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President Bush's Potential Supreme Court Picks are Pro-Life on Abortion
LifeNews.com ^ | November 24, 2004 | Steven Ertelt

Posted on 11/25/2004 10:01:13 AM PST by nickcarraway

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- With the potential to nominate as many as three or four Supreme Court justices, there is little doubt that one legacy President Bush will have is how he shaped the views of the nation's top judicial panel.

When Bush begins nominating new justices to replace the aging members of the court, one of the key battles will revolve around abortion.

A recentCBS-New York Times poll found that 64 percent of those polled said they thought Bush would appoint pro-life judges who favor making abortion illegal.

They may be right.

A survey of the most often discussed possibilities for Supreme Court appointments indicates many are either pro-life or have issued decisions on legislation favorable to the pro-life community.


Samuel A. Alito, Jr.

As a judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Alito upheld a Pennsylvania pro-life law that the Supreme Court overturned in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. He wrote an opinion in that case arguing for a standard that would permit virtually any restriction on abortion. From New Jersey, Alito is known in legal circles as "Scalia lite" in reference to pro-life Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.


Janice Rogers Brown

Judge Janice Rogers Brown is the first black woman to serve on California's Supreme Court. Her nomination to a federal appeals court has been blocked by Senate Democrats.

In 1997, she issued a well-researched dissent in a case where the California Supreme Court overturned a pro-life law requiring abortion facilities to obtain parental consent before performing an abortion on a teenage girl.

Brown accused the court's plurality of abrogating the constitutional rights of parents, described the court's thinking as circular, and called the case "an excellent example of the folly of courts in the role of philosopher kings."

"When fundamentally moral and philosophical issues are involved and the questions are fairly debatable," Brown wrote, "the judgment call belongs to the Legislature. They represent the will of the people."

he also dissented in a decision requiring Catholic Charities to pay for contraception coverage in employee health insurance plans. The decision concerns pro-life groups because it could lead to a requirement that abortion be covered as well.

Brown has also garnered the support of the California voters. In 1998, 76% of voters decided to keep Brown on the bench in their state, the highest percentage of supporting votes in that election.


Emilio Garza

Emilio Garza is a federal appeals court judge on the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Judge Garza's opposition to abortion is beyond question. He wrote two separate opinions explicitly criticizing Roe v. Wade and suggesting it be overturned.


Edith Jones

Judge Edith Jones of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals is frequently mentioned as a contender for the high court. She was considered for the Supreme Court seat that eventually went to Clarence Thomas.

If pro-life advocates are looking for a justice who strongly opposes Roe v. Wade, Jones should be a favorite.

When the 5th Circuit denied a request in October by Norma McCorvey to approve her motion to overturn the Roe v. Wade ruling, Judge Jones issued an opinion blasting the Supreme Court's opinion in Roe and saying it needs to be re-examined.

She called Roe an "exercise of raw judicial power," and cited evidence McCorvey presented showing abortions hurt women.

Jones, a Reagan nominee, wrote that the "[Supreme] Court's rulings have rendered basic abortion policy beyond the power of our legislative bodies."

"The perverse result of the Court's having determined through constitutional adjudication this fundamental social policy, which affects over a million women and unborn babies each year, is that the facts no longer matter," Jones added.

Jones chided the nation's high court for being "so committed to 'life' that it struggles with the particular facts of dozens of death penalty cases each year," but failing to grasp the fact that abortions destroys the lives of unborn children.

"One may fervently hope that the court will someday acknowledge such developments and re-evaluate Roe and Casey accordingly," Jones said of the 5000 pages of evidence with affidavits from over 1000 woman who have been harmed by abortion.


Michael Luttig

Judge Michael Luttig is a member of the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Luttig was a clerk for pro-life Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia when Scalia was an appeals-court judge.

Later, Luttig worked for the first Bush administration and helped the former president win the appointment of Clarence Thomas to the nation's high court.

Luttig is widely considered one of Bush's top judicial prospects, especially given his young age, 50, and his ability to shape the direction of the court for years to come. He is considered the most conservative judge on one of the most conservative appeals courts in the nation.

He is regarded as a threat by abortion advocacy groups because he opposes abortion.

In 1998, Luttig issued an emergency stay of a lower-court order that blocked a new Virginia law banning partial-birth abortions. Eventually, Luttig and the 4th Circuit allowed the pro-life law to remain in place, but were overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court and the state's law was struck down.

However, should Luttig be selected for the Supreme Court, he would side with the four judges who comprised the minority in a 2000 case striking a Nebraska partial-birth abortion ban. The legal battle over the federal ban on partial-birth abortions is headed to federal appeals courts and will likely reach the Supreme Court.


