Judicial Nominee Refuses To Remain Silenced (Janice Brown)

Captains Quarters Blog ^ | 4/26/05 | Staff

[hipaatwo]

Janice Rogers Brown refuses to conduct herself under a cloister while milquetoast Republicans and hostile Democrats hold her career hostage for over two years and counting. The Los Angeles Times reports that Brown told an audience on Sunday that a cultural battle has formed in which people of faith face punishment from secularists for their beliefs:

Just days after a bitterly divided Senate committee voted along party lines to approve her nomination as a federal appellate court judge, California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown told an audience Sunday that people of faith were embroiled in a "war" against secular humanists who threatened to divorce America from its religious roots, according to a newspaper account of the speech. ...

"These are perilous times for people of faith," she said, "not in the sense that we are going to lose our lives, but in the sense that it will cost you something if you are a person of faith who stands up for what you believe in and say those things out loud." ...

The Advocate quoted Brown as lamenting that America had moved away from the religious traditions on which it was founded.

"When we move away from that, we change our whole conception of the most significant idea that America has to offer, which is this idea of human freedom and this notion of liberty," she said.

She added that atheism "handed human destiny over to the great god, autonomy, and this is quite a different idea of freedom…. Freedom then becomes willfulness."

Of course, the folks at PFAW and others already aligned against Brown will use this speech to claim that she is an extremist, one much too dangerous to put on a federal appellate bench. They might have a difficult time convincing the overwhelming majority of people who attend religious services on a regular basis that believing in God makes one an extremist, but they will do their best to do so nonetheless. When they do, they will go further in proving Brown's point than she dared to go herself.

In fact, Brown's speech serves as a perfect test for Ralph Neas and Nan Aron. Her implication that faith has become a litmus test for political appointments practically dares her opposition to use it against her politically over the next two weeks. If the Democrats start quoting from the speech in debating her confirmation, then the flimsy pretense of Chuck Schumer's "deeply held personal beliefs" will have been finally stripped away from their arguments. Brown has upped the ante by forcing the Democrats to attack her faith and her philosophical underpinnings.

The Democrats won't hesitate to use it, of course, and in doing so they will have demonstrated precisely what she argued -- that people of faith cannot hope to be treated equally with secular athiests by the political elite of the Left.

I think Justice Brown may have more political savvy than we realized. Not only has she proven herself an excellent jurist, but she has courage and wit. She will not remain silent while her enemies unfairly trash her reputation and her record. If our appellate courts do not have room for a Janice Rogers Brown, then it only reflects the unworthiness of the people entrusted to confirm her into that position. If the Republicans cannot muster the votes to defend her nomination, then we all should be ashamed of ourselves for putting them in those seats.

[Catholic and Conservative]

“Democrats often point out that the Senate has confirmed more than 200 of Mr. Bush's judicial nominees. True, but the heavy majority of those have been for district court positions. At the appeals court level, a step below the Supreme Court, filibusters have kept 10 out of 52 nominations from being voted upon”.

So the approval rate for appellate nominations is lower, 79%, which to me doesn't seem bad unless one is completely bent on getting everything they want.

I checked the article you linked to; it is consistent with the one I mentioned to you. Ten out of 52 appellate court nominees are being filibustered. Where you are making a mistake is in assuming that the rest have all been confirmed. In fact, only 34 have, giving a confirmation rate of 65% rather than 79%.

My guess is that it would be difficult for a judge to be confirmed to a higher court, if Democrats knew for sure that he or she held traditional views on abortion and homosexuality. I hope that you are right, and that they are more of a "big-tent" party than that.

[John Lenin]

You go, girl !

[rodguy911]

The trick for GW is to get everything done that we need, immigration reform, Socha Security is a dream, judges in, we really need tort reform and term limits IMHO and not, not sink to the level of the rats to get it done. Tough job.

[middie]

The response to your discourse is simple: The judicial oath which froms the premise of your comments is the oath a witness takes in preparation for testimony. It has nothing to do with the oath a judge takes to apply the law without fear or favor, impartially and dispassionately irrespective of a partiy's faith, color or any other singular trait attributable to a person before the court.

[traviskicks]

Gotta love these quotes:
From http://www.neoperspectives.com/quotes.htm


Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible.
- CA Justice Janice Rogers Brown

We no longer find slavery abhorrent. We embrace it. We demand more. Big government is not just the opiate of the masses. It is the opiate. The drug of choice for multinational corporations and single moms; for regulated industries and rugged Midwestern farmers and militant senior citizens.
- CA Justice Janice Rogers Brown

The quixotic desire to do good, be universally fair and make everybody happy is understandable. Indeed, the majority's zeal is more than a little endearing. There is only one problem with this approach. We are a court.
- CA Justice Janice Rogers Brown

Government is the only enterprise in the world which expands in size when its failures increase.
- CA Justice Janice Rogers Brown

The public school system is already so beleaguered by bureaucracy; so cowed by the demands of due process; so overwhelmed with faddish curricula that its educational purpose is almost an afterthought.
- CA Justice Janice Rogers Brown