A Bad Shift for the Court--By William Raspberry--WaPo

[Demeter]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/14/AR2005081401035.html?referrer=email


"If you're concerned about the rightward drift of the U.S. Supreme Court, you may be hoping -- as I am -- for a smoking-gun revelation that would disqualify John G. Roberts Jr.....And we wonder why none of it seems to matter. Don't the American people understand the danger of letting the Supreme Court become, in essence, a partisan of one side in a closely divided nation? ...In a word, no. I've just looked at something I wrote on the subject more than a dozen years ago, and I'm not sure I'd change a word of it now:

"Certainly it is within the prerogatives of presidents to name to the federal judiciary men and women whose views are more or less consistent with their own. But it is also within the bounds of good government to keep the courts -- and the Supreme Court in particular -- generally reflective of the populace. It's just another way of legitimizing the judiciary...Only in fairly recent times has the Supreme Court come to be viewed as part of an ideological spoils system."

The second thing about balance came from a friend -- black, conservative and Republican -- who was laying out the reasons he opposes the Roberts nomination....It isn't his conservatism, my friend said, but the too-smooth path by which Roberts has arrived at this juncture. Son of a wealthy steel executive, Roberts attended private schools, Harvard and Harvard Law School, then held a federal appeals court clerkship, followed a year later by a clerkship with Supreme Court Justice (now Chief Justice) William Rehnquist...He then was named special assistant to the U.S. attorney general, and associate counsel to the president (at age 27) before joining one of Washington's top law firms. Then Roberts went to the office of the solicitor general of the United States and, for the past two years, a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

The point: Nothing in that glide path suggests exposure to anything that might temper his conservative philosophy with real-life exposure to the problems and concerns of ordinary men and women. Roberts is undeniably bright, said my friend, but his life has been one of quite extraordinary privilege....And then it occurred to me: Roberts's life has been amazingly like that of the man who wants to put him on the court -- but with better grades."

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[Demeter]

1. kick--good slam at Roberts and Bush