John Roberts

Judge John Roberts, a former clerk of pro-life Chief Justice William Rehnquist, recently won confirmation to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, a traditional steppingstone to the Supreme Court. He is a former legal counsel to President Reagan.

As Principal Deputy Solicitor General during the first Bush administration, Roberts played an active role in efforts to limit abortion. Roberts argued in a brief before the U.S. Supreme Court that “[w]e continue to believe that Roe was wrongly decided and should be overruled. [T]he Court's conclusion in Roe that there is a fundamental right to an abortion ... finds no support in the text, structure, or history of the Constitution."

In Rust v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court considered whether the Department of Health and Human Services could counsel women to have abortions. Roberts said regulations prohibiting that were constitutional.


Larry Thompson

Larry Thompson was deputy attorney general and the Bush administration's highest-ranking black law-enforcement official until he quit in 2003 to join a think tank, the Brookings Institution. A longtime friend of Justice Clarence Thomas, Thompson now serves as the general counsel for PepsiCo.


Harvie Wilkinson

Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, also a member of the Richmond, Virginia-based federal appeals court, is considered a top prospect for the first Supreme Court seat that opens up.

Wilkinson opposes abortion and is considered someone who may be palatable to Democrats in the Senate because of his more moderate views on other political issues, such as environmental policy.

He voted to uphold a state law allowing parents to know when their teenage daughters were considering an abortion.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Front Page News; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: California; US: Texas; US: Virginia
KEYWORDS: agenda; appointments; bush; bust; court; edithjones; emiliogarza; janicebrown; janicerogersbrown; jharviewilkinsoniii; judge; larrythompson; michaelluttig; nominees; presidentbush; samuelalitojr; supremecourt
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To: Huck
According to most accounts I've read, Brown does appear well grounded -- but then again, we hope others research her case history thoroughly to ensure she is very conservative.
61 posted on 11/25/2004 10:37:45 PM PST by F16Fighter
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To: Huck; Harmless Teddy Bear
As I understand it, the US Constitution guarantees the right to life.

Apparantly not to the Founders who wrote and ratified the document. They had their own state laws on the subject.

No one may be deprived of life or property without due process. That is what the Constitution says. This is not merely a state issue at all.

62 posted on 11/25/2004 10:40:47 PM PST by streetpreacher (There will be no Trolls in heaven.)
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To: Huck; MHGinTN; F16Fighter

But did not judges usurp the original decision making about Roe from the states to begin with.

Pre-Roe states had for a few years individually determined whether abortion would be legal or not and to what term.

Then the Roe case made it's way to SCOTUS and here we are....as you said based on bad law....right to Privacy tongue twisting and Harry Blackmun's fembot urges.

Now...if only Roe is overturned and right to life for the unborn is not seen as a constitutional protection then what is to stop the courts from once again working to derail those states that would toss Roe.

This snake needs to be cut off at the head in my view or we shall just go back and forth until the unborn are granted constitutional protection by a packed SCOTUS who decide from whatever constitutional angle necessary to do so.

I understand your purist view but expecting all the Fed courts and legislatures to play fair is naive in my view.

Now....you are correct to be sure that getting SCOTUS to overturn Roe will be easier than outright abolition.

But look at the PBA ban....stuck in the courts ....captured and controllable legislatures only work if the Fed judiciary is solidly strict Constituionalist from top to bottom...unlikely

btw....is this forum a ghost town tonight or what?


63 posted on 11/25/2004 10:41:57 PM PST by wardaddy
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To: streetpreacher
That is what the Constitution says. That is how the Constitution reads.

Heh, I guess that would really make it a "living, breathing" document as the liberals insist.

64 posted on 11/25/2004 10:42:14 PM PST by streetpreacher (There will be no Trolls in heaven.)
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To: streetpreacher
I think the Court could legitimately go beyond just overturning Roe v. Wade and move to outlaw abortion, being that the right to life is the most clear constitutional principle. No one has a right to deny the right to life to another without due process of law, even the states.

I don't even think Scalia or Thomas would go for that. In fact Scalia has said he wouldn't go for such a thing. Read this, from his dissent in Casey:

There is a poignant aspect to today's opinion. Its length, and what might be called its epic tone, suggest that its authors believe they are bringing to an end a troublesome era in the history of our Nation and of our Court. "It is the dimension" of authority, they say, to "cal[l] the contending sides of national controversy to end their national division by accepting a common mandate rooted in the Constitution." Ante, at 24.

