Wednesday, July 20, 2005
John Roberts Makes Me Nervous
From Linda Greenhouse in today's New York Times:
This is what these nominations have come to. In order to get on the bench the individual cannot be too extreme or too experienced so that he or she does not have opinions that can lead to a contentious confirmation battle.
On C-Span this morning Senator Kennedy actually framed the coming hearings with perfect accuracy. He said that his opinion of Roberts will come down to how he views Congressional powers under the Commerce Clause. I worry that the Senator will be able to go to bed without fear.
PermaLink | 4:58 AM |
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There are others, potential nominees whom the president might have chosen, who probably also feel a lump in the throat when they think about the Supreme Court, but it is caused by anger rather than reverence. That is not to say that Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, whom President Bush had offered as his models for a Supreme Court selection, do not respect the institution, but their stance is one of opposition to many currents of modern legal thought that the court's decisions reflect.So it looks like the President picked someone who will get through the Senate. But as far as a hero who will drive the Supreme Court to see the error of its ways, well it doesn't look promising at this time. I don't get non-ideological judges. On what basis do they make their decisions?
Now the question is whether Judge Roberts, if confirmed, will, like those two justices, commit himself to recapturing a distant constitutional paradise in which the court was faithful to the original intent of the framers or whether, like the justice he would succeed, he finds himself comfortably in the middle rather than at the margin.
His r�sum� suggests the latter, as does his almost complete lack of a paper trail. There are no flame-throwing articles or speeches, no judicial opinions that threaten established precedent, no visible hard edges.
This is what these nominations have come to. In order to get on the bench the individual cannot be too extreme or too experienced so that he or she does not have opinions that can lead to a contentious confirmation battle.
On C-Span this morning Senator Kennedy actually framed the coming hearings with perfect accuracy. He said that his opinion of Roberts will come down to how he views Congressional powers under the Commerce Clause. I worry that the Senator will be able to go to bed without fear.
PermaLink | 4:58 AM |
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