Posted on 07/21/2005 10:30:51 AM PDT by BaghdadBarney
No, not Greg Kinnear or Dan Quayle. Not talking about his looks. Talking about the kind of justice a Justice Roberts would be. Reading through the long profile in today's New York Times confirmed what has sounded right to me all along: Roberts sounds a lot like Justice John Harlan. Harlan was a superb lawyer, possibly the best lawyer to sit on the Court in this century. He was very deeply respectful of the Court and the Constitution, non-doctrinaire but still principled and coherent — unlike almost every other justice who has, like Harlan and evidently like Roberts, eschewed grand theories of interpretation. Harlan of course was with the majority in Griswold. That's the case which (as George and Tubbs just wrote in the dead-tree NR) started us down the primrose path of "privacy" jurisprudence. Harlan did not live long enough to put an oar into Roe's water. It really is anyone's guess what he might have done there. The weakness in Harlan's work — and it is the question about Roberts and Roe — is this: When conventional legal reasoning runs out or is indeterminate, where does one turn? This does not happen everyday on the Court. It happens a lot less, as a matter of fact, than liberals contend. But it happens more often than most conservatives allow. Now, conventional legal reasoning would be enough to do the right thing about abortion — if this were 1973. Even pro-choice lawyers and professors were aghast at the slipshod quality of Blackmun's opinion. (Maybe that means Harlan would have dissented. Who can say for sure; even sober lawyers such as Lewis Powelll went south in Roe.) The question now is reversing Roe. Here I think we should be very, very cautious about where we think a Justice Roberts would go. (Note well: I do not know Roberts at all and write this solely based upon what I have read recently about his judicial philosophy.) Dedication to legal craft, the internal logic of law, the Court's role in our system, respect for precedent — all the things that Roberts clearly does (and should) value are themselves indeterminate when it comes to this question. Probably, they tilt towards the joint opinion by the three Republican in Casey. I think that to reverse Roe today a justice has to dip into a realm which, to date, John Roberts suggests is not within his judicial comfort zone: moral truth. Precedent matters a lot most of the time. But not when we are talking about fundamental matters of justice. To see that abortion is a fundamental injustice requires moral vision, which John Roberts no doubt possesses. But a justice with the requisite moral vision has to have a stable and coherent account, too, of just how moral truth is part of constitutional law. A justice has to have a cogent reply to the standing twentieth-century judicial accusation against what I have just proposed: Judges must never impose their own moral predilections upon the law.
They are a minority, a tiny one in fact, however in their own delusional minds they think they represent a vast majority of conservatives.
If Roberts is good enough for Mark Levin and Laura Ingraham, then he's good enough for me. Those two have a great understanding of the issue, and some personal experience with the candidate himself.
Agreed.
IMO, if they really wish to know who Robert's is, and I have hesitated to state this because I know their agenda, Roberts is G.W.B. had he chosen a career in law rather than drifted a few years then chosen the life of a politician where sometimes concessions are made in interest of a larger goal.
This statement of course will send them if they latch onto it into hysteria bringing up CFR. Except G.W.B. is a politician, he calculated the Court would overturn, it was a mistake but not an example of G.W.'s thought on the matter absent political calculations.
Robert's is not Rehnquist. He is not Thomas. He is not O'Connor. He is not Stevens. He is not Souter. He is not Scalia. He is representative of G.W.B's view of the Court in the American process. Those that hate G.W. will be furious. Those that have trust in the President's vision of the Court comforted.
Nor is he his father. G.W.B. is not the sort to leave this to chance. He is 100% certain in his judgement of this man or he would not have nominated him.
Great post.
Roe could be overturned instantly by simply recognizing that Roe erred in calling the fetus a 'potential life' instead of what it was: human life.
There are other ways to overturn Roe. Maybe 50 ways to do so. Incremental chipping away is not the way to go with Roe.
It is scary indeed that we aren't even sure that Roberts would overturn the worst Supreme Court decision since Plessy v Ferguson. But not as scary as the fact that - EVEN IF HE JOINED SCALIA, THOMAS AND REHNQUIST - there is a court majority left to uphold it.
"Roberts is a Souter. Who else would a liberal Republican like Bush nominate? George H. W. Bush set the precedent. Bush isn't pro-life anyway, never has been. He has always supported the "but" position, as in against abortion except in the case of rape, incest, or life of mother. He also allowed federal funding on destroyed stem cell lines."
Okay ... This gets my vote for dumbest post of the day.
For the record, Thomas was *NOT* a sure thing.
He was a protoge of Senator Danforth, a nice man and one of the more 'wobbly' Senators out there.
We had no reason to expect Thomas to be as good as he is, and no reason to expect Kennedy to be as bad as he is ... maybe its the confrimation process that did it. Maybe Thomas' independent streak helps him stay away from the DC Kool-Aid.
Frankly, Roberts is a bit more of a sure thing, because so many other conservatives know him personally.
An exhibit at Madam Tusauds?
A Stepford Judge?
A Pod Person from the planet Judas?
Yeah, gave us that other well-known left-winger Thomas too!
He looks like Lee Atwater.
Maria Shriver and her Mother are involved with FFL (especially Eunice Shriver), but it doesn't mean, they or their husbands are conservative.
*GASP*
The same Senator Danforth critical of the religious right and Bush and procedures of the Bush administration in the WOT was Thomas' mentor? Clearly he's overdue to "grow" as a Justice any day now.
I'm just no impressed by the weak arguments the detractor's have raised thus far.
What does conservative contrarian Howard Phillips say about Judge Roberts? Phillips was a rare bird: he detected the liberalism of both Sandra Day O'Connor and David Souter when hardly anyone else wanted to think that these two Republican appointees could be liberal.
Unfortunately, SCOTUS likes to bind itself to precedent, no matter how flawed those precedents might be. Which means they will eviscerate Roe without ever actually overturning it, IMO.
You're right. I hate that. For some folks, no matter who Bush nominates will be the wrong choice. Roberts, so far, sounds okay to me. We'll have to wait and see but I'm not going to bash the guy.
Jay Sekulow likes him, too.
I don't know. Why did the rabid left wing groups oppose Souter? Because he was nominated by a Republican. It's the only reason they recognize.
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