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Putting Judicial Nominees in Perspective, Part III (Example of Far-Left Judicial Nominee)
National Review Online | 05/20/05 | Edward Whelan

Posted on 05/20/2005 8:15:43 AM PDT by LavaDog

Imagine, if you will, that a Democrat President nominated a judge whose constitutional and policy views were, by any measure, on the extreme left fringes of American society.

Let’s assume, for example, that this nominee had expressed strong sympathy for the position that there is a constitutional right to prostitution as well as a constitutional right to polygamy.

Let’s say, further, that he had attacked the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts as organizations that perpetuate stereotyped sex roles and that he had proposed abolishing Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and replacing them with a single androgynous Parent’s Day.

And, to get really absurd, let’s add that he had called for an end to single-sex prisons on the theory that if male prisoners are going to return to a community in which men and women function as equal partners, prison is just the place for them to get prepared to deal with women.

Let’s further posit that this nominee had opined that a manifest imbalance in the racial composition of an employer’s work force justified court-ordered quotas even in the absence of any intentional discrimination on the part of the employer. But then, lo and behold, to make this nominee even more of a parody of an out-of-touch leftist, let’s say it was discovered that while operating his own office for over a decade in a city that was majority-black, this nominee had never had a single black person among his more than 50 hires.

Imagine, in sum, a nominee whose record is indisputably extreme and who could be expected to use his judicial role to impose those views on mainstream America. Surely such a person would never be nominated to an appellate court. Surely no Senate Democrat would support someone with such extreme views. And surely Senate Republicans, rather than deferring to the nominating power of the Democrat President, would pull out all stops—filibuster and everything—to stop such a nominee.

Well, not quite. The hypothetical nominee I have just described is, in every particular except his sex, Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the time she was nominated to the Supreme Court in 1993.

President Clinton nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg on June 22, 1993. A mere six weeks later, on August 3, 1993, the Senate confirmed her nomination by a 96-3 vote.

(The source for the information in the second through fourth paragraphs is “Report of Columbia Law School Equal Rights Advocacy Project: The Legal Status of Women under Federal Law,” co-authored by Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Brenda Feigen Fasteau in September 1974. The information in the fifth paragraph can be found in the transcript of Ginsburg’s confirmation hearing.)


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Editorial; Front Page News; Government; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: courts; filibuster; ginsburg; judges; judicialnominees; scotus

1 posted on 05/20/2005 8:15:44 AM PDT by LavaDog
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To: LavaDog

WOW! Very Interesting.


2 posted on 05/20/2005 8:17:12 AM PDT by LavaDog (U.S. Marines ... Best Friend ... Worst Enemy)
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To: LavaDog

Do as I say, not as I do.


3 posted on 05/20/2005 8:19:03 AM PDT by RKV ( He who has the guns, makes the rules.)
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To: LavaDog

Very interesting. Please forward your analysis to Fox News and Rush.


4 posted on 05/20/2005 8:21:25 AM PDT by LOC1
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To: LavaDog

This woman was also head of the ACLU prior to her nomination to the SC.


5 posted on 05/20/2005 8:25:09 AM PDT by GarySpFc (Sneakypete, De Oppresso Liber)
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To: LavaDog

Great article. It appears that decades of Democratic control in congress and often the executive branch have provided an infestation of leftists in the judiciary who are bent on destroying society. It's time to correct the problem.


6 posted on 05/20/2005 8:26:17 AM PDT by rockthecasbah
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To: GarySpFc

http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1583

During the hearings for her confirmation, Ginsburg's position on Roe v. Wade was a focal point of discussion. Ginsburg had expressed criticism of the Supreme Court's 1973 decision that upheld a woman's right to an abortion, suggesting to some Senators that her support for abortion rights might be less than enthusiastic. Ginsburg's position, however, was not that a woman's right to an abortion was questionable; she merely doubted the legitimacy of the sweep of the Court's decision, arguing that the states would soon have achieved the same result on their own. The Court, she argued, should merely have overturned the particularly restrictive state laws at issue in the case. As for abortion itself, Ginsburg said that a woman's right to choose an abortion was "something central to a woman's life, her dignity. . . . And when government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a full adult human being responsible for her own choices."



7 posted on 05/20/2005 8:31:21 AM PDT by GarySpFc (Sneakypete, De Oppresso Liber)
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To: LavaDog
Note the last sentence at http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1583

Ginsburg is frequently mentioned as a possible successor to Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
8 posted on 05/20/2005 8:33:11 AM PDT by GarySpFc (Sneakypete, De Oppresso Liber)
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To: LavaDog

Outstanding find!


9 posted on 05/20/2005 11:02:44 AM PDT by Right Wing Professor
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To: Right Wing Professor

I remember her outrageous racist history was a significant point of fact during her confirmation but totally neglected by the MSM


10 posted on 05/20/2005 11:14:05 AM PDT by Steven W.
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To: GarySpFc

Not by the Bush administration.


11 posted on 05/20/2005 11:33:33 AM PDT by steve8714
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To: Steven W.

If I remember correctly some repub senator (Spectre?) DID ask her about her "No Blacks" policy. He then apologized and refrained from asking any more "tough" questions.


12 posted on 05/20/2005 11:54:24 AM PDT by boop (Testing the tagline feature!)
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To: LavaDog

You forgot my favorite:

When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was an attorney for the ACLU, she co-authored a report recommending that the age of consent for sexual acts be lowered to 12 years of age ("Sex Bias in the U.S. Code," Report for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, April 1977, p. 102). The paragraph reads as follows: "Eliminate the phrase "carnal knowledge of any female, not his wife, who has not attained the age of 16 years" and substitute a federal, sex-neutral definition of the offense.... A person is guilty of an offense if he engages in a sexual act with another person.... [and] the other person is, in fact, less than 12 years old..)"


13 posted on 05/20/2005 1:12:09 PM PDT by Bob Buchholz
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To: LavaDog

big bump


14 posted on 05/20/2005 2:30:21 PM PDT by prognostigaator
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To: LavaDog

big bump


15 posted on 05/20/2005 2:31:46 PM PDT by prognostigaator
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To: boop

That was Orrin Hatch. He exposed her hypocrisy on this issue, then let her off the hook. He asked her whether a low percentage of minority employees makes an employer guilty of racist hiring practices, and should that employer be sanctioned. When she gave her emphatic yes, he pointed out that she had never once hired a black person, although she had hired many people. Presumably he did it to make a point. I believe he voted to confirm her.


16 posted on 05/20/2005 5:01:11 PM PDT by GenXFreedomFighter (We smirked our way back for a second term!)
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To: LavaDog

This brilliant article needs more notice!


17 posted on 05/21/2005 2:09:04 PM PDT by aculeus (Ceci n'est pas une tag line.)
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To: LavaDog

Bump


18 posted on 05/21/2005 4:17:52 PM PDT by Tahts-a-dats-ago
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