In the interest of full disclosure, I like Bernie Sanders. That doesn’t mean I can always agree with him.

In his last debate with Hillary, Bernie said that, if elected, he would ask President Obama to withdraw the name of his current nominee for the Supreme Court vacancy in order to give President-Elect Sanders the opportunity to find an alternate candidate who would commit to overturning Citizens United vs. FEC.

Don’t get me wrong. If ever there was a case in need of overturning, it is Citizens United. Endowing corporations (and unions) with the First Amendment rights of flesh and blood people stretches credulity. Sure, I can go to my piggy bank and withdraw $100 to donate to the candidate of my choice. To say it is the same thing for a corporation to go to its piggy bank and pump $100,000,000 (or in the case of the Koch brothers, $900,000,000) into the political process through anonymous contributions to Super PACs, or other legal confections intended to obscure the money trail, offends common sense.

It isn’t a Democrat or Republican issue. Both parties, their candidates, and all the various “independent” entities toiling in the twilight world of campaign finance are fully capable of acquiring their share of the monetary windfall released by Citizens United. The loser is the political system itself. Government by the people runs the risk of being perceived as government by the biggest bank roll—and that isn’t a healthy perception.

But I digress.

Somewhere in this fair republic of ours, there should be a place that is insulated from the hurly-burly of the passing political passions of the day. That’s not my idea; it’s the ideal the framers of the Constitution were attempting to achieve when they created the federal judiciary.

It was a conscious decision. Judges appointed by the executive branch and confirmed by the Senate. Lifetime tenure during good behavior. Salaries that could not be reduced to avoid such cuts being used as a means of political coercion or retribution. Judges were supposed to apply the law to the facts irrespective of politics.

I wasn’t born yesterday. (Nor, come to think of it, for many, many yesterdays before yesterday!) I am aware that appointments to the federal bench are not devoid of political considerations. However, those considerations should be confined to exploring general judicial tendencies and philosophy, and not to how a specific jurist would vote on a specific case. Prejudging cases is not what the framers had in mind.

Admittedly, judicial appointing is an imprecise science, and this is especially true when it comes to the Supreme Court.

Who could have predicted that Dwight Eisenhower’s appointment of Earl Warren would usher in one of the most progressive eras in the court’s history? Who could have predicted that a court whose majority loudly embraced the concept of judicial restraint and respect for states’ rights would step in and tell the State of Florida to stop a recount of votes cast in the 2000 presidential election, thus handing the election to George Bush?

For that matter, who could have predicted that a court whose majority trumpets its respect for precedent would overturn a century of precedent in order to arrive at its decision in Citizens United?

On balance, however, we are better off with a court that more resembles Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates (you never know what you’re going to get) than one populated by jurists whose answers to litmus-test questions were well received by whoever was in the ascendency at a given time.

Litmus tests are no respecters of political ideology.

Progressives, and this includes Bernie, would howl like scalded cats if an appointment hinged on whether a candidate for the Supreme Court would publicly commit to oppose any efforts to break up the big banks on Wall Street.

As comforting as it may be to seek certainty, a little uncertainty is more what the framers had in mind.