Policy Preferences Quotes

Senators should not play politics by threatening filibusters and evaluating Judge Gorsuch based on what his policy preferences are or how he might come down on a specific case that may come before the Court.

I want judges on the Supreme Court who will not use that position to impose their personal policy preferences or political agenda on the American people.

You want to know what judicial activism is? Judicial activism is judges imposing their policy preferences on the words of the Constitution.

Public Policy Polling asked a broad sample of Democratic and Republican primary voters whether they would support bombing Agrabah. Nearly a third of Republican respondents said they would, versus 13 percent who opposed the idea. Democratic preferences were roughly reversed; 36 percent were opposed, and 19 percent were in favor. Agrabah doesn’t exist. It’s the fictional country in the 1992 Disney film Aladdin. Liberals crowed that the poll showed Republicans’ aggressive tendencies. Conservatives countered that it showed Democrats’ reflexive pacifism. Experts in national security couldn’t fail to notice that 43 percent of Republicans and 55 percent of Democrats polled had an actual, defined view on bombing a place in a cartoon.

A clearer form of politicization (of intelligence) is the inconsistent review of analysis: reports that conform to policy preferences have an easier time making it through the gauntlet of coordination and approval than ones that do not.

Political science has long tried to tackle a fundamental question of voter behavior: Do voters choose politicians because those politicians hold views that they like, or do voters choose policy positions because the politicians they like say those positions are correct?

If you know a lot about something and apply that information to a vote that matches your policy preferences, your opinion quality is high.

I do not believe there are any circumstances in which a judge should consider his or her own values or policy preferences in determining what the law means.