Posted on 09/29/2005 8:56:08 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - John Glover Roberts Jr. won confirmation as the 17th chief justice of the United States Thursday, overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate to lead the Supreme Court through turbulent social issues for generations to come.
The Senate voted 78-22 to confirm Roberts — a 50-year-old U.S. Appeals judge from the Washington suburb of Chevy Chase, Md. — as the successor to the late William H. Rehnquist, who died earlier this month. All of the Senate's majority Republicans, and about half of the Democrats, voted for Roberts.
Underscoring the rarity of a chief justice's confirmation, senators answered the roll by standing one by one at their desks as their names were called, instead of voting and leaving the chamber.
Roberts is the first new Supreme Court justice since 1994. Before becoming a federal judge, Roberts was one of the nation's best appellate lawyers, arguing 39 cases — many in front of the same eight justices he will now lead as chief justice.
He won 25 of those cases.
Roberts watched the Senate vote on television from the White House's Roosevelt Room. He and his wife Jane, were then to have lunch with President Bush and first lady Laura Bush, followed by a swearing-in ceremony at the White House so he could take his seat in time for the new court session Monday.
Under Roberts, justices will tackle issues like assisted suicide, campaign finance law and abortion this year, with questions about religion, same-sex marriage, the government's war on terrorism and human cloning looming in the future.
"With the confirmation of John Roberts, the Supreme Court will embark upon a new era in its history, the Roberts era," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., whose 55 GOP members unanimously voted for the multimillionaire judge. "And for many years to come, long after many of us have left public service, the Roberts court will be deliberating on some of the most difficult and fundamental questions of U.S. law."
Twenty-two Democrats opposed Roberts, saying he could turn out to be as conservative as justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court anchors on the right.
"At the end of the day, I have too many unanswered questions about the nominee to justify confirming him to this lifetime seat," said Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada.
Anti-abortion and abortion rights activists both have their hopes pinned on Roberts, a former government lawyer in the Reagan and first Bush administrations. While Roberts is solidly conservative and his wife, Jane, volunteers for Feminists for Life, both sides were eager to see how he will vote on abortion cases.
Roberts told senators during his Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings that past Supreme Court rulings carry weight, including the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in 1973. He also said he agreed with the 1965 Supreme Court ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut that established the right of privacy in the sale and use of contraceptives.
But he tempered that by saying Supreme Court justices can overturn rulings.
During four days of sometimes testy questioning by Democrats, Roberts refused to hint how he would rule on cases.
"If the Constitution says that the little guy should win, then the little guy's going to win in the court before me," Roberts told senators. "But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well then the big guy's going to win because my obligation is to the Constitution."
Over and over, he has assured lawmakers his rulings would be guided by his understanding of the facts of cases, the law and the Constitution, not by his personal views. "My faith and my religious beliefs do not play a role," said Roberts, who is Catholic.
Roberts' confirmation brings the number of Catholics on the court to a historic high of four. The Roman Catholic Church strongly opposes abortion.
Democrats, even as they complained about his Reagan-era opinions and the White House's refusal to release his paperwork from the George H.W. Bush administration, acknowledged his brilliance and judicial demeanor.
"I've taken him at his word that he does not have an ideological agenda and he will be his own man as chief justice ," said Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record) of Vermont, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary. "I take him as his word that he will steer the court to serve as an appropriate check on the potential abuses of presidential power, not just today but tomorrow."
Republicans showered praise on Roberts, and said the justices on the court like him too. "There have already been indications from members of the court about their liking the fact that Judge Roberts is going to be the new chief justice," said Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who shepherded the nomination out of his committee on a 13-5 vote.
Roberts has the potential of leading the Supreme Court for decades. Not since John Marshall, confirmed in 1801 at 45, has there been a younger chief justice.
Roberts also will hold a record of sorts — nominated to succeed two different Supreme Court justices within seven weeks. Bush originally named him to succeed retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in July. Rehnquist's death led to the second nomination on Sept. 6, and Roberts now will be confirmed as chief justice while O'Connor remains on the court until the president selects a new replacement.
a left handed, disabled, veteran, Latin female Texan district judge would be a shoo-in.........
You win the prize for Orwellian posting. Apparently you haven't availed yourself of Aristotle's explanation for why ends don't justify means.
