Posted on 07/21/2005 7:06:36 AM PDT by Theodore R.
On John Roberts
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: July 21, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com
President Bush's selection of John Roberts as Supreme Court nominee to replace Sandra Day O'Connor is being hailed as a stroke of genius.
He has the likely opposition off balance because the nominee does not have a record of writings and positions that can be easily attacked and challenged.
He is said to be a very nice man with a nice family and to possess a brilliant legal mind.
At first blush, Roberts seems to be an acceptable choice for Americans who still believe in the Constitution. Nothing is his background would suggest he is a lawmaker disguised as a judge.
But, given this background, which makes it so difficult to figure him out, could Roberts be fooling the very people who are most supportive of him right now?
It has happened before.
Just think of Anthony Kennedy and David Souter.
It concerns me that Bush apparently chose a nominee based in part on a strategy of heading off controversy with the Democratic opposition.
I personally believe controversy is a very healthy thing in a free and open and vibrant society. Why shouldn't we debate the big issues of the day? Why shouldn't we get our disagreements out on the table? Why shouldn't we challenge the political and cultural orthodoxy of the day?
Supreme Court justices are very important. But are they more important than educating the public on the way our constitutional system is supposed to work?
There are other concerns about Roberts.
Despite his brilliant legal mind, or, perhaps, because of it, he seems a little confused about the way a constitutional free republic is supposed to operate.
While he argued against Roe v. Wade during his days as a lawyer in the administration of George H.W. Bush, he later explained that position in a way that should make all constitutionalists shudder.
Pressed during his 2003 confirmation hearing for the appeals court about his own personal views on the issue of abortion and the landmark 1973 ruling, he said: "Roe v. Wade is the settled law of the land. ... There's nothing in my personal views that would prevent me from fully and faithfully applying that precedent."
Is Roberts not himself confusing a badly decided ruling of the court with "the settled law of the land"?
A Supreme Court decision is simply that – a Supreme Court decision. Hundreds of them have been reversed throughout our history as a nation. There is nothing "settled" about a ruling of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court does not and cannot make law, or we need to revise Article 1, Section 1, of the U.S. Constitution, which reserves this power exclusively to the Congress of the United States.
These are the kinds of issues that need to be talked about openly and honestly and debated among the American people. In fact, the meaning of the Constitution and the way we apply it to our lives in this country is a bigger issue even than Roe v. Wade.
Without a perversion of the Constitution, we would never have had a Roe. v. Wade decision.
I have one other concern about Roberts – minor in comparison to his characterization of Roe as "the settled law of the land," but worth mentioning nonetheless. In his brief remarks following the president's formal announcement of his nomination, Roberts twice referred to our system of governance in the U.S. as a "democracy."
"Before I became a judge, my law practice consisted largely of arguing cases before the court," he said. "That experience left me with a profound appreciation for the role of the court in our constitutional democracy and a deep regard for the court as an institution."
Later he added: "It's also appropriate for me to acknowledge that I would not be standing here today if it were not for the sacrifice and help of my parents, Jack and Rosemary Roberts, my three sisters, Cathy, Peggy and Barbara, and of course, my wife, Jane. And I also want to acknowledge my children – my daughter, Josie, my son, Jack – who remind me every day why it's so important for us to work to preserve the institutions of our democracy."
I may be accused of splitting hairs, but it offends me when our highest public officials refer to our system of governance as a "democracy." The word appears nowhere in our founding documents. The founders saw democracy as a terrible system – one that always leads to despotism. They carefully created a system of governance unique to the U.S. – a constitutional free republic that protected the rights of individuals and minorities and balanced the will of the people with the rule of law.
I don't know about John Roberts. I will accept that he is a brilliant man, a decent man and probably better than at least six current justices. But it takes an exceptionally strong character to stand up to the pressures of the beltway establishment and the decaying American political culture – especially with a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.
I personally would prefer to know on which side of the barricades John Roberts stands.
Exactly. We should be making as much of the hearings as Democrats. I want to know where this guy stands.
Then there are others who've been on the road to stop these activist jurist who are giving Judge Roberts a thumbs up. Taking our country and our courts back...we're on the road...Thank You President Bush.
The first question gives rise to endless questions that we do not know the answer to. Does he believe that we should attempt to interpret ambiguous words and phrases that appear in the constitution, or does he think we should ignore them. Does he believe that historical evidence should be used to discern what the Founders thought the words in the constitution mean, or is the relevant inquiry what the general pubic meaning of the words were at the time. At what level of ambiguity does historical evidence become relevant?
There are many more questions I can think of regarding his personal views on interpreting the constitution that have nothing to do with his personal views on politics.
Confusing how we elect our representation with how our government works is not a good thing either. And that isn't just splitting a definition hair.
Why is it Republicans always have to leave it to chance when we nominate a USSCJ but the liberals get it right 100% of the time.
I guess that makes all us Ohioans who fought for Dubya during the election evil little DUer's in disguise, huh? And I suppose Reagan really screwed up with this guy:
Antonin Scalia was born on March 11, 1936, in Trenton, New Jersey, as the only child of Eugene and Catherine Scalia. A second generation American, Scalia grew up with a strong Italian heritage explained by his father's foreign birth and his mother's immigrant upbringing. His father worked as a professor of Romance languages and his mother taught school. At age five, Scalia's father accepted a job at Brooklyn College so he and his family moved to Queens, New York. Called "Nino" by friends and family, Scalia first attended public school in Queens. He later enrolled in St. Francis Xavier, a military prep school in Manhattan, where his intellect and work resulted in a first place graduation.
One of those flaming northeast liberals -- and even from New York City!
Maybe you'd have preferred that one of those strong southern "conservatives" like John Edwards get the nomination, eh?
