system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: if judges are just supposed to interpret and uphold the law, how can there be some judges that are 'friendlier' to left or right politically?
gpt
So the thing is, when it comes to interpreting the law, there are different ways that reasonable people would interpret the same laws.  These aren't as simple as "left-wing or right-wing" interpretations but often come down to some degree of legal positivism vs. natural law.

Let's take the classic case of Roe v. Wade for example.  You're a judge and a plaintiff is arguing that she has a fundamental right to have an abortion.  How do you interpret the law?

Judge #1 says that our constitution was clearly intended to establish a limited government and the Bill of Rights establishes that.  Even if the Constitution doesn't explicitly say so, there's an inherent recognition that humans have bodily dignity that the government cannot violate.  As such, the woman has the right to decide what to do with her body and the government cannot stop that.

Judge #2 says that in a democratic society, the people make the laws.  The Constitution says nothing about abortion or bodily dignity so we shouldn't assume that it applies unless the people make a law saying so.  Instead, the people made a law saying abortion should be illegal and we should respect that until the people change their minds and repeal that law.

Both of these are reasonable interpretation of the law and come down to how that judge interprets our legal system.  The by-product of this is that one judge's interpretation favors traditionally liberal policies while the other judge's interpretation favors conservative policies.