There comes vividly to mind a portrait by Emanuel Leutze that hangs in the Harvard Law School: Roger Brooke Taney, painted in 1859, the 82d year of his life, the 24th of his Chief Justiceship, the second after his opinion in Dred Scott. He is all in black, sitting in a shadowed red armchair, left hand resting upon a pad of paper in his lap, right hand hanging limply, almost lifelessly, beside the inner arm of the chair. He sits facing the viewer, and staring straight out. There seems to be on his face, and in his deep-set eyes, an expression of profound sadness and disillusionment. Perhaps he always looked that way, even when dwelling upon the happiest of thoughts. But those of us who know how the lustre of his great Chief Justiceship came to be eclipsed by Dred Scott cannot help believing that he had that case--its already apparent consequences for the Court, and its soon-to-be-played-out consequences for the Nation--burning on his mind. I expect that two years earlier he, too, had thought himself "call[ing] the contending sides of national controversy to end their national division by accepting a common mandate rooted in the Constitution."

It is no more realistic for us in this case, than it was for him in that, to think that an issue of the sort they both involved--an issue involving life and death, freedom and subjugation--can be "speedily and finally settled" by the Supreme Court, as President James Buchanan in his inaugural address said the issue of slavery in the territories would be. See Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States, S. Doc. No. 101-10, p. 126 (1989). Quite to the contrary, by foreclosing all democratic outlet for the deep passions this issue arouses, by banishing the issue from the political forum that gives all participants, even the losers, the satisfaction of a fair hearing and an honest fight, by continuing the imposition of a rigid national rule instead of allowing for regional differences, the Court merely prolongs and intensifies the anguish.

We should get out of this area, where we have no right to be, and where we do neither ourselves nor the country any good by remaining.

Emphasis added. GWB has promised Scalias. That's what I am hoping he delivers. Freedom to govern ourselves is more important than any one single policy question, even a question of life or death.

65 posted on 11/25/2004 10:44:18 PM PST by Huck (The day will come when liberals will complain that chess is too violent .)
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To: Huck

IOW, if their opinions on abortion are not there, then there's no way of knowing whether they are "strict constructionists". We don't need anymore "stealth" candidates.


66 posted on 11/25/2004 10:44:34 PM PST by streetpreacher (There will be no Trolls in heaven.)
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To: Huck
I don't even think Scalia or Thomas would go for that.

I've conceded as much; just offering my take on why I think it wouldn't be an illegitimate act by the Court.

67 posted on 11/25/2004 10:47:37 PM PST by streetpreacher (There will be no Trolls in heaven.)
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To: wardaddy
"This snake needs to be cut off at the head in my view or we shall just go back and forth until the unborn are granted constitutional protection by a packed SCOTUS who decide from whatever constitutional angle necessary to do so."

Amen, bro...

"btw....is this forum a ghost town tonight or what?"

Family stuff and exhaustion I suppose.

Tommorrow the Pajamadeen will return with a vengence to satisfy their addiction ;-)

68 posted on 11/25/2004 10:47:47 PM PST by F16Fighter
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To: wardaddy
This snake needs to be cut off at the head in my view or we shall just go back and forth until the unborn are granted constitutional protection by a packed SCOTUS who decide from whatever constitutional angle necessary to do so.

To me this isn't even a justifiable goal. I understand your point. I simply put the right to self government above the right of the unborn. The process itself must be jealously guarded. Scalia's been carrying the water all these years. Thomas is good, too. GWB's gotta get us 3-4 more. If the states want a constitutional ban on abortion, let them amend the constitution.

69 posted on 11/25/2004 10:48:21 PM PST by Huck (The day will come when liberals will complain that chess is too violent .)
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To: streetpreacher
Scalia from Webster:

Alone sufficient to justify a broad holding is the fact that our retaining control, through Roe, of what I believe to be, and many of our citizens recognize to be, a political issue, continuously distorts the public perception of the role of this Court. We can now look forward to at least another Term with carts full of mail from the public, and streets full of demonstrators, urging us - their unelected and life-tenured judges who have been awarded those extraordinary, undemocratic characteristics precisely in order that we might follow the law despite the popular will - to follow the popular will.


70 posted on 11/25/2004 10:56:21 PM PST by Huck (The day will come when liberals will complain that chess is too violent .)
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To: streetpreacher
IOW, if their opinions on abortion are not there, then there's no way of knowing whether they are "strict constructionists". We don't need anymore "stealth" candidates.

I disagree. I don't know Scalia's personal view on abortion. It's irrelevant. I know he's Catholic. Should I, like Patrick Leahy, make any assumptions based on that? I don't.

However, what I do know about Scalia is that he has a consistent record of resisting judicial activism. He has been a staunch advocate of the republican process. To me, that is the most important thing, because that is our only hope for freedom. Scalia asserts that the question of Roe belongs to the states, and to the people. He does not assert, in his role as justice, that abortion is unconstitutional. And yet, for me, Scalia is without question the Gold Standard. I don't care what he thinks about abortion personally, and I do not believe it motivates his thinking on the question of Roe.

