You are dead wrong about Specter. Here is an email I circulated during the battle to deny Specter theJudidiary Chair:
In the Book, Passion for Truth, By Senator Arlen Specter with Charles Robbins (William Morrow, 2000) Specter explains the key to his thinking about the Supreme Court. (All page numbers cited in this article refer to this book.) Specter states that (p. 331-2) “Bork’s theory essentially held that judges should not make law but should merely follow what was originally intended. In pure philosophical terms, Bork’s view that the Constitution should be interpreted as it was originally intended appeared to make sense, at least superficially. But the Constitution has turned out to be much more dynamic than that: a living, growing document, responsive to the needs of the nation.
Bork’s narrow approach is dangerous for constitutional government in America. Without adherence to original intent, Bork said, there was no legitimacy for judicial decisions.”
The Constitution has indeed been “a living, growing document, responsive to the needs of the nation.” Not in the childish manner that Specter conceives, as an excuse for the Supreme Court to invent any law it wants to, but as the founders intended, via the lawful amendment process set forth in the Constitution itself.
A few pages later (p. 334), Specter gets near to the heart of how Liberals like himself want to use the Supreme Court to transform America. “I was troubled by Bork’s writing and testimony that expanding rights to minorities reduced the rights of majorities. By that thinking, giving a criminal defendant Miranda warnings deprives the police of a confession, which might put a criminal back on the street to harm the majority. While perhaps arithmetically sound, it seemed morally wrong. The [law abiding] majority in a democracy can take care of itself, while individuals and minorities often cannot [referring in the case of Miranda to the minority of people in America that are criminals].”
This is about as coherent as can be expected for an argument that supports Liberalism and the Left Wing agenda. However, the notion that it is within the realm of Republican Party thinking is absurd.
Finally, Specter comes to the crux of the matter (p. 337). “The story of America is the story of decency and fairness, with the Supreme Court as the guarantor. Robert Bork displayed little grasp of that. After Brown v. Board of Education, nobody could argue in favor of segregated schools. But you don’t get to Brown via original intent. You get there via evolving notions of decency and fairness.”
”Evolving notions of decency and fairness” have indeed been central to American history. The Democrat canard is that the origin of these notions has been Supreme Court actions. Brown v. Board of Education (or any other Supreme Court action) was not the start of the movement away from segregation in the United States in the 1950s. While a book could be written on this subject, one example will suffice, from the website, “The Beginnings of a New Era for African-Americans in the Armed Forces” http://korea50.army.mil/history/factsheets/afroamer.shtml.
“Changes in the United States, the growth of black political power and the U.S. Defense Department’s realization that African Americans were being underutilized because of racial prejudice led to new opportunities for African-Americans serving in the Korean War. In October 1951, the all-black 24th Infantry Regiment, a unit established in 1869, which had served during the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, and the beginning of the Korean War, was disbanded, essentially ending segregation in the U.S. Army.”
The Korean War ended in 1953. Brown v. Board of Education was 1954. The Supreme Court did not start American society’s impulse away from segregation; it was not the motive force behind the trend toward “decency and fairness” in American life.
Nor has it, over the sweep of history, been so. The Supreme Court did not help, but rather hindered, the freeing of slaves in the U.S. “In March of 1857, the United States Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, declared that all blacks -- slaves as well as free -- were not and could never become citizens of the United States. The court also declared the 1820 Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, thus permitting slavery in all of the country's territories.” (This from “Dred Scott Case: the Supreme Court Decision”, at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2933.html.) The Supreme Court, in this instance, played a retrograde role. Four years later (1861), the nation began a bloody Civil War that ultimately ended slavery in the U.S. This was done via the 13th Amendment, without the aid of the Supreme Court. Nor did the Supreme Court help women get the vote in America. This was done via the 19th Amendment. Hence it was the legislatures of the United States, both State and Federal, that gave women the right to vote and freed the slaves---legislatures that Specter finds inadequate. He would sweep aside the legislatures, and the rest of the framework of the Constitution, traded for an all-powerful Supreme Court held in check by nothing but its conscience.
Specter, with his background as a lawyer, has promoted himself as something of an “expert” in this area. Here is an example of his reasoning. “Ultimately (p. 339) my view was that original intent cannot guide constitutional law very much. I suggested another standard, quoting Frankfurter, whom Bork had characterized as one of the stars of the Supreme Court. Frankfurter had quoted Cardozo on fundamental values and used the phrase “tradition and conscience” in his opinion in Rochin v. California, in which the Supreme Court suppressed evidence pumped from the defendant’s stomach. Again, the story of America and constitutional law is the story of decency. Original intent and legislative talent [the legislature itself], I told Bork, ‘only take you so far, and beyond that you can rely on Cardozo or Frankfurter to effectuate the values and the tradition of the people without being able to pull out a specific constitutional right.’”
Don’t misunderstand me, as a representative of the “say anything to reach the Leftist agenda” Left, Specter is an effective representative and I understand why Democrats in Pennsylvania consistently vote for him and why the Democratic leadership nationwide supports him. I just do not buy the idea that a person who votes for him to Chair the Judiciary Committee can call himself a Republican.