Posted on 09/08/2005 1:52:07 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Democrats must insist that the Senate not vote on John Roberts' confirmation to be chief justice until after Sandra Day O'Connor's successor is also named. The Senate needs to evaluate both picks together in assessing their impact on the Supreme Court, now and for years to come.
Also, Democrats need to make clear that since President Bush has already picked a conservative in Roberts for one vacancy, the other selection needs to be a more moderate Republican in the mold of O'Connor. Otherwise, a court that currently reflects a moderate mainstream view could become one that would be significantly further to the right and hostile to basic civil rights and civil liberties.
Since the last appointment to the Supreme Court 11 years ago, the justices have decided a number of important cases involving the proper role of government in our personal lives, the responsibility of government for protecting the general welfare and our continued commitment to the values underlying the rule of law. During that period, the court's majority, often by 5-4 votes, has resisted the assault (once led by Roberts) on a woman's fundamental reproductive rights; recognized the importance of affirmative action to the democratic purpose of public education; excluded government from the bedrooms of consenting adults; knocked down repeated efforts of some to inject religion into the activities of government; ended our internationally embarrassing execution of mentally retarded and juvenile offenders; and reaffirmed that not even the president is above the law.
Beyond the issue of whether these moderate decisions will be overruled, there also are important national issues that likely will come before the court in the next few years. For example, some conservative scholars have argued for the court to significantly limit the scope of Congress' spending power, claiming that federal aid for disaster relief is unconstitutional. The new justices also will have pivotal roles in deciding key questions concerning the scope of the president's powers as part of the war on terrorism.
The key question is whether the president will attempt to replace the moderate mainstream represented by Justice O'Connor with a right-wing nominee such as Justice Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas, who interpret the Constitution in a way that will produce decisions that are fundamentally inconsistent with how the public views the role of its government, both in our private lives and as trustee of our general welfare and national values.
Just as it would have been unthinkable for the Senate, after the decision in Brown v. Board of Education, to confirm a Supreme Court nominee whom it knew or suspected would have cast the deciding vote to overturn Brown, it should be equally unthinkable for the Senate now to vote to confirm a nominee who is unwilling to state unequivocally that he or she accepts as established that Roe v. Wade protects a woman's fundamental right of choice or that Grutter v. Bollinger correctly upheld the constitutionality of affirmative action in public education. For a Democrat to do so should be a career-ending vote.
The crucial question for the Senate must be whether the two picks for the Supreme Court together make it more likely that these and other key precedents concerning civil rights and civil liberties will be overruled.
John Roberts is unquestionably more conservative than Sandra Day O'Connor. With one conservative nominated, the Democrats must do all that they can to insist that the remaining nominee be more moderate.
The importance of what is at stake cannot be overstated. Roberts is 50 years old. Assuming that the second nominee is around the same age and that these justices remain until they are 85, like John Paul Stevens, they will be on the court until the year 2040.
The Senate must know who these two justices will be before proceeding further with either of them and must ensure that together they will not endanger our basic freedoms for decades to come.
Coleman and Chemerinsky are professors of law at Duke University School of Law in Durham, N.C.
What a load of bull hockey. These guys think they speak for the public. Last time I looked the President and the Senate were elected officials not two law professors at Duke who couldn't get elected dogcatchers in Durham.
The Democrats are making it up as they go along because they know the public will be turning them into a minority party for as far as the eye can see.
OK, Janice Rogers Brown.
Happy now?
Bumping for after work.......
From the land of Sheila Jackarse-Lee.
There is a growing pile of materials, in Roberts' opinions and in the Reagan-era documents dribbling out of the White House, that indicates he has strongly held and far-right views on major fronts—abortion, religion, and executive power. There's ammunition for principled opposition to be mined here. But (as the statement cited in my post above testifies) Roberts lacks is a clear judicial philosophy. As a result, proponents of judicial restraint — an approach to the law that's become as fashionable among liberals as conservatives — are eager to embrace him as one of their own. Leftist advocates of restraint celebrate justices who don't reach out beyond the facts of a case to decide more than they need to and who respect existing Supreme Court precedent. Roberts' judicial conservatism will stay on this line. Which is very different from that judicial philosophy, willing to jettison past anti-costitutional decisions(Thomas and Scalia).
This sort of little girl happy crap is the reason I no longer spend good money to buy the Houston Chronicle.
Nice term, but disgusting picture. :)
Aren't there some conservative groups opposing Roberts' nominations? It seems like I saw something on it.
What a load of bull hockey.
I think they use those buffalo chips or maybe cowpies as pucks.
No, the right question is simply that on my tagline. Even if Republican Senators will easily vote for him, I hope he will get a clear line of action in Court. But I'm afraid of the "precedents" (Kenney and Souter).
Hon. Kennedy, not Kenney. Sorry.
somebody tell the libs they have to win elections for them to implement this strategy
there will be a nuclear test on the senate floor in t minus ten, nine eight seconds and counting
oh how i hope that W elects judge brown if not ill settle for judge lutig
We then refuse to name our second nominee until they provide their planned votes for all possible nominees.
This is idiocy.
Only Republican Presidents have to obey the laws. Not Democrats, and especially not Xlinton.
The Democrats are not Democrats, they are Socialists. Their goal is to destroy the US Constitution in anyway they can, even piece by piece. These pieces are then referred to and pointed to as Precedent! Like Roe v Wade is unconstitutional, but the Socialist believe that this is a right given to women by the STATE, and it is not given to them by GOD! -- Which is as the US Constitution states. So they are trying to implement their Socialist Constitutional Law.
The same for the Chief and Associate Justices. They are not interested in following the US Constitution, if they get their way, then the US Constitution has been over run, and this action is now PRECEDENT!
Probably not.
Didn't you know those guys were a bunch conservative extremists bent on destroying the Constitution?
I haven't paid to read the Houston Chronicle for about 10 years.
I havent paid for one since the Houston Post folded. God,how I miss Lynn Ashby's column
Exactly! The environmentalists/socialists' aim is just that.
***....For these self-appointed social redeemers, the goal-"social justice"-is not about rectifying particular injustices, which would be practical and modest, and therefore conservative. Their crusade is about rectifying injustice in the very order of things. "Social Justice" for them is about a world reborn, a world in which prejudice and violence are absent, in which everyone is equal and equally advantaged and without fundamentally conflicting desires. It is a world that could only come into being through a re-structuring of human nature and of society itself.
Even though they are too prudent and self-protective to name this future anymore, the post-Communist left still passionately believes it possible. But it is a world that has never existed and never will. Moreover, as the gulags and graveyards of the last century attest, to attempt the impossible is to invite the catastrophic in the world we know.
But the fall of Communism taught the progressives who were its supporters very little. Above all, it failed to teach them the connection between their utopian ideals and the destructive consequences that flowed from them. The fall of Communism has had a cautionary impact only on the overt agendas of the political left. The arrogance that drives them has hardly diminished. The left is like a millenarian sect that erroneously predicted the end of the world, and now must regroup to revitalize its faith. ...*** Source
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