Posted on 07/06/2005 9:01:05 PM PDT by guitarist
Email from C.J. Willkie Referenced by the Times
Editor's Note: Below is the full text of an email from C.J. Willkie that was quoted in today's New York Times cover article "G.O.P. Asks Conservative Allies To Cool Rhetoric Over the Court"
About a year ago, I attended a meeting of almost 500 Conservative leaders. Judge Gonzales spoke to a general session, and I was able to ask him the following:
Q: Judge Gonzales, we’re hearing conflicting reports about your position on abortion. Can you tell us where you stand?
A: As a judge, I have to make judgments in conformity with the laws of our nation.
Q: Would you say that, regarding Roe vs. Wade, stare decisis would be governing here? (Note, stare decisis means that he would continue to uphold that decision because he would regard it as a binding precedent.)
A: Yes.
In response to this, there was a loud, spontaneous murmur across the entire auditorium of an “oooooh.” Rising above that were clearly audible “boos.”
Approximately two months later, I was privileged to be part of a smaller group of business executives at a meeting in the White House. One of the people who spoke to our group was Alberto Gonzales. I was again able to ask a question:
Q: Judge Gonzales, it’s well known that the Clinton administration had a very clear and consistent litmus test in regard to judicial nominations. If that person was not pro-abortion, they were not nominated. In light of this, do you ask your nominees what their position is on abortion?
A: No, we do not. We judge them on a very broad basis of conservatism and constitutional construction.
Q: Many of us feel that the Constitution does not speak to permissive abortion. Would you comment?
A: The Constitution is what the Supreme Court says it is.
There were no audible “oooohs” this time, but as the day went on, including the social evening, a significant number of those attending individually sought me out. Each expressed their deep reservation about this man being nominated to the Supreme Court.
Through the summer and fall, we heard almost nothing more about Judge Gonzales being nominated. But, more recently, his name has again been floated in Washington as possibly Bush’s first nominee. At a meeting of 65 pro-life leaders the day after the January 22nd March, my partner, Brad Mattes, asked a public question of Viet Dinh, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Policy, US Department of Justice. Mr. Mattes reminded him of Judge Gonzales’ sharp criticism of Judge Owen and his answers to the questions (above). He stated that we did not need another Souter, Kennedy or O’Connor on the Supreme Court. “Abortion has been legal for 30 years and over 43 million babies have died. It’s time that we put justices on the court who will reverse Roe vs. Wade and stop the killing… Judge Gonzales is not acceptable to the pro-life, pro-family movement.” Uniform applause throughout the room followed his statement. Mr. Dinh’s reply, we felt, was quite inadequate, as he did not directly address Mr. Mattes’ comments.
The other speaker on the panel, Manuel Miranda, Senior Counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee, explained that Judge Gonzales’ words were “flippant” remarks. Mr. Mattes responded that, flippant or not, the remarks were made and that Senator Lott recently learned such remarks can result in a very negative political reality. “No amount of political rhetoric or explaining can excuse what we’ve heard from Judge Gonzales, and I suggest that you gentlemen move on and select a justice who is truly a strict constructionist…If Mr. Gonzales is nominated to the US Supreme Court, Life Issues Institute would probably respond by educating its radio audience of four million people and communicating with over ten thousand pro-life leaders and educators.”
Mr. Mattes spoke in some detail of the esteem and love that we hold for President Bush. We respect his leadership and are grateful for his pro-life actions to date. But he noted that the Supreme Court nominations will be the most important thing the President can do for the babies. “As a result, Life Issues Institute would have to oppose a Gonzales nomination.” Again, Mr. Mattes’ comments were followed by general applause....
Now is the time to act, before the President nominates a candidate to the Court. A broad representation of pro-life, pro-family leaders and citizens must quickly communicate to Mr. Bush that Mr. Gonzales is not an acceptable justice to our nation’s highest court.
First, we must praise the President for his outstanding pro-life stand and actions. He is without doubt the most pro-life and the most effective pro-life President in modern times. But we must also point out to him, in personal visits, letters, emails, faxes or by any avenue that you might have access to the president, that the most important thing he can do is nominate solidly pro-life candidates to the US Supreme Court.
Mr. Gonzales deserves praise for his ongoing recommendation of good judicial candidates to Bush. We are pleased with those that he has recommended for the lower courts. In doing this, he is faithfully following the President’s direction. But if he joins the US Supreme Court, he will then be beholden to no one and will be voting his own convictions and conscience. We are deeply concerned about what some of these future votes will be.
"How are you any different than Ted Kennedy?"
MOTIVATION OF THE HEART. Love and respect for life and others vs self indulgence and selfishness.
Desiring an end result that is life and freedom rather than one of death and mandatory endentured service.
