June 17, 2005
Happy Father’s Day
[Edward Whelan 06/17 04:02 PM]
Before Justice Ginsburg succeeds in outlawing it, and in order to reinforce “traditional sex-based differences in parental roles” (at least insofar as those traditional differences reflect the wonderful and natural complementary differences between mother and father), may I wish all readers who have been blessed with the joys and responsibilities of fatherhood a very happy Father’s Day!
Fittingly enough, I suppose, I will spend a good chunk of Father’s Day weekend preparing my testimony for a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing next Thursday (before the Constitution subcommittee) on Roe v. Wade. Everyone ought to make a practice of reading Roe and its companion case, Doe v. Bolton, every so often. It’s truly amazing how lousy they are. And everyone likewise ought to read the joint opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) to see what a grandiose misunderstanding of the Supreme Court’s role the three Justices (O’Connor, Kennedy, and Souter) who signed their names to the lead opinion have.
Chief Justice Breyer?
[Edward Whelan 06/17 12:49 PM]
At the same CED forum today at which the Zogby poll results were released, AEI’s Norm Ornstein stated that President Bush can choose between “temperate” nominees to the Supreme Court and “in-your-face” nominees. As “temperate” nominees, in the event the chief justice resigns, Ornstein cited elevating Stephen Breyer to chief justice and nominating John Roberts as associate justice. His example of “in-your-face” nominees was Scalia as chief justice and Janice Rogers Brown as associate justice.
I have a great deal of respect for Justice Breyer’s intellect (as well as for Norm Ornstein’s). But the idea that it would be “temperate”--as opposed to abject surrender--for the President to appoint as chief justice someone who is (among other things) the author of the ghastly partial-birth abortion ruling in Stenberg v. Carhart, a former staffer to Ted Kennedy, and an appointee of Presidents Clinton and Carter is, I think, an indication of how unhinged even otherwise very reasonable Democrats have become on judicial nominations.
One can, of course, argue that it makes little difference whether Breyer is an associate justice or chief justice, as he has only a single vote either way and the powers of the chief are not considerable. But the symbolic significance of elevating Breyer--and thereby crediting and rewarding his unconstrained understanding of the Supreme Court’s role--would be devastating.
President Bush has won two elections in which he campaigned on the promise that he would appoint judges like Scalia and Thomas. If he is to elevate an existing justice to chief justice, Scalia and Thomas are his two alternatives.
Good News From Zogby
[Edward Whelan 06/17 10:27 AM]
A Zogby International poll of American business leaders, released this morning at a Committee for Economic Development forum on judicial nominations, contains some encouraging results. (The stated margin of error is +/- 6.3%.)
#*#68% of business leaders view the confirmation of President Bush’s judicial nominees as important to their business.
#*#Notwithstanding significant (61%) support for the Gang of 14’s anti-cloture reform agreement, a full 46% agree that “[i]t would have been better for the Republicans to enact the nuclear option, preventing filibusters on any judicial nominees.” 52% disagreed. (Zogby characterized this as even, as the results are well within the margin of error—i.e., the real sentiment could be 52-46 the other way.)
#*#73% believe that both parties should agree to consider judges “solely on their qualifications, and not their ideologies.”
#*#71% agree that Senate Democrats were “abusing the use of the filibuster.”
#*#67% disagree with the proposition that Democrats “have a right and obligation to ensure that only moderate judges are appointed.”
Will He Stay?
[Kathryn Jean Lopez 06/17 05:27 AM]
AP:
William H. Rehnquist was tapped to be chief justice 19 years ago Friday, and while conventional wisdom says his combination of age and cancer won't allow him to stay around for a 20th, some court watchers are not so sure.
They point out that he looks better than he had been, is keeping a regular schedule and, maybe most important of all, still loves his work. All that adds up to the possibility - still slim - that he'll confound everyone and stay put, perhaps for another full term.
June 16, 2005
Boyle confirmed by judiciary committee, 10-8 party-line vote
[Kathryn Jean Lopez 06/16 10:44 AM]
June 15, 2005
No Threat to New Deal
[Jonathan Adler 06/15 03:37 PM]
That’s the conclusion of this Federalist Society White Paper. The bottom line: Adding another justice (or two or three) who agrees with either Justice Scalia or Justice Thomas won’t produce a roll-back of the New Deal.
