A trusty companion of mine turned up in the news this past week.

With President Obama gearing up to select a new Supreme Court justice, his earlier remarks about what would guide his choice are receiving scrutiny. “We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom,” he said in 2007. “The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.” (Here is a report with video of this statement.) Earlier this month, when announcing David Souter’s retirement from the court, the president reaffirmed this point: “I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles, as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes.”

Empathy is beautiful. But what happens in a courtroom when a judge decides cases based not on the law, but on his own feelings about which party is more disadvantaged and thus more deserving of support? The court becomes a charity organization rather than a dispenser of justice. The rule of law is destroyed. The rules are written in sand. We are left at the mercy of the whims of the judge.

If empathy causes respect of persons in judgment, it leads to injustice. It causes oppression.

Many commentators have been justifiably hot about such injudicious thinking. And it’s in some of their comments that my companion made its appearance.

In the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby wrote about the importance of “Lady Justice’s blindfold.” He drew attention to the one-sentence judicial oath required of every federal judge and justice, which demands judicial impartiality: “I … do solemnly swear that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me … under the Constitution and laws of the United States, so help me God.”

Three references in a single sentence! A judge’s ability to dispassionately decide cases according to the law is crucial. The wisdom in this principle is timeless.

Should the president make his selections based on the “empathy” criterion, his judges will have to cross their fingers while taking their oath of office.

Where did this esteemed judicial precept of impartiality come from? “There are biblical echoes in the wording of that oath,” wrote Jacoby. Indeed.

Then—there it was. Jacoby quoted Deuteronomy 1:17: “You shall not be partial in judgment; you shall hear the small and the great alike ….” He cited Deuteronomy 16:19: “You shall not pervert justice; you shall not show partiality; and you shall not take a bribe ….” He referenced Exodus 23:3: “nor shall you be partial to a poor man in his suit” (all Revised Standard Version).

Ah—the law of ancient Israel. I have great admiration and affection for it. All of it.

I realize that puts me in a pretty small minority of Christians. Having devoted some considerable study to it, however, I’ve come to love the elegance and insight locked within even its smallest minutiae. Statutes that seem arcane or crude, when examined and mulled over, begin to open and unfold like lilies, revealing a center of fairness, of concern—even compassion.

That’s why it was so pleasing to see unapologetic references to that law not only in the Globe, but also in American Thinker (Deuteronomy 16:18-20) and Townhall.com (Leviticus 19:15). Several other commentators made similar points, and while they didn’t explicitly quote God’s law, the “biblical echoes” were clear.

Why the enthusiasm for these Old Testament judgments? Because they make sense. We easily recognize their wisdom. In our guts we feel the injustice in a judge taking a bribe or ruling in favor of the wealthy out of partiality, or to curry favor. We would also likely admit that it’s just as wrong for a judge to favor someone simply because he is poor. These injustices violate our sense—strong even in young children—of what is fair and unfair.

The fact that God expressly forbade these injustices in order to secure the rights of all citizens—and even visiting foreigners—is just right.

God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34-35). He sees everyone as equal under the law. That we have a president who wants to dispense with that wisdom shows why it was so necessary that God establish and codify it in the first place. (Watch this week’s Key of David program to hear Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry discuss the importance of the rule of law. You can see an excerpt at right.)

The laws on how to judge justly are only a start. God also gave Israel and recorded for us a whole canon of laws on government, family, economics, welfare, civil affairs, agriculture, business and commerce, health and hygiene, international relations. It supplies real-world solutions to the problems that every government on this Earth grapples with and fails to resolve. It informed and inspired the founders of the most blessed nations on Earth.

Pity most people dismiss God’s law as being out of date and done away. That’s not the way Jesus Christ thought about it. “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets,” He plainly said. “I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” (Matthew 5:17-18).

“God just took the way He thinks and made it into a law for us,” wrote Mr. Flurry in his booklet The Epistle of James. The law teaches us to think like God. Every little piece of it is worthy of study and contemplation as a means of gaining insight into His thinking.

It’s true that there are laws that are no longer in effect in quite the way they were within the physical nation of Israel. But that doesn’t take away the fact that they came from God’s mind. God is love (1 John 4:8). Those who say the law is a curse forget that God couldn’t author something that didn’t represent and reflect His love.

As Herbert W. Armstrong wrote, “God’s law is, simply, love! It is the perfect way of life. Every particle of human suffering, unhappiness, misery and death has come solely from its transgression!”

A man after God’s own heart, King David, prayed thus: “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law” (Psalm 119:18). He made it his constant meditation. The more he meditated on God’s law, the more he loved it (verse 97). The better acquainted he became with God’s mind, the more he actually came to think like God.

If you want to do the same, you couldn’t do better than to study His law book. Make it your trusty companion. Consider beginning with The Ten Commandments.