The Catholic Judge and Habeas Relief

I want to add a couple of words to the conversation between Rick and Eduardo about a Catholic judge's moral obligation to grant habeas relief in death penalty cases when they could do so with a technically correct legal ruling.  If we're talking about a range of technically correct legal rulings, I guess it would depend whether any particular ruling is more correct than another one.  If that's the case, I still don't see the basis for imposing a moral obligation on the judge to adopt the "less correct" ruling.  If the grant of habeas relief follows from the "most correct" legal ruling, then every judge should be under a moral obligation to adopt that position, shouldn't they?

Catholic social thought has something to say on this subject.  In a recent paper, I argue that, by upholding the law even when it conflicts with her rightly formed conscience, the Catholic judge furthers the principles of subsidiarity, solidarity, reciprocity, and the common good.