Sleight of Hand and the Supreme Court
After a couple of weeks of highly-publicized screening, W finally came up with his pick for Justice O'Connor's Supreme Court seat--an esteemed legal scholar and recent appointee to the DC Court of Appeals named John Roberts Jr. The good news: he is by all accounts a competent jurist and a nice person. Considering that the last Republican pick for the Supreme Court was Clarence Thomas, that's a relief. In years of court-watching, I have known the Supreme Court to turn liberals into conservatives and conservatives into liberals, but I have never known it to turn a hack into a competent jurist. Roberts, apparently, not only believes in stare decisis, he can spell it.
The middling news: he does believe in stare decisis, and has stated that Roe v. Wade is the law of the land and that's that. On the other hand, back when he was working in the Solicitor General's office, he did write a brief urging the reversal of Roe. I've written briefs espousing weirder positions than that, and didn't necessarily endorse their premises, so I don't know that that means anything. And Roberts is logistically an ideal pick because he has already been through one senatorial confirmation, which he passed with flying colors, but he hasn't been on the bench long enough to leave much of a paper trail.
The bad news: his wife (also a lawyer, which I guess is kind of good news) is a leader of a major women's "pro-life" organization. The Republicans are really pleased with this appointment. The head of Operation Rescue is pleased with this appointment. That's scary.
And the news management news: Bush floated a host of names of women and hispanics before making his choice, and apparently thinks that he deserves credit from minorities, women, and in particular Laura, for having done that even if all we wind up with is another white guy. (We will presumably never know if he spends the next month sleeping on the couch.) He played 20 Questions with the press for several days in a really obnoxiously coy manner guaranteed to get their attention off of Karl Rove (see yesterday's blog) just in time. He can keep on using the nomination for the same purpose until the confirmation hearings are over, possibly all the way to the first Monday in October. That's really scary.
The middling news: he does believe in stare decisis, and has stated that Roe v. Wade is the law of the land and that's that. On the other hand, back when he was working in the Solicitor General's office, he did write a brief urging the reversal of Roe. I've written briefs espousing weirder positions than that, and didn't necessarily endorse their premises, so I don't know that that means anything. And Roberts is logistically an ideal pick because he has already been through one senatorial confirmation, which he passed with flying colors, but he hasn't been on the bench long enough to leave much of a paper trail.
The bad news: his wife (also a lawyer, which I guess is kind of good news) is a leader of a major women's "pro-life" organization. The Republicans are really pleased with this appointment. The head of Operation Rescue is pleased with this appointment. That's scary.
And the news management news: Bush floated a host of names of women and hispanics before making his choice, and apparently thinks that he deserves credit from minorities, women, and in particular Laura, for having done that even if all we wind up with is another white guy. (We will presumably never know if he spends the next month sleeping on the couch.) He played 20 Questions with the press for several days in a really obnoxiously coy manner guaranteed to get their attention off of Karl Rove (see yesterday's blog) just in time. He can keep on using the nomination for the same purpose until the confirmation hearings are over, possibly all the way to the first Monday in October. That's really scary.
posted by WiredSisters at 9:17 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home