Filibuster Strategy
[Sean Rushton 06/15 01:35 PM]
With conservative ideology off the table as an extraordinary circumstance warranting judicial filibuster, Senate Democrats may be returning to the “Miguel Estrada strategy” of justifying filibuster with requests for more information, even when there is no specific issue they are probing and the information is confidential work product or protected by executive privilege.
Judge Boyle's 14-Year Trek
[Edward Whelan 06/15 01:34 PM]
District Judge Terrence Boyle’s 14-year trek to the Fourth Circuit is set for an important step tomorrow.
Boyle, who was first nominated by President George H.W. Bush in 1991, was renominated to the Fourth Circuit by President George W. Bush on May 9, 2001. He finally received his Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on March 3, 2005.
Tomorrow the Judiciary Committee is expected to debate and vote on his nomination, which (in the event of a favorable vote) would then be reported to the full Senate for action.
Re: Analyzing the Griffith Roll-Call Vote
[Edward Whelan 06/15 12:05 PM]
Beldar suggests that genuine concern over Thomas Griffith’s failure to keep his law license active might explain the votes of “moderate” Democrats against his nomination. As for the liberal votes for him:
Their votes were cynically political, a recognition that the Griffith fight was a loser for their side; and as such, solely to reduce the public perception of monolithic Democratic opposition to Dubya's judicial nominees, they threw their votes to the "aye" side without regard to Mr. Griffith's individual merits and problems.
A partial alternative explanation for the bizarre vote pattern might be that the liberal Democrats who voted for Griffith may have come to know him and respect him during his time as Senate legal counsel (1995-1999), whereas the moderates (with the exception of Byrd, and possibly a short overlap for Bayh) arrived in the Senate after Griffith had left.
Ohio and Judges
[Shannen W. Coffin 06/15 10:23 AM]
One reader writes in to comment that Ohio voters hvae been fed up with activism by the judiciary for some time:
One thing missing from the discussion on Dewine is that Ohio voters in 2004 voted overwhelmingly against Judicial Activism. It looks like the anger lingers...
Here's an abstract of an Editorial from the Columbus Dispatch on 11/5/2004
(the rest can be purchased here :)
"The voters' choice on Tuesday of Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer, Justice
Terrence O'Donnell and Judge Judith Ann Lanzinger for the Ohio Supreme Court was a sound rejection of the judicial activism that hurt this state for far too
long."
The Sins of the Father
[Shannen W. Coffin 06/15 09:06 AM]
K-Lo's early a.m. post on The Corner this morning about Pat Dewine losing his Republican primary in Ohio deserves further discussion. Dewine, a former frontrunner for the seat and son of Senator Mike Dewine, faded worse than Giacomo down the stretch at the Belmont, finishing fourth with 12% of the vote. There are often multiple factors at work here, but it is hard to believe that Senator Dewine's opposition to filibuster reform, otherwise known as the McCain Mutiny, didn't do his son in. Conservatives turned on a dime against Dewine and nominated Jean Schmidt for the heavily Republican District. Thanks Dad. Pappa Dewine can't be feeling too comfortable about his reelection chances in 2006.
June 14, 2005
Analyzing the Griffith Roll Call Vote
[Edward Whelan 06/14 04:50 PM]
In the 73-24 vote confirming Thomas Griffith’s nomination to the D.C. Circuit, 20 Democrats voted for confirmation and 24 voted against. (Of the Republicans, 53 voted aye, and two weren’t present, and independent Jeffords also didn’t vote.)
It should come as no surprise to learn that Bayh, Byrd, Johnson, Landrieu, and Salazar were on one side, and Biden, Dodd, Durbin, Levin, and Schumer on the other. But what was a surprise—to me, at least—is that the former set of five more moderate Democrats voted against Griffith’s nomination, and the latter set of five very liberal Democrats voted for the nomination.
What might explain this? One theory would be that even liberal Democrats are learning that their obstructionism is hurting them politically. But they also know that their activist groups will go bonkers if there are too many Democrat votes for certain nominees. So the party leadership, in order to enable liberals to gain some political cover with their constituents by voting for Griffith, pressures more moderate Democrats to vote against.
