Believe it or not, Senator Schumer is right
By Michael Paranzino (08/26/05)
Whether it is due to short memories or wishful thinking, conservatives are making mistakes in the run-up to Judge Roberts’ confirmation hearings that will come back to haunt our nation in the years ahead.
Let’s start with what should be obvious: the GOP does not have an electoral lock on the White House, meaning that the precedents set now could be used against us as soon as 2009. If something strange happens—say, $4 a gallon gas—a liberal could recapture the White House.
Conservatives, then, should consider what rules we would want to govern President Hillary Clinton’s judicial picks. And if your answer is you want her judges rubber-stamped the way the GOP Senate approved more than a hundred of her husband’s liberal picks, then you may as well replace that Constitution in your coat pocket with a copy of the U.N. Charter, because when they have run out of ways to expand the “right to privacy,” activist judges will accelerate their campaign to make our Constitution subservient to foreign laws.
The solution is to give Senator Chuck Schumer credit for reading the Constitution: nowhere does it say that a Senator must support a judicial candidate put forward by the president. Isn’t it time for conservatives to take “advise and consent” seriously?
You could see the muddy thinking on the Right from the night Roberts was nominated. First, the Judge’s “double Harvard” credentials were trotted out as proof of his qualifications to receive a lifetime position as a Superlegislator. Sorry, but this Yalie is here to say that in 99 out of 100 cases, the Constitution would be in better hands with a “double BYU” nominee rather than someone with two Harvard degrees. Laurence Tribe is double Harvard. Ready for Justice Tribe?
The next blunder came when the liberal American Bar Association gave Roberts its top rating. Republicans swooned. Sure it’s worth pointing out, as the Republican National Committee did, that Schumer and Sen. Pat Leahy have praised ABA ratings in the past. But the RNC and others failed to mention that the ABA’s liberal views should be accorded no more weight than the views of any other special interest group. The GOP fought for years to remove the ABA from its special perch—retreat now is shortsighted.
Most importantly, conservatives are blundering by embracing the position that Judge Roberts should “pull a Ruth Bader Ginsburg” and dodge all tough questions during his confirmation hearings. I respectfully dissent.
I want Judge Roberts, and all future liberal nominees, to answer these and other questions, before they get a lifetime veto over popularly elected laws and over the text of the U.S. Constitution:
· Do you agree with Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg and Breyer that the laws of China, France and other nations are relevant to interpreting the United States Constitution, or laws passed by the U.S. Congress?
· Do you agree with the U.S. Supreme Court’s recently invented constitutional right of 17 year-old gang members to kill innocent people without risking a death sentence themselves?
· Does the Constitution require states to recognize gay marriage?
· Do you agree with those Supreme Court Justices who have declared the death penalty unconstitutional?
· Do you agree with the majority of the Court that the Constitution includes an unfettered right to abortion, on demand and without apology?
· Doesn’t a fair reading of the Court’s Lawrence v. Texas case require states to permit polygamy and consensual incest among adults?
· Do you agree with the Court’s recent decision that governments can seize people’s property any time a wealthy developer would generate more tax revenues with the property?
· If the Constitution is a “living” document, the meaning of which changes with the times—or with the composition of the Court—have we not returned to a national of men and not laws? Wasn’t the point of the Constitution to fix limits on government power that were not to be subject to the whims of our leaders?
Conservatives should use the Roberts confirmation hearings to establish new rules for judicial confirmations. Prospective nominees should be told to answer the tough questions—and Senators should then utilize their Constitutionally-mandated role to “consent” or not consent to the President’s choices.
The genie of judicial activism is out of the bottle. The Constitution, and the American people, cannot afford the continued rubber-stamping of a president’s judicial nominees without knowing how these lifetime appointments are likely to impact our rights.
Senator Schumer is right. Judge Roberts, and every nominee, should tell the American people what we are in for if they are confirmed to a lifetime job as our masters.
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