To be sure, conscientious judges recognize a clear distinction between judicial interpretation and imposing personal preferences. Thus, in interpreting the Constitution, they invoke text, structure, history, and precedent as crucial guides.

But by the same token, it is pretense to suggest that judges can somehow compartmentalize - and then ignore -- their own values when choosing among interpretive methods and results.

Statutes are often ambiguous (they result from a political process that depends on ambiguity to attract the votes needed to pass a law), and the “correct” interpretation of a statute typically invokes a contest between competing values. When legislative intent is unclear, judges tend to favor values that are consistent with their own. Interpreting the reach of a law prohibiting employment discrimination, for instance, conservative judges might believe the law was not meant to burden businesses, while liberal judges might believe the law was intended to secure a fair work environment. Both might be true, but the judge’s own values will ultimately govern the law’s application to a particular set of facts.

Interpretations of the Constitution are even more value laden. Good judges try to be true to the document’s core principles, but how those principles translate into modern life -- a life unimagined by the Framers more than two centuries ago -- is often subject to debate. It’s silly to think that a judge’s own values will play no role as the judge analyzes a constitutional question.

Deciding what intrusions on privacy are "reasonable," what governmental purposes are "compelling," what punishments are "cruel and unusual" - to cite but a few examples - requires an exercise of judgment that is inevitably colored by a judge's own values and experience.

Lazarus argues that conservatives, with their rhetoric of “strict construction” and “original intent” and “activist judges,” have disguised their desire to install judges onto the bench who simply share conservative values. He wisely suggests that it is time to inject honesty into the debate about what makes a “good judge”:

In sum, the debate among conservatives over Miers's nomination exposes a longstanding intellectual deceit in their professed allegiance to "strict constructionist" judges. At the same time, it offers an opportunity -- at Miers's hearing -- to treat the public to a candid discussion of how judges actually do their jobs, in place of the mythologized version of judging that emerged during the Roberts hearings.