Perhaps someone closer to the Griffith battle would have some insights on this theory or would have an alternative explanation for the bizarre vote pattern.
Circuit Breakers
[Shannen Coffin 06/14 10:51 AM]
The Griffith confirmation continues the remaking of the D.C. Circuit, considered by many to be the most powerful appellate court short of the Supreme Court in the country. The court was more or less equally divided between Democrat and Republican appointees at the beginning of W's first term. But given some major retirements and three Bush appointments, the makeup of the Court is now 7-4 in favor of Republican appointees. With the impending retirement of former Chief Judge Harry Edwards, a Carter appointee, and the pending nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, the balance could shift even more. Democrats on the Hill are obviously keenly aware of this shift, which is likely why, as Ed Whelan reported yesterday, Kavanaugh's confirmation may be held up a while.
73-24
[Kathryn Jean Lopez 06/14 10:40 AM]
Thomas Griffith was just confirmed by the Senate (roll call should be up here in a few)
ConfirmThis.Com
[Jonathan Adler 06/14 05:36 AM]
The Legal Times reports that liberal interest groups began preparing for a Supreme Court judicial confirmation fight by purchasing potentially useful web domain names, including those likely to be sought by supporters of the President's nominees, such as supportluttig.com and confirmroberts.com
June 13, 2005
Batson Lives
[Andrew McCarthy 06/13 06:27 PM]
A number of decisions from the Supremes today, including two reversing murder convictions under the Batson doctrine, which holds that peremptory challenges during jury selection may not be exercised in a racially discriminatory manner. In one, Johnson v. California, Justices Scalia and Thomas part company--Justice Thomas being the sole dissenter arguing the proposition that Batson left the states lots of flexibility as to compliance with its test for determining whether a Batson claim is valid. The other decision, Miller-El v. Dretke, reversed a capital murder conviction (Thomas and Scalia were together in dissent, along with Chief Justice Rehnquist). It is lengthy and requires more study before responsible comment.
RE: Kavanaugh's Nomination on Indefinite Hold
[Edward Whelan 06/13 10:57 AM]
Another very knowledgeable Senate staffer tells me that Harry Edwards will be taking senior status by the end of 2005 and that Kavanaugh’s nomination will be moved at that point. This same staffer tells me that four Republicans – Grassley, Hatch, Kyl, and Sessions – support the hold.
Kavanaugh's Nomination on Indefinite Hold
[Edward Whelan 06/13 09:49 AM]
Bad news for Brett Kavanaugh: Perhaps I’ve missed it in the papers, but I am reliably informed by a very knowledgeable Senate staffer that the Senate Judiciary Committee is holding Kavanaugh’s nomination until another vacancy develops on the D.C. Circuit.
I gather that this hold has something to do with the longstanding dispute over whether the D.C. Circuit needs 12 active judges. Janice Rogers Brown became the 10th active member of that court, and Tom Griffith is in line to become the 11th.
I haven’t heard which Republican senator (or, possibly, senators) on the Judiciary Committee is combining with Democrats to hold Kavanaugh’s nomination. I do have a guess in mind, and it’s not Chairman Specter.
I have no information on whether another vacancy is likely soon. Does anyone?
On Noxious Knuckleheads
[Edward Whelan 06/13 09:48 AM]
It is, I suppose, an occupational risk of blogging that vandals in the blogosphere might distort one’s arguments and attack one’s integrity. This past weekend an anonymous blogger hiding behind the moniker “blue slip” mugged me. I don’t intend to make a practice of responding to noxious knuckleheads, but I’ll make an exception here.
After taking some potshots at Ramesh, Blue Slip attacks Bench Memos as “beyond dishonest”. As the sole support for his attack, he cites a recent post in which I stated that “no conceivable nominee will have the record of extremism that nominee Ginsburg had, but will instead surely display a much more sound understanding of the role of judging in a constitutional republic.”
There are a number of unintentionally amusing aspects to Blue Slip’s attack. For starters, Blue Slip writes for a blog “focused only on full disclosure,” yet his blog discloses neither his name nor anything else about him. Second, while his own credentials are a mystery, Blue Slip thinks it clever argumentation to assert that his points “may be above” me and are “probably all over [my] head.”