71 posted on 11/25/2004 11:00:33 PM PST by Huck (The day will come when liberals will complain that chess is too violent .)
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To: Huck; F16Fighter; MHGinTN
Roe reeks of Dred on the "not ever having been given life's constituional protection as yet unborn" logic transposed with "not a full person and hence not entitled either" ala Dred.

Now, we see where Dred led eventually.

If if as you claim there really is no Constitutional right to life for the unborn verbatim except some DOI rhetoric then we cannot logically outlaw abortion thru anything SCOTUS can interpret strictly (?)

Hence, we will be left in a void between varying states and competing Federal judiciaries making the run up from District to SCOTUS on every challenge from either side ad infinitum.

Hence, since in 67 when Kali and Colorado legalized abortion on their own and got the ball rolling up to Roe eventually, it's been a fait accompli and all we can hope for is just to toss it back to the states forever....all because two states made that fateful decision which was then rubber stamped universally by bad law with Roe?

I'm not prepared to live with those consequences forever simply to preserve judicial purity when that same judicial purity has not really ever existed except as an inspiration...not a practice.

Hoping for an idyllic situation while infanticide continues unabated is idealistic.

I'm in favor of strict constitutionalism but not to the point of falling on one's sword to in essence maintain something that should have never been.

but that's just me.
72 posted on 11/25/2004 11:06:29 PM PST by wardaddy
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To: Huck

People have to be incredibly naive to believe there is anyone in the legal profession that doesn't have an opinion on abortion, or that a single politician is not applying a litmus test to judicial nominees on this most critical of issues.

Either that or they are simply being disingenuous.


73 posted on 11/25/2004 11:07:18 PM PST by EternalVigilance (Allah's real name is Lucifer...)
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To: EternalVigilance
People have to be incredibly naive to believe there is anyone in the legal profession that doesn't have an opinion on abortion

Having an opinion and sticking it where it doesn't belong are two different things. I am convinced that Justice Scalia restricts himself to applying the law. In this case, I believe as a justice he would defer the question of abortion to the states, based on constitutional law, not based on whatever his personal opinion on abortion is.

If you want to say that a person with enough integrity and ethics to do his job responsibly is a rarity, you can say that. I have no data on the subject. I maintain that ethical jurists with integrity are what's needed. Not pro-life activists.

74 posted on 11/25/2004 11:15:21 PM PST by Huck (The day will come when liberals will complain that chess is too violent .)
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To: wardaddy
Hoping for an idyllic situation while infanticide continues unabated is idealistic.

A serious question: Would you rather be a slave in a land with abortion outlawed, or a free man where some people elect to permit abortions, and others elect not to? I'd take the latter without hesitation, and in my opinion, that is what is at issue with judicial fiat and out of control federal intrusion.

75 posted on 11/25/2004 11:25:06 PM PST by Huck (The day will come when liberals will complain that chess is too violent .)
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To: F16Fighter

well.

i'm off to bed even though manana is a fiddle around work day for me....keep the car wash clean and run about with the lads.

crisp and clear here in Nashville....about freezing right now.

hope my heaters, blowers and weep systems are working at my new wash.....there is a lot of copper pipe to blow.

nite


76 posted on 11/25/2004 11:26:26 PM PST by wardaddy
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To: Huck

To be anything but a 'pro-life activist' is to deny every principle this country is founded upon.

Those who will betray innocent babes in the womb, on or off the bench, will betray any principle.

Your neat little world that somehow presumes disinterest by some imaginary individual on this issue of life and death just doesn't exist.


77 posted on 11/25/2004 11:28:57 PM PST by EternalVigilance (Allah's real name is Lucifer...)
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To: Huck; F16Fighter; MHGinTN

I don't think the distinction need be that dramatic Huck.

Your other pleas for logic are sound but I will cop to not being a pure Constructionist.

I will also cop to having SCOTUS take gun rights back to pre-1968 GCA (at a minimum) as well in whatever fashion they can opine.

Nite.

I'm a slave to my ideology and value system I guess...lol...and yes, I wish to impose them.


78 posted on 11/25/2004 11:30:07 PM PST by wardaddy
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To: Huck
A serious question: Would you rather be a slave in a land with abortion outlawed, or a free man where some people elect to permit abortions, and others elect not to? I'd take the latter without hesitation, and in my opinion, that is what is at issue with judicial fiat and out of control federal intrusion.

Nice straw-man argument.

79 posted on 11/25/2004 11:30:17 PM PST by EternalVigilance (Allah's real name is Lucifer...)
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To: EternalVigilance

I wasn't talking to you. Run along.


80 posted on 11/25/2004 11:38:06 PM PST by Huck (The day will come when liberals will complain that chess is too violent .)
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