Posted on 08/24/2005 12:07:14 AM PDT by neverdem
Lessons from a Supreme Court nominee's defeat.
For liberals and conservatives alike, the touchstone for beleaguered Supreme Court nominations is the rejection of Judge Robert Bork in 1987. Supreme Court nominees had been rejected before, 27 times, but never with so much orchestrated fury. Usually the nominees were lesser jurists, if not lesser intellects, if not lesser men, than was (or is) Judge Bork. The Senate rejected George Washington's nominee for chief justice, John Rutledge, in 1795 because of his position on a treaty. Andrew Jackson's nomination of Roger Taney was blocked in 1835, though Jackson later nominated Taney successfully as chief justice. John Tyler, the first vice president to finish a deceased president's term, had four nominees rejected or blocked.
More recently, in 1968 Democratic and Republican senators alike signaled that they would reject Justice Abe Fortas's elevation to chief. This was partly for ethical reasons, but Southern Democrats also sought to punish Fortas for the overreaching of the Warren Court, and Republicans wanted to save the vacancy for Richard Nixon to fill. Lyndon Johnson withdrew the Fortas nomination, and Nixon got the payback. The Senate rejected his first two nominees to replace Fortas, Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell, before approving Harry Blackmun.
Every rejected nominee since Fortas, and almost every controversial nominee, has been appointed by a Republican president at a time when the Democrats controlled the Senate. That includes Douglas Ginsburg (whose nomination Reagan withdrew over a marijuana controversy) and Clarence Thomas. By contrast, not since Fortas have Republicans attempted to block a Democratic high court nominee. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a former general counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union, got only three "no" votes; Stephen Breyer, a former counsel to Ted Kennedy, only nine. The one time a Democratic minority waged a fight against a...
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And they're not all that great at computer security, either :-)
I suppose there isn't much reason to block a liberal nominee for conservatives. Unlike them we don't rely on the courts to push through radical agenda.
And I would like for the MSM to at least admit that Robert Bork was "borked" because the Democrats refused to get over Bork's role in the Saturday Night Massacre....not because he rented dirty movies or believed in a strict interpretation of the Constitution.
Your post doesn't make sense. It takes two to make a fight. Control of the judiciary is just as important to conservatives to keep out the liberals' activist judges as it is to the liberals for the sake of getting them in.
One would think that is the case, but it doesn't seem to be the opinion of the Republicans in congress.
Then again the same Republicans are nominating these liberal activist judges.
Yes, that certainly is the way they're acting.
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