December 19, 2004
60% JUSTICE:
President Bush and the court: What kind of justices will he nominate? (Stuart Taylor Jr., December 19, 2004, San Diego Union Tribune)
A lot of liberals, and a lot of conservatives, think that President Bush is speaking in code when he says he would nominate to the Supreme Court "strict constructionists" who would "faithfully interpret the law, not legislate from the bench."Just as liberal activist judges have driven millions of moderates into the Republican fold, conservative activist judges could drive them back out. Karl Rove must know this. So must Bush.
After all, didn't Bush once cite Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas as his model justices? And haven't they both voted to overrule Roe v. Wade? To uphold laws making homosexual acts criminal? To outlaw government use of racial preferences? To allow state-sponsored school prayers (at least at graduations and football games)? To require states to subsidize religious instruction (at least in some contexts)? To overrule Miranda v. Arizona? To strike down many federal laws as violating states' rights?
Mr. Taylor is too smart to think such rulings wouldn't be popular with the electorate. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 19, 2004 10:26 AM
Since the media is always giddy about taking polls, here's a question I'd like asked: Find out how many people understand the meaning of overturning "Roe" wouldn't be that it would make abortion illegal in the United States, only that the choice would revert to individual states, as was the case before January 1973.
Since most of the media reports over the years either can't or won't get that distinction right when it comes to talking about the effects of any Supreme Court nominee, odds are the majority in the country will be at least a little vauge about what reversing the decision would do to abortion's legality (and in the bluest of the Blue States, odds are it would do nothing).
Posted by: John at December 19, 2004 12:02 PMExcellent point, John!
I don't want a conservative court intervening with Federal and State laws willy-nilly any more than I want a liberal one doing so. It should interpret its mandate narrowly as its greatest justices, Holmes, Frankfurter and Brandeis all insisted it should. The four clowns who opposed the New Deal on the bench were just as foul as Warren, Douglas and Brennan.
Posted by: Bart at December 19, 2004 12:08 PMJohn: I've been trying to explain that to people for years. Many think Roe "made abortion legal", when in reality it "made it illegal to make abortion illegal." I once read that at the time of Roe about a third of Americans lived in states where it was already legal.
Bart: Really? You have no problem with those sweeping economic policies of FDR's that were ruled unconstitutional, and which would have made the Depression worse if they'd remained?
Posted by: PapayaSF at December 19, 2004 12:54 PMThose policies were not unconstitutional, and in a democratic system the people have the right to get the policies they want. It is for the legislature to rule on their wisdom, not for the judges. Justices were appointed not elected and certainly not annointed and they should not behave as if they were. Star chambers are incompatible with democracy.
Posted by: Bart at December 19, 2004 1:55 PM