Wednesday, July 20, 2005
Judging Judge Roberts
My health club was oddly empty last night as President Bush announced his nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge John Roberts. So who is this guy? Last November, the New Republic called Roberts a "principled conservative" and added:
John Roberts, 49. U.S. Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C., Circuit. Top of his class at Harvard Law School and a former law clerk for Rehnquist, Roberts is one of the most impressive appellate lawyers around today. ...
In another case, however, Roberts joined Sentelle in questioning whether the Endangered Species Act is constitutional under Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce. The regulation in question prevented developers from building on private lands in order to protect a rare species of toad, and Roberts noted with deadpan wit that "the hapless toad ... for reasons of its own, lives its entire life in California," and therefore could not affect interstate commerce. Nevertheless, Roberts appears willing to draw sensible lines: He said that he might be willing to sustain the constitutionality of the Endangered Species Act on other grounds. All in all, an extremely able lawyer whose committed conservatism seems to be leavened by a judicious temperament.
Given that the moderately liberal New Republic thinks so well of Roberts, there seems to be a certain "we hate nominee (fill in the blank)" quality to the early opposition to his nomination.
While People for the American Way and NARAL would undoubtedly prefer another Supreme Court Justice like Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who famously questioned the very idea of Mother's Day, their preferred presidential candidate lost the election last November.
During that same 2004 campaign, President Bush promised to nominate conservative judges. A majority of voters pulled the Bush lever on Election Day. A vocal minority now seeks to use the Senate to veto any conservative judicial nominee. Their cookie-cutter press releases still reek of the storeroom in which they were seemingly placed years ago for just this moment.
Dishonesty watch: Roe v. Wade has the support of six Supreme Court Justices. Even if Roberts is a zealous pro-lifer (of which there is no proof), and he is confirmed by the Senate, Roe can still count upon at least five votes in its favor. While there are other issues at stake in this nomination, Roe is not one of them, no matter how shrilly NARAL might claim otherwise.
|posted by Jim on 9:01 AM|
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