WP: In 1980s, Roberts Criticized The Court He Hopes to Join

[DeepModem Mom]

In 1980s, Roberts Criticized The Court He Hopes to Join
By Jo Becker, R. Jeffrey Smith and Sonya Geis
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, August 20, 2005; Page A04


When John G. Roberts Jr. accepted President Bush's nomination to the Supreme Court last month, he spoke with awe about the high court. He had argued 39 cases before the justices, but he said he "always got a lump in my throat whenever I walked up those marble steps."

Two decades earlier though, as a young lawyer in the Reagan administration, Roberts expressed less reverential comments, repeatedly arguing that the high court was interfering in issues best left to Congress. He even wrote approvingly of an effort to term-limit federal judges instead of giving them lifetime appointments, so they "would not lose all touch with reality through decades of ivory tower existence....

***

The memo was among more than 50,000 pages of documents made public this week by the Ronald W. Reagan Presidential Library, covering Roberts's 1982 to 1986 tenure as an associate counsel to the president. Along with other papers covering Roberts's 1981 to 1982 stint as a special assistant at the Justice Department, the documents portray a young conservative whose views were very much in line with the administration he served.

Roberts's writings reflect a steady concern about maintaining an appropriate balance of power, often expressing suspicion that one branch of government was trying to encroach upon another. Much of his trepidation involved his view that the courts were encroaching on issues that Congress never intended with overly broad interpretations of federal law, or by creating rights not stated in the Constitution. That, in turn, informed his views on a host of controversial issues.

He was skeptical of the Supreme Court's legal underpinning for the right to abortion, referring to it as a "so-called right to privacy." He said that a case prohibiting a moment of silent prayer or reflection in public schools "seems indefensible," and criticized other court decisions upholding racial preference programs aimed at remedying past discrimination as "constitutionally impermissible" because the programs themselves were discriminatory....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/19/AR2005081901609.html?sub=AR

[Greeby]

1. Hmm

How Bolton-esque

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Oh, that's good, Greeby! nt