From Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s opening statement today:

I decide cases from a neutral posture. I evaluate the facts, and I interpret and apply the law to the facts of the case before me, without fear or favor, consistent with my judicial oath.

If the nominee of a Republican president uttered those words, lefty law professors would be racing to condemn them as hopelessly naïve or outright deceptive. There is no such thing as a “neutral posture,” they would tell us, and the pretense of adopting such a posture disguises the policy choices that inhere in judging. The Left would heap scorn on a conservative nominee who summarized the judicial role as impartially applying the law to the facts—as being an umpire calling balls and strikes, if you will.

Lest you take false hope from KBJ’s statement, have in mind that even Sonia Sotomayor adopted formalist-sounding rhetoric at her confirmation hearing. As I wrote back then:

Judge Sotomayor deserves an A+ for brazen doublespeak. She emphatically rejected the lawless “empathy” standard for judging that President Obama used to select her, but she denied the plain import of her many statements contesting the possibility and desirability of judicial impartiality. She hid behind a ridiculously simplistic caricature of judging that embarrassed and disgusted her most vociferous backers, but she never recognized any meaningful bounds on the role of a Supreme Court justice. She gave a series of confused statements about the use of foreign law that are inconsistent with each other and that contradict a speech that she gave just three months ago.