We have been here before: judges--and especially appellate judges, and especially Justices of the Supreme Court--are inevitably confronted with a range of issues on which they must make moral and political judgments, and thus it makes perfectly good sense to evaluate them based on their moral and political views. A particularly powerful case against confirming Judge Roberts has just appeared; I'll quote the conclusory opening and closing paragraphs, and invite readers to consult the full article for the documentation and support:
The most intriguing question about John Roberts is what led him as a young person whose success in life was virtually assured by family wealth and academic achievement to enlist in a political campaign designed to deny opportunities for success to those who lacked his advantages. It is a question of great relevance to Roberts's candidacy for the Supreme Court. As the late Charles Black has written, no serious person is under the illusion that "a judge's judicial work is not influenced...by his sense, sharp or vague, of where justice lies in respect to the great issues of his time."
After a privileged upbringing in an Indiana suburb, attendance at an exclusive, expensive private school, high ranking at the undergraduate and law schools of Harvard, and clerkships with Federal Appeals Judge Henry Friendly and Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist, John Roberts took a job in the Reagan administration. There he joined in its efforts to dismantle the civil rights gains of the 1960s and 1970s....
The record made by John Roberts in his decade of public service clearly documents his single-minded focus on limiting legal protections and opportunities for African-Americans, Latinos, alien children, people with disabilities, women, and others.
There are reasons, still, to hope that as a judge he will be neither more nor less conservative than the late Chief Justice Rehnquist, which also means he will not be as venal and dangerous as, say, Justice Thomas. Within the next two years, we should have a fairly clear idea where he stands.
Meanwhile, tomorrow, the alleged President will nominate a successor to Associate Justice O'Connor. If he nominates Janice Brown, Edith Jones, Michael Luttig, or Priscilla Owen, there will be, justifiably, a ferocious confirmation battle, the outcome of which may well determine whether the U.S. will be a free society in the decades ahead (the U.S., of course, is not a just society, so at least that's off the table as an issue!).
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