Twisting reason to justify law

I really enjoy reading Josef Conrad. I faked my way through the classic Conrad novels we were force-fed in high school, Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness, getting by with Cliff’s Notes. However, as and adult I have actually read and enjoyed both novels: so much so that I have gone on to slowly work my way through the entire oeuvre. Thus it was recently in Conrad’s Victory that I came upon this line:

the use of reason is to justify the obscure desires that move our conduct, impulses, passions, prejudices, and follies, and also our fears.

I was “reading” it on a audio book while driving, and I pulled over to back up the CD and make sure I heard it correctly. This observation, I thought, describes the phenomenon so common in decisions by governmental officials to bend logic and law to serve a particular desired end. It is most obvious in judicial decisions where the trail of reasoning from law to decision often seems strained, as though the jurist had worked backwards from the desired decision to select a the law that could most easily be twisted to fit the outcome.

This also happens when legislators and executives abuse their power, but I’m more disturbed when jurists do it (especially the good ol’ Ninth Circuit) because we seem to have culturally accepted courts as the most powerful wielders of governmental authority. In the case of the SCOTUS, the power is that of an absolute monarch. Of course, one could argue back, an absolute monarch is not limited by the law. Yet, from my strict constructionist POV, courts that use reason to justify desired ends are not terribly limited.

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