Well, he might.
The thing about Roe is that the decision is more than 30 years old, and even someone who thinks it is wrongly decided might think its stare decisis. But that's not really a liberal or conservative call. I'm supporting him because his legal reasoning appears to be originalist/textualist. Whether that means I agree with him as to the result of every case is a different issue, but that isn't and shouldn't be the standard unless you believe in activism.
I'm giving John Roberts the benefit of the doubt. He certainly sounds like a good fellow, so I'm supporting his nomination and predicting that he'll be a solid constitutionalist.
But if he is another Souter or O'Connor, or even another Kennedy, I think it'll be an utter catastrophe for the Republican Party. A society can reach a tipping point beyond which recovery is impossible. Europe and Canada have likely passed that tipping point. we haven't yet reached it, but unless we reign in the courts, we will reach it.
If John Roberts fails us, then we could see a mass exodus of Christians from the political realm. Several commentators, such as Paul Weyrich and Orson Scott Card, have predicted such a thing as being possible. If Supreme Court Justice John Roberts turns out to be just another "Republican" who votes with the court's leftist block, Christian Americans may simply decide that victory within the political realm is no longer possible. They'll simply withdraw, forming relationships and ties with their fellow Christians through their churches and private institutions, and abandoning voting as pointless.
Now, some may ask, what about other issues? Even if the Supreme Court has given (or is going to give) the entire culture over to the ultra-left on issues ranging from abortion to gay "marriage" to voluntary prayer to Nativity scenes, surely Christians will still want to vote for Republicans for economic reasons and to support the war on terror?
Not necessarily. First of all, a socially liberal culture makes fiscal conservatism mostly impossible. We know that from the experience of Holland and the Scandinavian countries. One of the reasons the left pushes social liberalism so hard is that victory in that realm all but assures that victory in the economic realm will fall easily into place. Imagine ttying to convince a society awash in porn, abortion, and homosexuality that the best economic system is one where everyone is economically responsible for himself. Can't be done. Social liberalism breeds dependency, weakness, and a plethora of social problems (absent fathers, STDs, women screaming for subsidized daycare) that inevitably bolster Socialism.
Well then, how about the war on terror? Won't Christians still vote Republican to keep the sissified Democrats from capitulating to the enemy? Ostensibly, that's a good argument. But will Christians in the long run defend a decadent society against Muslims? It's one thing to defend Christendom against Islam. It's another thing entirely to defend a society that has declared sociological war on Christianity against Islam. One of the reasons Europe is so impotent in fighting against Islamic aggression and terror is that in most of Europe Christianity is all but dead.
Remember, once the left succeeds in controlling the culture, they won't stop there. They'll feel the need to rewrite history, to eradicate every remaining remnant of our Judeo-Christian heritage from our collective memory. We see that in Europe, where the EU constitution forbade any mention of God, and where a devout Catholic was recently disqualified from holding an EU judgeship. In Canada, there's now open discussion of putting churches under government control, forcing them to ordain women, perform gay marriages, etc. or be closed down. Think that can't happen here? Think Chuckie Schumer & Teddy Kennedy wouldn't "go that far"? Ha!
The left won't fight to defend it's own liberalism against Islam. Why should anyone think Christians will fight once they have nothing outside the spiritual realm to fight for?
Social liberalism is societal death. Pray that John Roberts keeps us from going over the precipice.
Jarhead is right in post 39. Farah was either not thinking or he believes a judge in a lower court should not be bound by Supreme Court precedent if he has personal views to the contrary. The latter would be a serious breach of the rule of law and judicial professionalism. I suspect he was just not thinking.
His objection about Roberts referring to us as a "Democracy" repeats a similar criticism made by Ann Coulter. This seems to me to be semantic hairsplitting. We often refer to ourselves as a democracy, even though the term is technically inaccurate.
The only really legitimate concern is the lack of writings that allow someone to get a glimpse of Roberts real leanings, which is, I suspect, one of the principal reasons Bush picked him. It may turn out bad--I would include on the list of bad examples a lot more than Kennedy and Souter. I suspect, though, that there is a list that could be drawn up of good outcomes from the appointment of stealth candidates, I just don't have the historical knowledge to compile it. I wonder how well known Jackson and Harlan were when they were appointed.
Let's face it, almost anyone appointed, once they get the insulation of their lifetime tenure, is a book with blank pages. If there was no question where they stood, like Bork, well we all know where that would get us. I don't have a problem with Bush wanting to avoid a fight like that.
if a case for Roe V Wade comes up before the courts, I am pretty sure Roberts with his (and coincidentally his wife's) strong pro-life views, the vote will go a certain way.
However, he won't and probably shouldn't attempt to go back an review every case that didn't go conservatism's way in the past 30 years. That would be ACTIVISM, which is what XJ is saying but you keep dancing around.
you are missing what I am saying.
Get NEW cases up before the court.
Old cases won't cut it.
and I forgot to say this...
just because THEY did it, doesn't mean it was right then OR now. tit for tat isn't the way you want your Court system to work.
Those are good questions. My point was more directed at the "issues" people who seem more interested in getting a conservative activist judge.
This indeed seems to be the same modus operandi of the feckless GOP that has wound up compromising conservatism. They and
Of course the cynic in me does NOT believe believe GOP Presidents since Nixon were either ignorant or sloppily uninformed about the choices of Souter/Kennedy/O'Connor, etal., but that they knowingly opted to maintain a "balance" in the SCOTUS.
Why??
CFR, Bilderburgers, Trilateral Commission -- the New World Order (tilting tinfoil hat.)
MEMO TO FREEPERS:
Do NOT look for a Scalia/Thomas model to chosen AT ALL -- this first SC selection was THE selection in which to make it and fight for.
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