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Written by Thomas Peters
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Thursday, 20 May 2010 11:23 |
There is, once again, an air of inevitability about the confirmation of a President Obama nominee to the Supreme Court. I have heard some in the conservative movement say that it would be best to let Elena Kagan be confirmed lest her appointment fail and the President nominate someone more problematic than her a replacement.
At the same time, numerous pro-life organizations are doing their best to oppose Kagan’s nomination, to highlight her extreme views on this issue, and to provide Senators with the legal rational for opposing her nomination.
Some of these pro-life activities, however, feel perfunctory, and many of the forces who oppose her nomination because she supports the flawed decision rendered in Roe v. Wade would be perfectly content to see her nomination sunk by extraneous factors (her negative views about first amendment rights, for instance).
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Last Updated on Thursday, 27 May 2010 10:51 |
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Written by Robert P. George
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Monday, 10 May 2010 22:44 |
Published by the American Principles Project: http://tinyurl.com/rpgonkagan
In Elena Kagan, President Obama has nominated a person of great intellectual attainment, and unquestioned personal integrity. In these important respects, she is a nominee much in the mode of both nominees of the President's predecessor, George W. Bush, namely: John Roberts and Samuel Alito. There are some who argue that intellectual ability and personal probity are sufficient qualifications for someone to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. President Obama disagrees with that position, and I believe he is right to reject it. In explaining his decisions to vote against the confirmation of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito, then-Senator Obama explained that a suitable justice must have a sound view of the role of the courts in our Constitutional system. Again, I agree.
Where I believe President Obama errs is in his view of the proper role of the courts. In envisaging courts as agents of social change unconstrained by the text, logic, structure, and original understanding of the Constitution, he misunderstands the important but limited role of judges in our constitutional system. The judicial office is not a license for jurists to usurp the authority of legislators, or impose on the nation their preferred ideas about social justice or personal rights. When judges do that, in the name of a right to abortion, for example, or to redefine marriage or drive religion from public life, they betray the Constitution in whose name they purport to act.
So, Solicitor General Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court provides an important opportunity for a national conversation on the proper role of the judiciary in our system of democratic republican government. Senators, in particular, should follow the President's lead and advice in questioning the nominee closely about her view of the role of judges, and oppose confirmation if they find that she espouses a view contrary to the one they believe to be proper under the Constitution. To this end, as Kagan herself noted in relation to previous Supreme Court nominees, it is imperative that she answer questions about particular issues, including abortion, marriage, and the role of religious faith in American public life. For her to decline to answer such questions would be not only to contradict herself but to undermine the valuable opportunity for a serious discussion of the role of courts that her nomination presents.
Because I know Solicitor General Kagan to be a person of integrity, I do not expect her to attempt to evade questions whose legitimacy she affirmed when the nominees of previous presidents were under consideration. Moreover, with an overwhelming Democratic majority in the United States Senate at the moment, her candor would be unlikely to place her confirmation in jeopardy.
As Dean of Harvard Law School, Kagan's openness toward the serious engagement of competing points of view led to discussions that enriched the intellectual life of the community she served. By making possible a serious discussion of the vital question of the role of courts in our constitutional system she is in a position to confer an equally-valuable gift on the nation.
This is no time for her to go silent.
Robert P. George is the Founder of the American Principles Project. He previously served as a Judicial Fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States, as well as on the United States Commission on Civil Rights, and was a member of the President's Council on Bioethics. |
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Last Updated on Monday, 10 May 2010 22:50 |
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Bowman on The Advice and Consent of the Senate |
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Written by Thomas Peters
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Friday, 23 April 2010 09:00 |
Bowman's back! APP's favorite Friday contributor, who also writes at Prolix Patriot, takes a more serious tone this week as he contributes his thoughts to our ongoing discussion about the upcoming nomination debate over a new Supreme Court Justice.
The Advice and Consent of the Senate
We do not yet know whom President Obama will nominate to the Supreme Court, but the dark mood of the country and Scott Brown’s election must surely be on his mind as he ponders his choice. Unlike health care reform, there is no reconciliation, no deem-and-pass, nor any other parliamentary maneuvers to skirt the objections of a unified and energized Republican minority. No Supreme Court nomination has ever been filibustered, but as the Los Angeles Times reported last week, the GOP seems eager for a fight.
Liberal commentators on the Huffington Post sneered today at the suggestion that Obama nominate a centrist, but the political calculus shows that the President may not have much of a choice. Democrats ought to know better than to criticize Republicans for using strong-arm tactics in the Senate to try to stymie a president’s Supreme Court pick, precisely because they have done so with varying degrees of success for every Republican president since Nixon. The name of the Democrats' greatest triumph, Robert Bork, has even become a verb to describe the practice.
An academic study by Timothy Johnson and Jason Roberts at the University of Minnesota found that “presidents, even when faced with a hostile Senate, can successfully secure confirmation of their chosen nominee.” The study’s authors go on to conclude that “presidents often rely on their wealth of political capital so that they can choose someone closer to their preferred choice than the Senate may actually like." However, their study fails to take the president’s approval ratings into account.
This is especially relevant in the case of Justice Stevens' replacement. Obama is exhausted from a long and politically costly fight over health care and his Gallup job approval rating has sunk to new lows. Faced with a hostile Senate, Obama’s political capital meter is hovering somewhere near empty. Democrats are trying to win back lost ground by punishing Wall Street in a belated and misguided appeal to populist anger, but an exceedingly liberal Supreme Court nomination will do nothing but reignite the acrimonious debate over abortion that ended Bart Stupak’s career and nearly ended ObamaCare.
As election day draws ever nearer, changing the national conversation back to abortion would be like a blaring radio or a blinding floodlight as the nation tries to recover from the collective hangover of health care reform. The safe bet is that Obama will not take the political risk of forcing his party to drink another round of spiked kool-aid. Ironically, Stevens was himself appointed as a moderate by an extremely unpopular president and ended up drifting across the political spectrum. It's about time that Republicans returned the favor.
Mr. Bowman writes from the Commonwealth of Virginia. |
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Last Updated on Friday, 23 April 2010 10:41 |
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Written by William Saunders
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Published by the American Principles Project: http://tinyurl.com/scnreview
Here we go again.
Barrack Obama, unquestionably the most pro-abortion President in history, gets a second bite at the apple.
Not that this was a surprise. For over two years John Paul Stevens has been hinting (loudly) about retiring from the Supreme Court. He had originally promised to do so during a Republican administration – he was nominated by Gerald Ford in 1975 – but…well, as he solemnly told us over the past week, since he has never wavered from his “conservative” principles while the Court has lurched to the right, it was better to leave during the reign of the president he “admires”.
Thus, one year after the retirement of David Souter and the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor as his successor, we are off to the Supreme Court races again.
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 21 April 2010 15:40 |
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