Wonder if you'd be standing next to Patrick Henry crying for decorum as he sounded off about our counrty men already in the field. "No Patrick! Violence is the way of the redcoat! Don't stoop to such measures!"
People that advocate stances such as yours are worse than the hillarys, schumers, and Kennedys of the world. At least I respect them cuz they go for it full bore. You say you're on the conservative side but waffle at the gate when it is flung open to usher in change. Your ideals are a slave to decorum. Pragmatism....the death of morals and corageous action!
Which constitution? The constitution of today is about 20 amendments different from the the one originally crafted. If the Founders had decided that the original constitution and the 10 amendments were all that we would ever require then they would have put a full stop at the end of it instead of the amendment process.
Baloney.
I am a big fan of Justice Antonin Scalia and I have read almost every opinion he has written since he became a SC Justice. I have also watched a debate he had with Justice Breyer last year where he speaks about what I am saying here tonight very clearly, (Mush better than I can). I suggest you watch that debate if you haven't already. If you haven't, I have a DVD of it and will gladly send it to you. Scalia is a Justice that our Founders would be very proud of, especially considering how politicized the Court has become these days.
Cheers,
Mike
And I am in full agreement with the second part of your post.
Now, on to the thing about Gonzales..........
We have spent ALL of President Bush's first term in office and the better part of the beginning of his second term, having vast swaths of his nominees FOR ANY POSITION, being stalled and/or crucified. It was hard enough to get Gonzales conformed to be the AG, so why would anyone, with more than 3 working brain cells, pull him out of that position, try to get him on the Supreme Court and then have to get someone new as AG passed on?
O'Connor will NOT be the last to have to be replaced...the president will have at least one more judge to place there, if not two; perhaps even three. The man isn't an idiot and only a mordant idiot, would relish an extra blood on the floor fight with the damned Dems,by nominating Gonzales and then a new AG!
"So you want your very own activist court. How are you any different than Ted Kennedy?"
LOL! Maybe because Ted Kennedy is one of the creeps who does not mind dismissing the responsibility of raising a child and thinning the population via abortion mills? That would surely separate the two, right?
"The hypocrisy of the far left and the far right knows no bounds."
And the centrist weenies are exempt from hypocrisy?
Friend I have found that when it comes to the far left and right the only sanity lies well within the center. Both factions are crazy as bedbugs and mirror images of each other.
"Baloney."
Yeah...thought that might be a foreign concept.
Bottom line is protection of life and liberty is not judicial activism. It is American goverment's RESPONSIBILITY and it's only function.
As far as Judge G's comment stating the constitution is whatever the SC says it is is ass backward. You modify the laws to fit the constitution, not the constitution to fit the laws.
And the 'center' is where the whirlpool sinks deepest....
useless. uncommitted. status quo. no responsibility. no action required. no benefits obtained. everything lost over time. gutless.
goodnight.
Your reasoning is a bit off. You've fallen for the attitude that, indeed, the Constitution is what the Supreme Court says it is. Jefferson recognized that the entire concept of stare decisis was the way in which the Constitution would be ultimately undermined. He voiced his condemnation of the judiciary in general and of tje concept of stare decisis in particular in a letter to Monsieur A. Coray, October 31, 1823:
"At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance."
Your reasoning implies that an unConstitutional usurpation of federal authority becomes established law and that the only remedies left are either legislative, which, under current practice cannot overturn such decisions or Constitutional amendment. This would now apply to topics such as eminent domain under your criteria. Instead, it is possible that the Court, when presented with a case addressing a previous decision can acknowledge it's error and over-rule even long established law. This is what people envision happening with Roe. I don't disagree that it can also be undermined piecemeal, but I also contend that it is possible and permissible to overturn the entire decision. The liberals would claim it is activism. Instead, it is entirely in the realm of returning to the original intent of the document. To be activist would require creating new powers or rights not dealt with in the Constitution. Overturning Roe or Kelo or any of the myriad true activist Court decisions of the last 70 years on the basis that the authority for them never existed in the Constitution in the first place is a valid strategy. The key will not be in choosing future justices based on their "conservatism". A conservative justice implies an activist one, who makes decisions from a particular political viewpoint. The real criteria will be whether he or she is an originalist. If so, then their position on each and every social issue of the day becomes irrelevant. They will decide based on the document as it was written and understood, and if the authority is not in the document, then the decision is left to the states or to the people.
That's exactly right. You do realize that R v W was decided on a law in Texas and an activist court ruled that Texas law was unconstitutional and therefore all state abortion laws were unconstitutional? That was a direct abridging of the constitutional protections of the 10th amendment. For a conservative activist court to overturn R v W without sending it back to the states then it would be guilty of the same damned thing. That has been Bush's "litmus test" all along. Not a court that slashes and burns "liberal courts" past decisions but places the interpretations of constitutionality back within the parameters of the constitution as it reads today NOT how it read before the ink was dry. Much of the judicial activism we see today is a direct results of several subsequent amendments far after the original. To actually get back to "original intent" then we have to repeal at least half of the constitutional amendments in place now.
