn’t be forgotten.” |
| Roberts’s own speech accepting the ALI medal is evidence that that simple lesson has… |
