Greedy Trial Lawyer
Bush Has "Moved The Courts" To Another Planet
Category: Seeing Clearly Now
Emily Bazelon, at Slate, asks the question - What do the liberal and moderate lawyers who supported John Roberts' nomination say today?
Emily's article is posted at Sorry Now? and is worth a read.
The second page of the article raises a concept that needs to be taken to the trash heap of history.
In those preconfirmation days in 2005, there was one more argument for broad support for Roberts and Alito. Benjamin Wittes, a member of the Washington Post editorial board when it backed both of Bush's picks, reminded me of it in an e-mail this morning. He has no regrets about his support for Roberts, because he expected to disagree with him on key votes and thought he should be confirmed nonetheless. "Presidents have a legitimate right to move the courts and the principal check on this power is not the confirmation process but, rather, a certain ideological diversity of presidents over time," he writes.
Because of the life-expectancy and lifetime appointments of Supreme Court Justices some presidents are always going to have the opportunity to "move the courts" whereas other presidents, also elected by the voting citizens of the U.S., never even get to nudge the courts. A president who is eager and able to "move the courts" should be checked by the Senate advice and consent function. Nobody seriously believed the Alito and Roberts appointments were intended to simply fill vacancies with fair-minded legal scholars. These nominees were, despite their statements to the contrary, activists fully intent on making major changes in our jurisprudence.
It may take 20 or more years to see any diminishment of the rightward swing and pro-business agenda of the U.S. Supreme Court because the Senate allowed President Bush to "move the courts". Maybe the nation can survive this judicial relocation; but, as I have said in other articles, the U.S. Supreme Court seems to have moved to another planet.
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