The last time I checked, federal judicial officers do not take an oath to support "established law."
The SC would have 2 choices in overturning R v W. The non activist choice is to rule it violated the 10th amendment protections of the individual states and send it back to the states or the activist choice and just rule that abortion is illegal in all states in a mirror image of the Warren court. Now, let's say that we have a devout Catholic on the court that believes all abortion is murder and according to his religious belief he must vote for the activist option he has made it heaven on earth for the pro-life activists. However, when the constitutionality of the death penalty is brought before the court as it is every session that same judge, to be true to his religios cannons must also come down on the side of those that oppose the death penalty or be branded a hypocrite within his own Church's dogma. I want SC judges that know where federal powers end and states powers properly reside NOT philosophical or religious deliberations. The founders all agreed the best government was the one closest to and most accountable to the people with the federal government the most remote.
But I disagree with Activism to counter Activism
And you do realize that without a moralistic backdrop to serve as the foundation on which the constitution was written it is worthless? That is self evident, right? The constitution is not capable of directly addressing all of lifes evils and usurptations of power, right? There is some higher more comprehensive all encompassing law...right? Otherwise we'd all be dancin' Between the lines...right?
Wow...kinda where we are today! It's just a blob of tissue....it's all relative to what you think....no biggie.....except for that blob of tissue with 10 fingers, 10 toes, a beating heart and functioning brain with complete human dna....to him or her it's relative too....and pretty damn personal.
Texasforever...meet the all encompassing law that should guide your morals. It's God's word.
Your lost and dancin' between the lines without it....and doomed. Don't drag your children and their's along. Christ alone is your guide.
And you do realize that without a moralistic backdrop to serve as the foundation on which the constitution was written.... it is worthless? That is self evident, right? The constitution is not capable of directly addressing all of lifes evils and usurptations of power, right? Not even reams and volumes of federal and state statutes can cover all of life's choices. There is some higher more comprehensive all encompassing law...right? Otherwise we'd all be dancin' Between the lines...right?
Wow...kinda where we are today!
It's just a blob of tissue....it's all relative to what you think....no biggie.....except for that blob of tissue with 10 fingers, 10 toes, a beating heart and functioning brain with complete human dna....to him or her it's relative too....and pretty damn personal.
Texasforever...meet the all encompassing law that should guide your morals. It's God's word.
Your lost and dancin' between the lines without it....and doomed. Don't drag your children and their's along. Christ alone is your guide.
Not when it comes to the constitution. The constitution is what we charge government officials with following. Nothing else. The constitution is VERY different from the one that was originally written with the most glaring changes coming after the civil war. The 14th amendment upon which R v W was originally argued has been a liberal playground from it's inception. However; it IS in the constitution just as the 16th amendment and all of the others and it is now a very cumbersome document with many paths to interpretation and I don't care who is reading it you will have as many interpretations as there are readers.
I think the current court reconstituted around SOC and Rehnquist will not revisit RvW unless tried up as you say which really is a formality but if they revisit it the question of viablity will be paramount.
And in that regard the question of the previous decision could protect life at the federal level in a way that hasn't been expressed before.
In other words, the federal gubmint may extend protection to the unborn and define life for the first time. Overall, not a bad thing in my book.
How do you feel about Gonzales?
I agree, but I also think most of the pro-life movement (or the property rights movement or the second amendment backers or whatever the issue may be) are politically savvy enough to realize that SCOTUS would require a pertinent case in order to reverse a previous ruling. You have envisioned Roe v. Wade being done to death in a piecemeal fashion and that tends to be the case (we'll stick with abortion since it was your original example, but it could as easily apply to any "established" precedential activist ruling). But it could also come in dramatic fashion, for example, if a state legislature outlaws abortion completely. Such a law was up for consideration in one of the Dakotas, I believe, last year. At the time, I felt strongly that it was the wrong time to do it in that manner, since with the current composition of SCOTUS, it would simply result in a reaffirmation of Roe. Even with O'Connor retiring, and, with any luck and some Republican Senatorial backbone, an originalist appointed to replace her, it would still be a 5-4 reaffirmation. However, should the current rumor mill be correct and we have 3 appointments (for O'Connor, Rehnquist and Ginsberg or Stevens) and the appointment and confirmation of 3 originalists, it might result in a 5-4 reversal. However, the rumor mill is also speculating that Gonzales would be the 3rd pick (on the basis that the conservatives would be satisfied with 2 originalists and a good buddy appointment). With Gonzales, I think we'd still have 5-4 for reaffirming Roe.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.