My Sense of the Roberts Confirmation Picture:
It's less than a day since President Bush nominated John Roberts to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, but I wanted to offer some thoughts on how the nomination is playing out so far based both on my reading of the press and blog reactions and my own discussions about these issues with folks in DC.
1) My sense is that most people expect Roberts to sail through. Roberts is widely liked and respected, and there are no obvious red flags. More importantly, from the perspective of many Democrats, Roberts was one of the two or three least objectionable names on the list of a dozen or so possible picks floated by the Bush Administration. The big question had been whether Bush would nominate someone with some Democratic support (which mostly meant McConnell, Roberts, or Gonzales), or someone Democrats saw as a lunatic or Republican hack (Janice Rogers Brown, etc.). Bush has answered that question by picking a safe nominee, someone with considerable Democratic support. And most expect Bush will be rewarded with a fairly straightforward nomination.
2) The interest groups have to make a lot of noise right now, but it's mostly because they see that as their job regardless of who is the candidate. Lots of groups have been given lots of money to fight or support whoever Bush nominates, and that money has to be spent somehow. The spring has been wound very tight, and now we have to let it unwind a bit. But most people I've talked to aren't taking it very seriously, or seeing it as very specific to Roberts.
Of course, all of this may change. These sorts of things are very fluid. But at least the initial sense seems to be that Roberts is in pretty good shape.
1) My sense is that most people expect Roberts to sail through. Roberts is widely liked and respected, and there are no obvious red flags. More importantly, from the perspective of many Democrats, Roberts was one of the two or three least objectionable names on the list of a dozen or so possible picks floated by the Bush Administration. The big question had been whether Bush would nominate someone with some Democratic support (which mostly meant McConnell, Roberts, or Gonzales), or someone Democrats saw as a lunatic or Republican hack (Janice Rogers Brown, etc.). Bush has answered that question by picking a safe nominee, someone with considerable Democratic support. And most expect Bush will be rewarded with a fairly straightforward nomination.
2) The interest groups have to make a lot of noise right now, but it's mostly because they see that as their job regardless of who is the candidate. Lots of groups have been given lots of money to fight or support whoever Bush nominates, and that money has to be spent somehow. The spring has been wound very tight, and now we have to let it unwind a bit. But most people I've talked to aren't taking it very seriously, or seeing it as very specific to Roberts.
Of course, all of this may change. These sorts of things are very fluid. But at least the initial sense seems to be that Roberts is in pretty good shape.
On the Left MoveOn.Org: "In nominating John Roberts, the president has chosen a right wing corporate lawyer and ideologue for the nation's highest court instead of a judge who would protect the rights of the American people....That's why we believe: The Senate must not confirm right-wing corporate lawyer John Roberts to the Supreme Court."
http://political.moveon.org/roberts/
On the Right Ann Coulter: "Souter in Roberts Clothing" "From the theater of the absurd category, the Republican National Committee’s “talking points” on Roberts provide this little tidbit: In the 1995 case of Barry v. Little, Judge Roberts argued—free of charge—before the D.C. Court of Appeals on behalf of a class of the neediest welfare recipients, challenging a termination of benefits under the District’s Public Assistance Act of 1982.”
Link: http://www.anncoulter.org
link?
I was under the impression that Bush didn't "float" any actual names. The only floaters of names of whom I'm aware are Schumer and the media.
I clerked for a conservative/libertarian judge in a federal Circuit--my judge and Roberts ended up competing for, and hiring, roughly the same set of Fed Society, moderate conservative, and libertarian law students and recent grads.
In any event, my hope is that Roberts will be a fairly strong textualist and federalist.
One of the things I like best about Judge Roberts is that he doesn't have a grand overarching interpretive theory for constitutional adjudication and doesn't think it's a good idea to have one, either. Check out these comments from his Court of Appeals confirmation hearings (huge pdf file available here).
Sounds vaguely reminiscent of Farber &Sherry's Desperately Seeking Certainty: The Misguided Quest for Constitutional Foundations, a book that's probably none too popular with the contributors to this blog and which I thought was quite good.
I tell you, the scariest part of this whole process so far was hearing Chuck Schumer, looking like a little mafia don, averring with passion in front of the C-SPAN cameras that nominations to the Supreme Court were "a whole new ball game" because Supreme Court justices make law. He said it several times. This guy very clearly believes he lives in an imperium and is electing a Caesar, or at least a nonumvir.
Both Jefferson and Hamilton rolled over in their graves, no doubt, although perhaps Hamilton more particularly, since Schumer and his regrettable junior lictor -- oops, I mean colleague of course -- represent forcefully the sad decline of republican self-respect in his own state of New York.
I don't think this will work but it will make the hearings loud and messy and please Naral and the Alliance for Justice.