When I was young and naïve, I assumed legal writing was much like scientific writing — dry, measured, and singularly focused on the data or arguments at hand. It was jarring to discover that judges routinely go beyond the law to indulge in emotional flourishes and amateur-hour philosophy. As I’ve mentioned before, I never had an economics professor or journal editor tell me, “This data analysis needs to be dressed up with some philosophizing. And would it kill you to add a little moral preening?”

Which brings us to Monday’s decision by Judge Katherine Forrest to free an immigrant ex-con, Ravidath Ragbir, who had been detained by ICE eight days before the expiration of his latest in twelve years’ worth of deportation delays. The following quote is not from a press release or a stump speech. It is a ruling by a federal judge:

There is, and ought to be in this great country, the freedom to say goodbye. That is, the freedom to hug one’s spouse and children, the freedom to organize the myriad of human affairs that collect over time. It ought not to be — and it has never before been — that those who have lived without incident in this country for years are subjected to treatment we associate with regimes we revile as unjust, regimes where those who have long lived in a country may be taken without notice from streets, home, and work. And sent away. We are not that country; and woe be the day that we become that country under a fiction that laws allow it [my emphasis].

This is legal analysis? Woe be the day, indeed.

Judge Forrest goes on to acknowledge that the government’s actions were legal by statute, since ICE can detain and deport once it has the necessary travel documents for people in Ragbir’s situation. But then she makes hand-waving references to Fifth Amendment liberty and due process — “North Stars that must guide our actions” — and to the government’s “cruelty” in detaining someone who had had twelve years to prepare his own departure.

Needless to say, this is the decision of an advocate, not a judge. Advocacy rulings have become so brazen of late that it is time to consider censure or even impeachment of federal judges who traffic in them. Recognizing all of the practical impediments, I still know of no better way to start reining in judicial lawlessness. One may object that punitive action is too risky, since Congress could end up targeting judges who make unpopular but legitimate decisions. That concern is misplaced. It is the judges themselves who are risking the integrity of our system. As they overstep their bounds, they threaten the separation of powers and the rule of law. If judges had stayed within their proper constitutional sphere, Congress would not be faced with the messy task of clawing back the powers delegated to the elected branches.