The Wall Street Journal has published the text of Barry’s floor statement regarding the nomination of Chief Justice John Roberts:
Given that background, I am sorely tempted to vote for Judge Roberts based on my study of his resume, his conduct during the hearings, and a conversation I had with him yesterday afternoon. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind Judge Roberts is qualified to sit on the highest court in the land. Moreover, he seems to have the comportment and the temperament that makes for a good judge. He is humble, he is personally decent, and he appears to be respectful of different points of view.
Snip
I want to take Judge Roberts at his word that he doesn’t like bullies and he sees the law and the court as a means of evening the playing field between the strong and the weak. But given the gravity of the position to which he will undoubtedly ascend and the gravity of the decisions in which he will undoubtedly participate during his tenure on the court, I ultimately have to give more weight to his deeds and the overarching political philosophy that he appears to have shared with those in power than to the assuring words that he provided me in our meeting.
The bottom line is this: I will be voting against John Roberts’ nomination. . . .
In other words Barry has no problem not confirming a person he admits is completely qualified to sit on the bench, simply because he doesn’t have warm fuzzy fealings for every hard case that comes across his bench.
Now that the shoe is on the other foot, however, Barry has decided that any criticisms of his nominee are “nonsense“. Nevermind that 3 of 5 decisions written by her and reviewed by the Supreme Court were overturned (60%!) Nevermind that she ascribes to a judicial philosophy best described as oligarchic:
No! The Enlightened One, has given us his choice. Who are we to question it? All this criticism is “nonsense”. Don’t you get it? She feels our pain!
Senator Obama: He’s qualified but conservative. Nay
President Obama: She’s unqualified but compassionate and liberal. Yay
I think that when she’s appearing before the Senate committee, in her confirmation process, I think all this nonsense that is being spewed out will be revealed for what it is
Considering that he nominated someone who “hopes” that “Latina women” make better judges than “white males,” I’m a little curious about what he considers “nonsense.” Because what she said struck me as, plainly, nonsense. For him to call criticism of her “nonsense” makes me wonder whether he agrees with what she said.
Here are three paragraphs from a speech Judge Sottomayor gave in 2002. The last sentence of the first paragraph has been quoted numerous times, and I presumed that if I read the sentence in context, it would make more sense. I’m not sure it does:
Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O’Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O’Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.
Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.
However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.
What on earth does she mean by that sentence? 1. Why is there a presumption that “a white male” has less “rich” experiences than a “Latina woman”? 2. Even if she believed it were true that “Latina women” made better judges than “white males” (and should we be elevating people who say such things?), why would she “hope” it were true? I sincerely hope this gets explained during the confirmation hearing, and that it was nothing more than an inappropriate joke.
That hope aside, even though in the speech she makes a couple of statements along the lines of trying not to let her identity affect her judging, the speech as a whole gives the impression that she revels in how her identity shapes her judgement. Like a puppy rolling around in the grass. I think this nomination is a bad regression in the course of American race relations. I hope Justice Sottomayor is a little less obsessed with herself and her identity than is Judge Sottomayor.
American hostility to the consideration of foreign law, she said, “is a passing phase.” She predicted that “we will go back to where we were in the early 19th century when there was no question that it was appropriate to refer to decisions of other courts.”
If I recollect my histories right, there was a particular reason American judges relied on “decisions of other courts” in the early 19th century. Namely, we were a new country whose legal system was almost entirely adapted from an old country’s legal system. Indeed, the fact that this is completely different from the sort of reliance on foreign law that Ginsburg advocates can be seen in the fact that Justices Scalia and Thomas and Chief Justice Roberts feel no qualms about referring to pre-independence British law to interpret early American law, but heavily criticize Ginsburg’s use of modern foreign law. And indeed they should; two hundred years of American legal tradition, laid on top of several hundred years of British legal tradition, is an adequate source from which to draw interpretive insight into American law.
But I think elsewhere in the story we understand why she wants to use foreign law:
She added that the failure to engage foreign decisions had resulted in diminished influence for the United States Supreme Court.
The Canadian Supreme Court, she said, is “probably cited more widely abroad than the U.S. Supreme Court.” There is one reason for that, she said: “You will not be listened to if you don’t listen to others.”
How are American citizens aided by having our Supreme Court quoted in foreign cases? Are Canadians freer and more prosperous because of how widely respected their Supreme Court is? Of course not! The only people who benefit from that sort of international cite swapping are the judges themselves. I bet it’d make Ginsburg feel quite good about herself if one of her masterpieces was quoted in other countries. As an American citizen, though, I can’t remotely see how it helps us for our out-of-touch legal elites to be highly regarded by out-of-touch legal elites around the world. Is that what the Founders intended by creating an independent judiciary?
