Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Judge Peter Zarella, nominated by Governor Jodi Rell to be the next Chief Justice of Connecticut’s Supreme Court, begins his masterful disquisition on the separation of powers doctrine, printed in the Connecticut Bar Journal under the title “ Judicial Independence at a Crossroad ,” with a quote from Robert Frost: “Good fences make good neighbors.” Frost, like Walt Whitman before him, first gorged himself on all things American before spewing out his poetic pearls; and with either poet it may truly be said that little from sea to shining sea was beyond their ken. Some of Frost’s poems are shockingly political; others, like “Good Fences Make Good Neighbors,” are allegories that outline the central truths of the American experience. One has the same feeling reading Zarella’s “Judicial Independence at the Crossroad.” Everything American and familiar is here: Montesquieu on the laws; John Locke, the tutor of the founders who established our tri-partite form of government and thereby destroy...