Judge Roberts receives "well qualified" rating from the American Bar Association

Funny, because the Wall Street Journal editors predicted that the ABA would struggle with their rating because Judge Roberts is conservative. Hunh.

Years ago, the White House used to have the ABA rate prospective judicial nominees before nomination. President Bush opted out of that admittedly peculiar procedure.

But the Senate adopted it instead! So the good old ABA still weighs in; a private organization giving a politically important endorsement of a public official.
And we lefties thought Focus on the Family was out of line!

 

My hat's off to you, Nosborne, the self-proclaimed "leftie."

This story has been on the Net for a few days. I was going to post it but withheld it to see if someone left of center would post it instead.

Congratulations for being fair!

 

JWC,

Oh, I've been pleased with the Roberts nomination ab initio.

It's not really a question of fairness; another Antonin Scalia would elicit screams of pain and outrage from me. The man is a phony intellectual.

But Judge Roberts is the goods; he is a "lawyers' lawyer" His history reflects a solid grasp of jurisprudence and legal ethics as well as substantive law.

I warn you, though; unless I've completely misjudged him, his decisions will alternately thrill and infuriate you. He will not be an "accountable" Justice in the way that Santorum or DeLay claim to demand. He will pursue the Law with the intellectual integrity that is so obviously lacking in Scalia.

Nor should he be; "accountable" is the opposite of "independant" and an independent judiciary is a cornerstone of the rule of law. It says so, though not in so many words, in the Declaration of Independence and the principal is enshrined in Art. III of the U.S. constitution.

 

As long as he upholds the Constitution, doesn't legislate from the bench, and enforces the laws of the land, I will be satisfied.

 

Well...what do you mean by "upholding the constitution"? Do you mean the constitution as an old, dead thing, frozen in amber (Scalia) or do you mean the constitution as the living framework through which the people govern themselves, subject to reinterpretation as scoiety, and society's needs, change? Justice Roberts will take the latter, more intellectually honest approach, I think.

Some of what he will do will look a LOT like "legislating from the bench" because ALL Judges have to decide what a statute or series of court cases MEANS in the context of the case before them. They may well arrive at conclusions that you don't like.

Judge Roberts has already indicated, and quite rightly, IMO, that he considers precedent to be fundamental to due process in our legal system. He's not going to change couse on, say, the right to privacy.

 

Strict constructionism, pure and simple.

 

Well, what do you mean by strict constructionism? Do you mean that every word is to be taken literally and in the context of the Founders' world? Then what would you do with, say, the "necessessary and proper" clause? Or worse, the XIV th Aendement equal protection clause? Would you really say that "separate but equal" is constitutional NOW because it was considered to be constitutional in 1866?

Strict constructionism of that sort, the Scalia sort, is neither pure nor simple, JWC. It's an ideology that, taken to extremes, would work much more mischief than people realize. The world has changed since the constitution was written; words no longer have the legal, or sometimes even the common, meanings they had in 1789.

Now, if your objection is that the Courts craft overly detailed programs of reform to correct what they see as unconstitutional government activities, there I can agree with you. I do believe that the Court in Roe, for instance, should merely have striken the state statute and left it for the state legislature to repair. But that's a matter of degree, you see, not fundamental principal.

 

Bingo!

The Constitution can always be amended.

 

Okay.

If that's what you call "legislating from the bench", then I have to agree with you. Courts should consider constitutionality only when driven to it (and this is a well established principal of judicial decision making) and even then, Courts should say as little as possible beyond announcing their determination of (un)con stitutionality.

 

Stop it, Nosborne. You're scaring me!

If he's gonna replace Sandra O'Connor, maybe that's what we want. A swing vote who can be persuaded to go either way.

Perhaps the Democrats shouldn't fight him too hard. He's probably the best nominee that they can possibly hope for from Bush.

 

I think Judge Roberts probably IS the best we can hope for from President Bush but I also think he's much better than THAT!

I can't recall EVER being so impressed with a nominee from EITHER side.

Of course, I don't know, nobody knows, not even the President, what Justice Roberts will be like once confirmed. He COULD be a new Darth Vader or Oliver Wendell Holmes, we just don't know. But I don't think so. I THINK he will be one of the few truly great Jusitces of American history.