If not having our Supreme Court quoted in other countries is the price we have to pay to have judges who remain true to the American legal tradition and do not wish to impose on us the thoughts of those around the world with a lot less experience and success in self-government, then that’s a bargain I’d gladly strike.
Ronald Dworkin celebrates Boumediene because it finally gets rid of that arbitrary line between Americans and foreigners trying to kill Americans.
I commented a few weeks ago about commentary on NPR that was giddy about the possible repercussions of Boumediene. This last week I heard their report about the end of the Hamdan trial. The reporter said that he was uncertain why no one complained that Hamdan had not been Mirandized. That is, he seemed to think that under Boumediene a terrorist captured in a foreign country by American soldiers needs to be advised of his rights to a lawyer and to remain silent.
Boumediene is rapidly approaching the top of my list of cases I’d like to see repealed by amendment. This is a long-term disaster.
O-B-A-M-A. On detainee rights, on gun rights, and now on abortion, in the space of a month he’s now come out with three positions that are in direct opposition to the type of Supreme Court justice he claims he’d appoint. Moreover, the three justices he’s singled out as his model justices would take the opposite view of what Obama claims to support, and enshrine it as a part of the Constitution.
Nifty trick liberals have. “Of course I support this commonsense position and decry the Supreme Court when it enshrines extreme leftists positions as part of our Constitution. Please avert your eyes from the fact that I will appoint justices who do the thing I decry.”
Of course, if you read the story, plainly NARAL hears the dog whistle. They back Obama despite his adoption of his heterodox position, because they know that what he thinks (or, really, what any of us think) won’t matter once there are a couple more Ginsburgs on the Court.
Yesterday morning on NPR, this guy was discussing the results of Boumedeine. He was describing a future where the government had to go before a judge to justify every single person detained in a war: to prove that the detainee had some sort of belligerent connection, and to prove that the detainee was dangerous enough to justify locking up. He then said that the government would have to reaapear before the same judge periodically and justify not releasing the detainee.
To be clear, this applied both to people arrested on the street and to people captured on the battlefield. And, to be clear, this prospect made the commenter giddy.
The longer Boumedeine sets in on me, the more it becomes apparent that it may very well be the single greatest shift of power from one branch to another that our government has ever seen. It happened without a vote being cast, and there are those in this country who have allowed their dislike of the current president to lead them to cheering on the Supreme Court’s usurpation of war fighting powers.
For the first time, I’ll define a Supreme Court decision as scary. Both in its hamstringing of a legitimate war effort, and the in the inter-branch power struggle that will most assuredly result from it. If the judiciary insists on maintaining the unstated premise of Boumedeine – that they are supreme over the wartime decisions of the president regarding how to fight a war – they will lose.
The Founders defended the lack of limits placed on the federal judiciary by pointing out that it was naturally the weakest branch, controlling neither the military nor the treasury. Some on the court seem to remember how ill-prepared they are for a real fight with the other branches. That the wisdom of the Founders is lost on the current Court should come as no surprise.
I don’t know which is more encouraging: that McCain gave a wonderful speech on judicial nominations, or that he had Fred Thompson and Ted Olson on the stage with him.
On activism:
Quite rightly, the proper role of the judiciary has become one of the defining issues of this presidential election. It will fall to the next president to nominate hundreds of qualified men and women to the federal courts, and the choices we make will reach far into the future. My two prospective opponents and I have very different ideas about the nature and proper exercise of judicial power. We would nominate judges of a different kind, a different caliber, a different understanding of judicial authority and its limits. And the people of America — voters in both parties whose wishes and convictions are so often disregarded by unelected judges — are entitled to know what those differences are.
Federal courts are charged with applying the Constitution and laws of our country to each case at hand. There is great honor in this responsibility, and honor is the first thing to go when courts abuse their power. The moral authority of our judiciary depends on judicial self-restraint, but this authority quickly vanishes when a court presumes to make law instead of apply it. A court is hardly competent to check the abuses of other branches of government when it cannot even control itself.
One Justice of the Court remarked in a recent opinion that he was basing a conclusion on “my own experience,” even though that conclusion found no support in the Constitution, or in applicable statutes, or in the record of the case in front of him. Such candor from the bench is rare and even commendable. But it was not exactly news that the Court had taken to setting aside the facts and the Constitution in its review of cases, and especially in politically charged cases. Often, political causes are brought before the courts that could not succeed by democratic means, and some federal judges are eager to oblige. Politicians sometimes contribute to the problem as well, abdicating responsibility and letting the courts make the tough decisions for them. One abuse of judicial authority inspires more. One act of raw judicial power invites others. And the result, over many years, has been a series of judicial opinions and edicts w andering farther and farther from the clear meanings of the Constitution, and from the clear limits of judicial power that the Constitution defines.
