Hounded, but this Woulfe did not budge
HE’S one smart Woulfe – our new Supreme Court Judge Séamus.
He knows when it’s time to hunker down and he certainly has a full grasp of how the media works.
The former Attorney General ‘gets’ that if you hold tough for 48 hours – 72 hours tops – journalists will look elsewhere, the storm will blow over and a few weeks later nobody will have the foggiest what all that fuss was about.
So, as politicians were dropping all around him, he faced down the Chief Justice Frank Clarke and other higherups on the bench and refused to budge. Now he’s home and hosed.
Our new member of the Supreme
Court is stubborn, single-minded and not amenable to persuasion, even when on the receiving end of a lot of incoming. Could make a great judge – when he’s finally allowed to do a stroke of work next February.
His success is reflected in the discussion, this week, of a proposed law for the appointment of judges in which Woulfe was relegated to a mere sideline mention. The new law means that up to five names would be put forward to Cabinet for judicial appointments – but these names would not be ranked.
That’s because the Government has the constitutional right to decide who gets these plum jobs and then instruct the President to give their choices the final seal of approval.
No new law can be expected (nor should it) to fetter the government’s discretion in this regard. Only a referendum can sort that out.
So, as the late US Supreme Court judge Antonin Scalia would say – off with them!