Third, Blue Slip makes no effort to understand my point. The hyperlink in my statement of course contained my supporting evidence, yet Blue Slip does not address, and evidently did not even read, that evidence.
The broader point that I have sought to establish through several posts is that, notwithstanding Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s reputation as a moderate, she had at the time of her nomination (and has manifested on the Court since her appointment) a record that is in many respects strikingly extremist. Yet she was promptly confirmed by the Senate, with overwhelming Republican support. That history therefore provides helpful context for assessing Senate Democrats’ treatment of President Bush’s judicial nominees.
I have never maintained that Ginsburg’s record was uniformly extremist. There are certain areas, like criminal law, where the political label of “moderate” or at least “moderate liberal” more or less fits. But these areas should not obscure her extremism on “culture war” issues nor her unconstrained view of the role of a judge.
Blue Slip’s basic argument is that Ginsburg is “conservative” compared to “true judicial liberals” like Justices Brennan and Marshall. The utter irrelevance of his argument can perhaps most readily be captured by an analogy: Let’s say that I stated that Illinois is closer to the Mississippi River than California is. Blue Slip’s rebuttal is that Hawaii is even farther away than California.
Blue Slip’s closing suggestion that my criticism of Ginsburg is somehow anti-Semitic would be laughable if it were not so contemptible.
Poor comprehension, laziness, arrogance, name-calling. Quite a combination. No wonder Blue Slip hides behind his anonymity.
One More Pryor Gush
[Kathryn Jean Lopez 06/13 08:02 AM]
And, Rick, he's an model of how a religious person can live a principled public life--and be successful. This is from a Mobile Register piece on Friday:
"I can think of no greater honor or weightier responsibility for an American lawyer than to serve as a federal judge who is bound to support and defend the Constitution of our beloved nation," Pryor said in the statement, released through his Birmingham office. "By God's grace, I will continue to give this duty my best effort."
Pryor shocked people with his honesty and refusal to back down, despite attacks (which Dems made about religion). The president stood behind him. And now, he's been confirmed by the Senate. Sometimes the right thing does happen, because good men don't give up.
Pryor's Courage
[Richard W. Garnett 06/13 07:58 AM]
I agree with my Bench Memos colleagues that the NYT profile of Judge Pryor Friday was a fair one. I think it is worth emphasizing, though, how wonderfully refreshing--and courageous--it was for Judge Pryor, when invited to distance himself from his previous characterization of Roe v. Wade as an "abomination," refused: "No," the judge replied evenly, "I stand by that comment." He had to have known that, by adhering to his view, he risked losing the votes of more than a few Republican senators.
There is another aspect of Judge Pryor's courage that goes unnoticed, even in the Times profile. The profiles notes that Judge Pryor is a Roman Catholic. (Of course, Pryor's religion was made an issue, by both sides, during his confirmation fight, in regrettable fashion). The article does not mention, though--and I have not really heard others mention this--that for a Roman Catholic public figure in Alabama (the home, remember, of Hugo Black, who made his name defending a man charged with killing a Catholic priest) to stand up to Judge Moore's antics and showboating with the Ten Commandments is also quite courageous. I have no doubt that, in some quarters, Pryor's refusal to go along with Moore's defiance triggered nasty, and even anti-Catholic, grumblings. Here, for example, is one blogospheric commentator and Moore partisan accusing Pryor of being a "secular humanist." Here, another blogger laments Pryor's "treachery" in the stand-off between the "Catholic" Pryor and the "Christian" Moore. And here, another enlightened "conservative" commentator calls Pryor a "turncoat Judas."
Judge Pryor is, in my judgment, a credit to the law, and to the bench.
"his claim is not getting more persuasive with repetition"
[Kathryn Jean Lopez 06/13 07:39 AM]
Ramesh on that Rosen piece.
Re: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics
[Andy McCarthy 06/13 05:27 AM]
The always amusing Beldar understands Rosen/NYTimes arithmetic about as well as I do.
June 12, 2005
Novak on Nominations
[Jonathan Adler 06/12 03:38 PM]
Bob Novak's Sunday column reports:
The next two Senate test votes on judicial confirmations are likely to be cast on White House aide Brett Kavanaugh and U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle of North Carolina, both named to federal appellate courts. Kavanaugh and Boyle are not included in the bipartisan compromise on confirmation. If Democrats refuse to end debate on them, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is expected to invoke the "nuclear option" to confirm them by majority vote.