On Kelo v. City of New London, the infamous eminent domain case of 2005:
The year 2005 also brought the case of Susette Kelo before the Supreme Court. Here was a woman whose home was taken from her because the local government and a few big corporations had designs of their own on the land, and she was getting in the way. There is hardly a clearer principle in all the Constitution than the right of private property. There is a very clear standard in the Constitution requiring not only just compensation in the use of eminent domain, but also that private property may be taken only for “public use.” But apparently that standard has been “evolving” too. In the hands of a narrow majority of the court, even the basic right of property doesn’t mean what we all thought it meant since the founding of America. A local government seized the private property of an American citizen. It gave that property away to a private developer. And this power play actually got the constitutional “thumbs-up” from five m embers of the Supreme Court.
On his opponents:
For both Senator Obama and Senator Clinton, it turned out that not even John Roberts was quite good enough for them. Senator Obama in particular likes to talk up his background as a lecturer on law, and also as someone who can work across the aisle to get things done. But when Judge Roberts was nominated, it seemed to bring out more the lecturer in Senator Obama than it did the guy who can get things done. He went right along with the partisan crowd, and was among the 22 senators to vote against this highly qualified nominee. And just where did John Roberts fall short, by the Senator’s measure? Well, a justice of the court, as Senator Obama explained it — and I quote — should share “one’s deepest values, one’s core concerns, one’s broader perspectives on how the world works, and the depth and breadth of one’s empathy.”
These vague words attempt to justify judicial activism — come to think of it, they sound like an activist judge wrote them. And whatever they mean exactly, somehow Senator Obama’s standards proved too lofty a standard for a nominee who was brilliant, fair-minded, and learned in the law, a nominee of clear rectitude who had proved more than the equal of any lawyer on the Judiciary Committee, and who today is respected by all as the Chief Justice of the United States. Somehow, by Senator Obama’s standard, even Judge Roberts didn’t measure up. And neither did Justice Samuel Alito. Apparently, nobody quite fits the bill except for an elite group of activist judges, lawyers, and law professors who think they know wisdom when they see it — and they see it only in each other.
On many important issues — global warming, the proper size of the federal government, campaign finance, and immigration — I have serious issues with McCain. But when it comes to the four most important issues of this campaign (the War, the War, the War, judges) he’s excellent.
John McCain, setting the record straight about Sam Alito:
“Let me just look you in the eye,” McCain told me. “I’ve said a thousand times on this campaign trail, I’ve said as often as I can, that I want to find clones of Alito and Roberts. I worked as hard as anybody to get them confirmed. I look you in the eye and tell you I’ve said a thousand times that I wanted Alito and Roberts. I have told anybody who will listen. I flat-out tell you I will have people as close to Roberts and Alito [as possible], and I am proud of my record of working to get them confirmed, and people who worked to get them confirmed will tell you how hard I worked.”
“I don’t get it,” McCain continued. “I have a clear record of that. All I can tell you is my record is clear: I’ve supported these guys. I went to the floor of the Senate and spoke in favor of them. It’s in the record, saying, ‘You’ve got to confirm these people.’”
John McCain has serious work to do to win votes from conservatives: campaign finance, pharma-bashing, global warming hysteria, etc. But can we please end this idiotic meme that McCain is weak on judges?
Today’s oral argument in Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. United Statesis about nothing less than whether the Bush administration’s war on terror—endless in its geographic reach and indefinite across time—will become the instrument of the great writ’s demise.
Um, no. Here’s a nice statement of the questions the cases actually discussed. “The great writ,” as I have grown tired of hearing it called this week, has survived Edward II, Richard III, Henry VIII, Charles I, Oliver Cromwell, James II, George III, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt. I humbly submit that if George W. Bush intentionally set out to destroy Habeas Corpus he could not, if given 40 years in the presidency.
No, it seems to me the question is this: Is the American judiciary hell-bent on granting rights to foreigners captured by American servicemen fighting on foreign soil? If so, I suspect in future wars it will be easier to just shoot them on the battlefield rather than try to defend at their endless habeas hearings. Though I suspect it won’t much matter, since wars are petty things best managed by elderly men in black robes.
I may not agree with the Family Research Council on everything — I’m pro-choice but anti-Roe — but Tony Perkins is absolutely correct in his analysis of Rudy Giuliani’s statements about judicial appointments:
To [Giuliani's] credit (he is more consistent than some of his proponents are), he stood by the remarks he made last May at the GOP presidential debate at the Reagan library.
Those remarks were very clear.
Giuliani said that it would be “OK” with him if a Supreme Court judge upheld Roe on strict constructionist grounds.
“It would be OK to repeal it,” he said, adding: “It would be OK also if a strict constructionist viewed it as precedent.”
