Blogging is likely to remain light as I teach at an IES seminar here in Gummersbach, Germany, but you never know.
In the meantime, Ryan Sager has an interesting column on the confirmation process in the New York Post called Question the Court. Here is how it begins:
Either judges are fallible human beings, prone to substituting their own biases for sound constitutional reasoning at the clack of a gavel, or they’re cool-blooded automatons, applying the Constitution to specific cases in a way not dissimilar to old punch-card computers.
If they’re computers, a check of the specs should do just fine for vetting a nominee to the Supreme Court like Judge John Roberts (Harvard, check; appearances before the Supreme Court, check).But if they’re human beings — as President Bush and many in his party have made clear when criticizing “activist judges” and a runaway judiciary over the years — then it matters quite a bit what a nominee actually thinks.
About Roberts, so far the American people have been told . . . not much.
Here is how it ends:
Roberts may have more solid “conservative” credentials than, say, David Souter did. But that’s hardly enough reason for the Senate to confirm, essentially, a blank slate.
Roberts should be grilled.
He should be asked his views on everything — from the Second Amendment to the Commerce Clause to the Takings Clause.
And he should answer. We’re not buying a computer. We’re trusting a human being with the care of our Constitution.
What is in between is interesting too.
Comments are closed.