An Open Letter to Judge Charles W. Pickering Sr.
Dear Judge Pickering: Your nomination to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals will come up in the Senate Judiciary Committee today. The way things look, you're likely to be defeated on a party-line vote. Don't take this process personally. It's just Washington.
You are but a pawn in a much larger battle over whether an independent judiciary will prevail, or whether a liberal judicial litmus test will transform our courts into another political branch with a liberal activist bent. You are at the mercy of many people right now, unable to speak out for yourself. You may have thought your reputation was something valuable -- that you had led your life with integrity and honor -- and that these attributes would be appreciated. But then you offered yourself for public service.![[Portrait]](http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/Thomas_Clarence-EH52009291999205948.gif)
And so, today, you hear that you are unqualified, and that you are "polarizing," because you will not pledge to rule in favor of the hard left's political agenda. Instead, you believe the role of a judge is not to prejudge cases, but to fairly apply the law (not politics) to cases that may come before you in the future. Your principled view of a judge's role brands you as "unqualified" in their results-oriented world.
All this has reminded me of a tearful young woman who came to my office a few years ago, asking me to forgive her for her part in my husband's confirmation process for the Supreme Court -- where outside groups, media representatives and senators cast my husband, Clarence Thomas, as a man far different from the one his family and friends knew.
Through her tears, this woman told me of a religious experience she had that changed her liberal political philosophy. It was for this reason she asked to meet me. She recounted stories of feminists, civil rights groups, and other leftists in the media, and told me that "she hadn't realized we were human." Her point to me was, "It was all about abortion and homosexuality," and of making sure those rights could never be threatened by a judge who applied the law differently from their views. Every calumny had seemed appropriate to maintain those freedoms, and she asked me to forgive her. Today, I see you vilified too, by people impervious to the truth.
You wrote a three-page law review article that made reference to interracial marriage -- way back in 1959, when you were a freshman in college. The People for the American Way now say they find it disturbing that you failed, then, to express adequate moral outrage over the state law banning interracial marriage. But in the 14 years of my interracial marriage, I've found many more people on the left exercised over my union (and others like it) than on the right.
Your critics say that your record doesn't demonstrate "an affirmative commitment to civil rights protection." Yet they are deaf to powerful assertions made in your favor -- which deny that you were opposed to civil rights -- by such advocates as Charles Evers, the brother of the murdered activist Medgar Evers.
Judge Pickering, the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee and the outside groups that egg them on don't think of you as human right now. You are just a way to project an ideology and protect "rights" that the left has worked for decades to make "mainstream."
Senate Democrats are actually claiming that some views are so politically incorrect that judges (or others) cannot be allowed to hold them. Why? Because they are "outside the mainstream" and inappropriate for public service. Facts matter little to those waging this war; it is merely the perception they can create, so as to create a chilling effect that, they hope, will influence votes, scare off conservatives from being nominated, being defended or even applying for such positions in public service. It also doesn't hurt their fund-raising efforts.
It feels personal to you and your family because it is. You may have to live with a new reputation that the left is smearing on you. What America is saddled with, from these battles, is a culture less tolerant of philosophical disagreement. Why anyone offers themselves for public service is increasingly beyond me, yet I hope people like you will continue to do so.
You and your family have been through the Washington ordeal. Take it from me, it could have been worse. You may find, as we do, that people are shocked when they have the opportunity to meet you. It shocks them to find that you are not the devil your enemies are making you into.
As a judge, you may not care what people think; you have the integrity to call your decisions as you see them, regardless of what people think of you. Yet your family may still struggle with this. It helps to find your faith and be reminded that you are not called to be popular, but rather to have integrity.
If they can demonize you, Judge Pickering, they can do it to anyone. It is a painful process, but a process even more damaging to the nation's health than to an individual's life. It is wrong, but the hard left doesn't care. All they see is the political stakes for rights they view as sacrosanct with an intensity previously found only among the religious.
Take comfort in seeing how those who know you best are coming to your defense -- white and black alike. No matter how today's vote turns out, thank you for offering yourself to the nation's service.
Ms. Thomas is director of executive branch relations at the Heritage Foundation.
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