Forgotten among all the partisan agitation about whether Justice Andrew McDonald should or should not have disqualified himself in the Santiago death penalty decision is the implicit premise of many of those who oppose his nomination to be the next chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court.

That implicit premise is that he is a “liberal” justice imposing his egalitarian social views on the body politic, rather than faithfully construing the Legislature’s original intent and leaving the Legislature in charge of bringing the law up-to-date. Being familiar with his decisions, we write to challenge that premise.