This quotation has been cited, with good reason, by many Giuliani critics who are rightly concerned that, as president, it licenses him to appoint any number of judicial candidates who will leave Roe v. Wade exactly as it is.
In other contexts since the May debate, he has stood by the view that strict constructionism can coexist with Roe.
“Strict constructionists,” he has said, “can look at it [Roe] and say, it has been the law for this period of time, therefore we can respect the precedent.”
That’s not a judicial philosophy I want our next president to have. The Constitution is supposed to mean what it says; if someone got that wrong in the past, we are obliged to correct our interpretation, no matter how long that interpretation has been in place, how well-intended it was, or even how morally right it is (which it isn’t in the case of abortion, if you ask me).
This is one of the reasons I won’t vote for Rudy in the primaries and will have to think about it hard before doing deciding in the general election.
Of this I am certain: In the few hundred pages of his new book, Thomas has managed to undo years of effort by his colleagues to depoliticize the judicial branch.-Dahlia Lithwick
Yeah, after years of completely apolitical decisions like finding a constitutional right to butseks, a constitutional right to remove a baby from the womb and kill it (which was revoked within a couple of years thanks to a thoughtfully considered change of heart by the court a new appointment), that the 14th amendment’s equal protection will apply to white kids applying to college in 2028 but not now…
The Court’s been trying real hard to look apolitical. And now Justice Thomas comes along and ruins all that hard work.
The sad state of the American death penalty has created a situation where, given the option between killing the condemned in a manner that is dignified and humane or killing the condemned in a way that appears dignified and humane, we think appearance is more important than reality. So we get crap like this:
Prison staff had problems finding a useable vein on Clark, and one vein they did use collapsed. The execution team also apparently tried to administer the lethal drugs through the original IV line by mistake, according to written accounts that the execution team is required to submit.
During the first injection attempt, Clark finally pushed himself up and said, “It don’t work.”
During the second attempt at finding a vein, he asked, “Can you just give me something by mouth to end this?”
This man deserved to die, but he did not deserve to die like that. No one does, but this is where the pursuit of uncruelty has led. A sensible and humane execution lets a man die on his feet (or at least nearly so). Not strapped to some gurney like a sick dog.
The problems during the execution led the state to change its lethal injection process to ensure that veins can be found more carefully and quickly to avoid similar delays.
But in May, an execution team again struggled to find veins in another inmate’s arm. Christopher Newton died nearly two hours after the scheduled start of his execution.
It has long been apparent that conservatives and liberals were fighting bitterly over Supreme Court appointments. The warfare reached perhaps its lowest point when Ted Kennedy, knowing that being on the Senate floor gave him immunity from a slander lawsuit, said this of Robert Bork:
Robert Bork’s America is a land inwhich women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens.
Still, even as politicians threw off the veneer of civility, most mainstream liberals attempted to find some polite justification. It looks like E.J. Dionne has just removed even that fig leaf:
Just say no.
The Senate’s Democratic majority — joined by all Republicans who purport to be moderate — must tell President Bush that this will be their answer to any controversial nominee to the Supreme Court or the appellate courts.
The Senate should refuse even to hold hearings on Bush’s next Supreme Court choice, should a vacancy occur, unless the president reaches agreement with the Senate majority on a mutually acceptable list of nominees.
Dionne’s justification for this, however, is much more interesting:
If another conservative replaces a member of the court’s moderate-to-liberal bloc, the country will be set on a conservative course for the next decade or more, locking in today’s politics at the very moment when the electorate is running out of patience with the right.
Did Dionne complain when Bill Clinton replaced the conservative Byron White with the left-wing Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Wasn’t the electorate running out of patience with the left then? It’s refreshingly honest, I’ll admit, to see him assume that the court will be “locking in today’s politics,” but if you admit that, you’re assuming that the court is not about principles but power.
Dionne also throws out this inflammatory accusation:
And if conservatives claim to believe the president is owed deference on his court appointees, they will be — I choose this word deliberately — lying [emphasis added]. In 2005 conservatives had no problem blocking Bush’s appointment of Harriet Miers because they could not count on her to be a strong voice for their legal causes. They revealed that their view of judicial battles is not about principle but power. When they went after Miers, conservatives lost the deference argument.
Er, no. The right, from Pat Buchanan to Virginia Postrel, opposed Miers on the grounds that she had no clear principles. And conservatives didn’t block her appointment with a filibuster or by voting her down on the Senate floor or in commitee. They argued, on talk radio and in the blogosphere, against the appointment, and Bush withdrew the nomination. Dionne doesn’t so much argue as steal bases. He thinks that the court is not about principles but power, and so assumes that his opponents think that way, too. If he’s still wondering why Americans hate politics, he should reflect on his column—after he’s calmed down a bit.