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Friday, July 29, 2005
Roberts Is A Conservative -- Wink, Wink!
I keep getting email after email from pressure groups urging me to write senators to press them to confirm John Roberts for the Supreme Court. But I continue to doubt whether Roberts is the conservative strict constructionist fan of limited government the White House and others insist he is. A few lawyers around town who know him claim he is, but really, as Ann Coulter argues, we are just taking President Bush & Co. at their word. In her latest column, Fool Me Eight Times, Shame on Me, Coulter writes:
"He is David Hackett Souter, only the most recent reason Republican presidents -- especially Republican presidents named 'Bush' -- have lost the right to say 'Trust me' when it comes to Supreme Court nominations.
The other reasons are: Earl Warren, William Brennan, Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy.
Like John Roberts, Souter attended church regularly. Souter was also touted for his great intellect. He went to Harvard! And Harvard Law! (Since when does that impress right-wingers? So did Larry Tribe. It is one of the eternal mysteries of the world that liberals are good test-takers.)
At least when Souter was nominated, we needed a stealth nominee. The Senate was majority Democrat back then. The Judiciary Committee consisted of eight Democrats and six Republicans -- two of whom were aggressively pro-abortion. A year later, faced with the same Democratic Senate, the current president's father nominated Clarence Thomas. Who would have thought the current Bush would be less macho than his father?
Roberts would have been a fine candidate for a Senate in Democratic hands. But now we have 55 Republican seats in the Senate and the vice president to cast a deciding vote -- and Son of Read-My-Lips gives us another ideological blind date.
Fifty-five seats means every single Democrat in the Senate could vote against a Republican Supreme Court nominee -- highly unlikely considering some of those Democrats are up for election next year -- along with John McCain, Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and Lincoln Chafee. We would still win..."
Coulter's fears may be justified. I reviewed all the decisions Roberts has written or participated in while on the District of Columbia Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals (there are a few dozen) but have not been able to discern any particular judicial philosophy. Roberts ruled against the District of Columbia in the recent CSX case, in which the railroad challenged the D.C. law forbidding the rail shipment of hazardous materials through the District. I thought, well, perhaps this means Roberts is a strong supporter of the Interstate Commerce Clause, reasoning, as he did, that it trumps state or local laws. A liberal lawyer told me that no, Roberts' ruling was a perfectly reasonable interpretation of the law. I thought maybe his ruling in Hedgepeth v. WMATA, the so-called French Fry case, in which he upheld a public-transit system regulation requiring the arrest of juveniles for minor infractions, offered some insight into his views. No way, another liberal lawyer told me. As Roberts pointed out, the regulation itself may have been assinine but the Constitution did not forbid it. Roberts reached a constitutionally correct decision, and not a particularly courageous one at that.
So to all those out there saying 'come hop on the bandwagon with us because Roberts is clearly a real conservative,' I say, 'bullocks: the burden is on you to prove it.'
The presence of all this Bush administration-generated hype about Roberts' conservatism is just pure public relations. There is little or nothing in the way of hard evidence suggesting what kind of Supreme Court justice Roberts might be. Conservatives are just taking Bush's word for it.
(brought to you by vadum.blogspot.com, originally posted here)
Posted by Matthew Vadum on July 29, 2005 | Permalink
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Comments
Maybe all this stuff about Roberts is a big smoke screen.
Posted by: Bill Parsley | 2005-07-29 4:18:23 AM
No offense Mat, but I'd rather read your blog then have this page long article cramming up the Shotgun --- a blog that is about CANADIAN conservatism.
Posted by: Dylan Sherlock | 2005-07-29 1:50:16 PM
Roberts is a fine nominee for the Supreme Court - stop reading Ann Coulter, she's funny but out of touch with American conservatism and often doesn't know what she's talking about. The fact that the guys at Powerline were thrilled with Roberts is the best indication Roberts will be great on the bench. Whether he's a justice in the mold of Scalia or Rehnqist is yet to be determined, but rest assured Roberts is The Real Thing.
Posted by: Joel McLaughlin | 2005-07-30 3:37:09 AM
July 29, 2005
Hugh Hewitt Has a Great Idea
Hugh has a lot of them, actually. But this one is especially revealing. He is getting requests from lots of "mainstream" media sources for interviews, because he worked with John Roberts long ago, in the White House counsel's office. Hugh's answer: sure, but only if we do it live on my radio show, so the public can hear the whole thing, and compare it to the excerpts you put in your article. Brilliant. But, strangely enough, the reporters have all declined his offer. Hugh writes:
How interesting to note that the Post is willing to use sources that insist on anonymity, but not sources that demand transparency.
>>>>> powerlineblog
Posted by: maz2 | 2005-07-30 6:37:53 AM
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