Obama on 'Empathy'

During a 2007 speech to Planned Parenthood, then-candidate Barack Obama listed 'empathy' as an essential quality for any person he would nominate to the Supreme Court.

President Obama spoke with C-SPAN over the weekend about what "empathy" means to him. In short, he said that as a justice, "You have to be able to stand in somebody else's shoes." Notice also Obama's mention of Lilly Ledbetter. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was the first bill that he signed into law....

"I said earlier that I thought empathy was an important quality and I continue to believe that. You have to have not only the intellect to be able to effectively apply the law to cases before you.

"But you have to be able to stand in somebody else's shoes and see through their eyes and get a sense of how the law might work or not work in practical day-to-day living. And a good example of this, the Lilly Ledbetter case that came up a while back, where the justice has I believe misinterpreted the law in closing the door to a lawsuit by a woman who had worked for 20 years and had been paid less than her male counterparts.

"She didn't know that she was getting paid less, when she discovered it, she immediately filed suit to get back pay and the suggestion was somehow that she should have filed suite earlier.

"Well, I think anybody who has ever worked in a job like that understands that they might not know that they were being discriminated against it. It doesn't make sense for their rights to be foreclosed.

"That's the kind of case, where I want a judge not only to be applying the law in front of them, but also to understand
that as a practical matter. A lot of times people have weak bargaining power.

"Now, in some ways it might cut the other way. I want a judge who has a sense of how regulations might affect the
businesses in a practical way. And so, when they're interpreting a statute that they are saying, is congressional intent being met in this kind of circumstance. So, if there is a farm program somewhere, and you have somebody who can take the time to learn about how farmers work that's helpful.

"So, in all these cases what I want is not just ivory tower learning. I want somebody who has the intellectual fire power, but also a little bit of a common touch and has a practical sense of how the world works."