If a rubber Constitution is to mean whatever we want it to mean, this week, it means nothing. In that respect, yours is the philosophy of a leftist who believes that the States are administrative districts of the Federal courts.
Personhood of the corporation was intended from the beginning, according to testimony by one of the prominant writers of the Fourteenth.
John Roberts agrees with me. Where the framers use general terms we should interpret them generally.
"There are some who may think they're being originalists who will tell you, Well, the problem they [the framers] were getting at were the rights of the newly freed slaves. And so that's all that the equal protection clause applies to. But, in fact, they didn't write the equal protection clause in such narrow terms. They wrote more generally.... We should take them at their word, so that is perfectly appropriate to apply the equal protection clause to issues of gender and other types of discrimination beyond the racial discrimination that was obviously the driving force behind it."
John Roberts
Remember what it would have been....
IF John Kerry Had Won
Compared to that Alberto Gonzalez would be a Godsend. (Alberto's still my front-runner at 3:1)
It's a cheap class warfare shot that's typical of the left. I, for one, would like to see more private successful professionals holding public office.
as a multimillionare he couldn't possibly be for the little guy. LOL
That may indeed be true. My point was that now that it has been contrued to include much more than originally understood, meaning disabled people, women, etc, you raise due process issues where none existed before. This puts the courts solidly into the culture war.
Chevy Chase has got to be kicking himself now.
No, there is no bias in this article. It just happens to be a fact that the GOP is a party of rich white men. (sarcasm)
Indeed it does. But that extension is small potatoes. The biggie is handing person status to corporations, which gives human rights to non-human entities. The Global Civil Society has got wind of this. We should be aware of this evolution since much that happens on the big stage is incomprehensible otherwise. Such issues as NAFTA, Seattle, Enron and sweatshops fall neatly into place in that picture, but make little sense when viewed as 'giant sucking sound' or corporate peculance.
I don't disagree with you.
But I think the nation is well served by the partnership that is created when Congress regulates and the court interprets.
I admit there are serious issues for both the courts and the Congress, but I feel pretty confortable that we, as a nation, are handling things well.
The replacement for O'Connor will not give Conservatives a comfort zone. We will need one more conservative vote. With Roberts hopefully we now have three regular conservative votes. With a new Conservative to fill O'Connor's place, we will have four regular conservative votes. There are still 5 maverick votes left on the SC. We cannot count on any of these 5 voting conservatively and not activist.
As would any statist. It happens to be wrong, for reasons that have yet to become fully apparent to you.
They wrote more generally.... We should take them at their word, so that is perfectly appropriate to apply the equal protection clause to issues of gender and other types of discrimination beyond the racial discrimination that was obviously the driving force behind it."
The things people will say to get confirmed. If you are a fan of selective incorporation, just say so. The effect is to destroy the value of representative government and bring access to government only to those who can afford legal action. Unfortunately, it builds a body of law that becomes so convoluted and internally contradictory as to be situationally applicable.
If we take Conklin and Bingham (the authors of the 14th Amendment citizenship clause) at their words, the equal protection clause was written to confer the rights of citizenship to corporations.
I agree with that. But, for seeing what is going on, what the attraction is for candidates to have $millions to spend on elections, what campaign finance reform is really about, why there is such as thing as the 1967 UN Outer Space Treaty, and a lot of similar scenery along the national and state political roads, I need a hook. The USSC know what they are doing if anybody does, most of the Congresscritters know, too. The elephant in the room is corporations.
We may have to agree to disagree.
So I'll state my position.
I am very pleased with the current state of 14th amendment jurisprudence and I am delighted to have John Roberts as Chief Justice of the United States.
We disagree there. The current state exaggerates the establishment clause at the expense of free exercise, it incorporates parts of the Fifth, but not others, it permits outrageous gun regulation by local government by failure to enforce the Second, it makes a joke of the Tenth... in short, selective incorporation is inconsistent and an abomination of justice. You like it that way, probably because you have a deficit in understanding the operation of Federalism under natural law.
I'm just not a fan of government by fiat.
The jury is out on Justice Roberts. I don't know what to make of him. Time will tell.
I agree that selective incorporation presents some challenges. I hope that eventually we get to complete incorporation of the first eight amendments. And I think we will. We need to get a second amendment case up to the top.
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