True, but he can ignore them and inject his own beliefs. Those are the ones that should be automatically eliminated from consideration.
If a person has a long term track record (10+ years) of following an originalist philosophy and deferring to supreme court precedents when applicable then the odds are good that he will continue to do so.
What is certain is that once a judicial activist, always a judicial activist. Even one that tends to lean right will not be a reliable vote and will eventually veer to the left as all activists do.
Weed out the judicial activists and any who don't have enough of a track record to make an informed judgment. Sure, this may have eliminated Rhenquist and Thomas, but they were not the only originalist or textualist judges on the planet to choose from. This would have also eliminated Souter, O'Conner, Stephens and Blackmun.
I have strong feelings that Kennedy would have also been eliminated as I doubt his record was really as stellar as we are led to believe. He was probably just a judicial activist that tended to lean to the right at that time.
If a person has a long term track record (10+ years) of following an originalist philosophy and deferring to supreme court precedents when applicable then the odds are good that he will continue to do so.
What is certain is that once a judicial activist, always a judicial activist. Even one that tends to lean right will not be a reliable vote and will eventually veer to the left as all activists do.
Weed out the judicial activists and any who don't have enough of a track record to make an informed judgment.
A very nice template. Well done.
One little problem. There is at best considerable doubt that the Senate would have a vote on a nominee fitting this template. It is quite possible that the President was told privately by several Republican Senators (the usual gang of weasels) that such a candidate will NOT get a vote because there aren't 50 Senators willing to go "nucular".
I personally would have loved to see Janice Rogers Brown nominated and the 'Rats utterly crushed. Nothing would have pleased the vast, vast majority of us more than to see her tear Fat Ted, DiFi, Plugs, Chucky, Leaky Leahy and the other 'Rats to shreds. I was PISSED when Bork was Borked, PISSED when Thomas was lynched, PISSED when Jeffords jumped, PISSED when the Gang of 14 deprived us of what looked like total victory, and I'm PISSED now.
We don't have 50 Senators willing to ram JRB through right now. I hate that. But we don't have the votes.
So the President made his choice. I'm supporting it because any other option is worse. I'd rather be counting down the hours to JRB, but that's not going to happen whether Miers makes it or not. We don't have the votes.