A footnote: Michigan Appeals Court Judge Henry Saad, one of two judicial nominees sacrificed in the compromise agreement, may not even have the 50 votes needed for majority approval, much less the 60 senators needed for cloture.
Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics
[Andy McCarthy 06/12 03:33 PM]
GWU Prof. Jeffrey Rosen’s article (“Center Court”) in the New York Times Magazine today on the filibuster deal and the future of the Supreme Court is a potpourri of just about everything that is wrong with how the Left looks at the judiciary these days.
The set-up is a study in the disingenuous use of statistics. Rosen notes that “68 percent of [Quinnipiac opinion poll] respondents said that Congress ‘does not have the same priorities for the country’ as they do[,]” while 44 percent “approved of the way the Supreme Court is handling its job” – a bloc that Rosen repeatedly calls a “plurality” so he can treat it throughout the rest of his article as if it were a decisive majority. Of course, it actually means a true majority (and, 56 percent, a solid one) did not indicate approval of the Supreme Court’s performance. Rosen blows past this inconvenient fact since it destroys his thesis that Americans are thrilled with the current level of judicial governance and don’t want those bad Republicans to muck things up with nuclear options or, heaven help us, conservative appointees.
Even assuming for argument’s sake, moreover, that these two metrics were enlightening in some sense, they are measuring two very different things. Asking whether someone has the same priorities as you do is vastly different from asking whether you approve of the job he is doing. The pope and I do not share the same priorities, but I think he is doing a good job. Joe Torre and Yankee fans share the same priorities, but Yankee fans probably think he is doing a lousy job right now. Nonetheless, Rosen misleadingly portrays the questions as if they measured the same thing (i.e., as if the same question had been asked about both Congress and the Court) and that the responses mean the Court is 12 percent more popular than Congress. Thus, even on its own terms, his statistics-based argument is invalid – and even if it had any validity he is spinning it ludicrously because the most we could properly deduce from it is that the Court is somewhat less unpopular than Congress, not that Americans are delighted with the Court.
More to the point, this particular reliance on poll numbers betrays how badly the Left misperceives the proper role of the Court. Congress is a political branch. Its performance, if it is performing well, should line up with the priorities of Americans because its job is to represent them – which means actuating their wishes or changing their wishes by persuasion if the members of Congress think the people are ill-informed on some issue or another. Further, because the U.S. has a vast, diverse population, it cannot be said to have a single, identifiable set of priorities – it instead has multiple, competing priorities. Viewed in that light, 32 percent priority-sharing may not be all that bad.
The Court, on the other hand, has a much different job. Its members are given life tenure precisely because interpreting the law is not a matter of thrusting a wet finger in the air to divine which way the popular winds are blowing. If a document like the Constitution or a statute says two plus two equals four, but the public (or, more likely, elite opinion) wants it to equal five, the Court’s job is not to shuck-and-jive to make five. It is to say: "The answer is four. If you want it to be five you need the people whose job that is – namely, the Congress which is supposed to be responsive to your desires – to change the document. Don't ask us judges to pretend it says something it doesn’t."
That, naturally, probably would not be a “popular” decision as such things are inanely measured. It would, however, be a correct decision. But it might even be popular, too, depending on how the poll question was asked.
That is, let's say respondents were asked: “Did you approve of the Supreme Court’s recent decision that two plus two did not equal five?” A majority might well say no – some because they don’t have enough civics education to understand that the court’s function is not to figure out what’s popular and impose it; some, sadly, because they do have what passes for a modern civics education and think the court’s job is to “evolve” us no matter what the objective words of the law may say.
But let's instead say respondents were asked: “Do you think the court’s job is to apply the law as it is written and leave it to the people, through their elected representatives, to make any necessary changes in the law?” I imagine a considerable majority – i.e., even more than a “plurality”! – would answer “yes.” And even if I’m wrong, that would not change the fact that the question properly frames the institutional roles of the judiciary and the legislature. Thus, the answers would tell us a lot more about the populace than about either congress or the court.
