Trading One Dream Job for Another

Anastasia P. BodenThis week I left my job suing the government to join the Cato Institute as Director of the Center for Constitutional Studies. The reactions have been overwhelmingly positive and I ’m thrilled to return to an organization I’ve long respected. Many are now asking why I chose to leave what I still describe as a dream job.Some of my responses are conventional: I had been a civil rights attorney for ten years. Change is good. Litigation is all ‐​consuming. And at some point, people seek new challenges. But I also came to believe I could be a more effective advocate for liberty if I worked outside of the courts. Here ’s why.For a variety of reasons that I ’ll leave to future writings, courts have become a poor ally to civil rights litigants. A thicket of jurisdictional traps, immunity doctrines, standing rules, and other procedural hurdles often weed out even the most deserving civil rights plaintiffs from court. When a plaintiff is lucky enough to surmount these pitfalls and get a judge to weigh in on the merits of their claims, a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the judiciary has led judges to defer excessively to policymakers —the very people they’re supposed to protect our rightsagainst.This all takes place in the name of “democracy.” Unelected and unaccountable men and women in robes, we are told, should not thwart the will of the people. But the Fra...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs