Posted on 08/06/2005 12:57:03 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
CHICAGO - Supreme Court nominee John Roberts skipped the American Bar Association's yearly meeting, but big-name conservatives like Kenneth Starr and Theodore Olson were there to promote his credentials.
Roberts' nomination to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is a watershed for lawyers. And with Senate confirmation hearings just a month away, he was the inescapable subject at the meeting of the country's largest lawyers group.
Top conservatives, from Starr and Olson to Reagan administration Attorney General Edwin Meese and Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo, were attending the meeting and serving as unofficial ambassadors on Roberts' behalf.
"For those people who know him and can vouch for his capabilities and his excellence, this is a good opportunity," Meese said.
Roberts' nomination is also being promoted on television, radio and the Internet, with a $1 million campaign by the conservative group Progress for America.
About 10,000 people were in Chicago for the ABA's 128th annual meeting. The group weighs in on all federal judge appointments, with a grade on their qualifications.
A committee has not finished the Roberts' credentials review, but that didn't stop lawyers who are not involved in the process from engaging in their favorite pastime: debating.
"He has covered his tracks well," said Barton Resnicoff of Great Neck, N.Y, while wandering through exhibits of vibrating recliner chairs, custom suit makers and law books.
Said Villanova University law professor Lewis Becker: "Covered his tracks suggests something devious. We don't know that."
Resnicoff responded, "He has taken positions but not taken positions."
Roberts, a 50-year-old federal appeals court judge, went to Washington as a law clerk to Associate Justice William H. Rehnquist in 1980 and never left. The Harvard Law School graduate worked in the administrations of President Reagan and Bush's father, and he became a wealthy private practice appellate lawyer. He has been a judge for two years.
Thousands of pages of documents that have been released so far from Roberts' government service reveal a plucky young man with ardent conservative views but nothing concrete on how he will vote on matters like abortion and the death penalty. O'Connor was a moderate and an influential swing voter.
As a private attorney, Roberts did free legal work for a death row inmate, welfare clients and gay rights activists. But his government memos suggest he would aggressively move to limit civil rights.
Starr, who was solicitor general and Roberts' boss during the first Bush administration, was surrounded at meetings and receptions by people hungry for any tidbit about Roberts.
Olson, another former colleague, was headlining events on Monday and Tuesday, the final days of the meeting.
Roberts is an ABA member but has not been especially active in the group, which has clashed with the Bush White House over presidential war powers and even whether the group should be involved in peer reviews of judges.
In the past, the association has taken stands for abortion rights and a moratorium on capital punishment.
"The ABA has been regarded as a branch of the Democratic Party," said Thomas Merrill, a Columbia Law School professor and a former Roberts' colleague in the government who was at the meeting.
But Merrill said Roberts' successes as a Supreme Court lawyer — he won 25 of the 39 cases he argued there as a private practice and government lawyer — make it easy to sell his credentials to lawyers.
"Even very liberal lawyers would respect that," he said.
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On the Net:
American Bar Association: http://www.aba.net.org
Solicitor General Theodore Olson, is seen in this Dec. 11, 2000, file photo. Big-name conservatives like Kenneth Starr and Theodore Olson lobbied for Supreme Court nominee John Roberts at the American Bar Association's yearly meeting. (AP Photo/Kenneth Lambert,File)
Former Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr pauses during an interview in Rutherford, Calif., in this March 2, 2004, file photo. Big-name conservatives like Kenneth Starr and Theodore Olson lobbied for Supreme Court nominee John Roberts at the American Bar Association's yearly meeting. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg,File)
The Bush Administration refused on Friday to release some documents sought by Democratic lawmakers from Supreme Court nominee John Roberts' work as deputy solicitor general, opening the door for conflict as the Senate votes later this year on his confirmation. Roberts is pictured here during a meeting with Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) in her office on Capitol Hill July 27, 2005. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
?.......The ACLU is the.... 'Left-hand'....of the ABA?
Translation: he won't find "new" civil rights that simply aren't there in the Constitution.
But...how can these dedicated consevatives [Starr, Olson, Meese] be supporting someone who, according to numerous of those here, is a "second Souter"? Hmmm....
Didn't Kenny Boy whitewash the Clinton investigations?
You got that right. If Ken Starr is a conservative, we are screwed.
some have said that...
but, even if true, he had a lot of assists from a bunch of gutless, spineless twats on the Hill in '98, many most prominently still in the Senate to this day.. ;-)
But...how can these dedicated consevatives [Starr, Olson, Meese] be supporting someone who, according to numerous of those here, is a "second Souter"? Hmmm....
Go back and see who supported Souter, Kennedy and O'Connor.
Don't try and level the playing field. As far as they live and breathe, Ann Coulter is the only sage voice in the western World. And is that necessarily what they thought before? Nope. It's just they determined they were going to dislike just about anyone, and anyone that they could use to try to disguise their pre-determined opposition would be elevated.
It isn't to say there aren't good men and women out there that are taking a wait and see approach, but at least they are willing to acknowledge if Ann says one thing, on the other side you have people like Meese and Olsen saying another. While the "souter" crowd ignores ANYTHING that contradicts what they want to believe.
What if one did? How many mentionable mistakes have you made in this lifetime? Should it/they discredit you forever? [You're not one of those perfect people, are you?]
Although Mr. Smith had a list of 20 candidates, including eight men, he never sent it to Mr. Reagan. The attorney general narrowed the list to four women, one of them a moderately conservative Arizona appeals court judge named Sandra Day O'Connor.
Because others on the list had more imposing legal credentials, Judge O'Connor was no sure thing. But she had a friend in court - literally - in William Rehnquist, then an associate justice, whom she had briefly dated when they were both students at Stanford Law School, and the endorsement of her home state senator, Barry Goldwater, then Mr. Conservative of the Republican Party.
What if one did? How many mentionable mistakes have you made in this lifetime? Should it/they discredit you forever? [You're not one of those perfect people, are you?]
This is the only thing about Roberts and his wife that worries me. Every conservative lawyer worth his salt has already dropped his membership in the ABA. Why didn't Roberts and his wife? My son-in-law tells me it's possible his firm kept up his dues, and it would have involved some proactive move on his part to resign membership. My son-in-law's firm doesn't work that way, but he supposed it was possible.
Part of your concern is based on the fact that the ABA is 100% voluntary. It is NOT an official organization but it does have clout because they produce the ONLY model laws for leglators to base real laws, and they do the judicial "grades".
The left wingnuts are very very very entrenched in the ABA. Their diversity section, their family law sections are totally dominated by quota queens and homosexual agenda advocates.
Groups like the federalist society need to start producing model laws and need to start issuing report cards for judicial nominees.
Starr reached the conclusion that Foster killed himself.
Olson refused to take questions about Foster at some legal gathering.
FWIW, Mark Levin is a fan of Starr, Olson and Meese.
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