 

I'd be more than happy if we could just clone Scalia and have the clones replace all the other justices.

BLD

 

Cloning Scalia

We need an emoticon for HEART ATTACK!

 

What are the ABA ratings? Is "well qualified" the highest rating?

IMO, Judge Roberts is a Trojan Horse, in a way that is good for conservatives. The Democrats have almost nothing to attack him for, his resume is impeccable, so he will eventually be confirmed.

Again, IMO, Judge Roberts is Antonin Scalia in David Souter's clothing.

 

We can only hope that this is true!

BLD

 

Bruce:

You may indeed be right. I could easily be wrong about the man, but I don't think so. Here's why: The Supreme Court Justices, before whom he has essentially made a career arguing, ALL seem to respect him and, to the extent they can, they express support for the nomination.

Judges don't respect ideologues. Really, truly. Even Scalia, that fraud, doesn't like any ideology except his own.

As to wearing Souter's clothing, I IMAGINE Judge Roberts can afford his OWN robe, though things ARE rough all over...

Yes, "well qualified" is the ABA's highest rating.

 

Re: Re: Judge Roberts receives "well qualified" rating from the American Bar Association

What... this surprises you? It's nos we're talkin' about here! Fairness is the least of the qualities you should expect. Seriously.

But that's not really why I'm posting...

Ohgod... let's hope not! The last thing we need is another Scalia (though I really did enjoy reading the cover story about him -- Scalia, I mean -- in the New Yorker a while back).

Well... yes, his resume. Yes. But nothing to attack him for? Hmm... not so much, I think. Or, if not "attack," then at least "question."

Just yesterday (or was it the day before?) some 80,000 signatures (mine among them) were delivered by the ACLU to the Justice Department as part of a FOIA request for all the work done by Supreme Court nominee John Roberts on 16 crucial cases during his tenure in the first Bush administration's Office of the Solicitor General. If the request is honored, we'll be able to clearly see what was Roberts mindset with regard to the vital Constitutional issues at stake in each of the 16 cases. We'll get his unvarnished opinion, expressed in the memos he wrote to the people he worked with every day.

Says the ACLU's Executive Director, Tom McMahon:

Once we know what he thought of these issues, we'll know more about the kind of Supreme Court Justice he will make. Will John Roberts fight to protect our most fundamental freedoms? Or will he advocate a narrow, partisan interpretation of the Constitution that strips Americans of our rights or erodes the progress we have made?

Just looking at the public record, you can discern a pattern of hostility to civil rights. Here are a few of the cases we requested information on:

• Metro Broadcasting v FCC (1990)
  Roberts argued against letting the FCC use affirmative action in distributing broadcast licenses. This case was a rare instance of the Solicitor General stepping in to block an action of the federal government to increase opportunity.
  
• Board of Education of Oklahoma City v Dowell (1991)
  In a brief signed by John Roberts, the Solicitor General's office argued against a court ruling that ordered a school district to prevent racial segregation. Roberts's brief opposed the efforts of African American families to argue that Oklahoma schools would become segregated again.
  
• Freeman v Pitts (1992)
  Roberts signed a brief urging the Supreme Court to overturn a lower-court decision that required a Georgia school district to ensure its schools were fully desegregated.
  
• Lee v Weisman (1992)
  Roberts filed a Supreme Court brief arguing that a school district should be permitted to invite clergy to lead public prayers at a graduation ceremony.
  
• Voinovich v Quilter (1993)
  Roberts co-authored a brief supporting an Ohio redistricting plan that minority voters said violated the Voting Rights Act by concentrating minority voters in a small number of districts.

What little we know about John Roberts's record on civil rights is troubling -- at the very least. In his work in the Reagan and first Bush administrations, he demonstrated a consistent hostility to efforts to ensure equal opportunity and justice as guaranteed to every American under our Constitution. But there's more that we just don't know. That's why we need the full story.

The Bush Administration now has less than 20 days to respond to the FOIA request. Let the stalling tactics begin!

All of the above notwithstanding, yes, I believe you're almost certainly right... and correct, too.

 

Thanks, but...

Alas!

I'm NOT always fair; my diatribes against the Muslim World are nothing but bias and spleen venting.

(Though I STILL maintain that, as a Jew, I KNOW who my enemies ARE because they tell me so at every reasonable opportunity...)