The horrible prospect of Supreme Court Justice Cass Sunstein

[KoKo]

The horrible prospect of Supreme Court Justice Cass Sunstein
By Glenn Greenwald

A media consensus has emerged that the retirement of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, the 90-year-old Ford-appointee who became the leader of the Court's so-called "liberal wing," is now imminent. The New York Times' Peter Baker has an article today on Obama's leading candidates to replace Stevens, in which one finds this strange passage:

The president’s base hopes he will name a full-throated champion to counter Justice Antonin Scalia, the most forceful conservative on the bench. . . . The candidates who would most excite the left include the constitutional scholars Harold Hongju Koh, Cass R. Sunstein and Pamela S. Karlan.

While that's probably true of Koh and Karlan, it's absolutely false with regard to Sunstein, who is currently Obama's Chief of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. From the beginning of the War on Terror, Cass Sunstein turned himself into one of the most reliable Democratic cheerleaders for Bush/Cheney radicalism and their assault on the Constitution and the rule of law.

In 2002, at the height of controversy over Bush's creation of military commissions without Congressional approval, Sunstein stepped forward to insist that "nder existing law, President George W. Bush has the legal authority to use military commissions" and that "President Bush's choice stands on firm legal ground." Sunstein scorned as "ludicrous" the argument from Law Professor George Fletcher that the Supreme Court would find Bush's military commissions without any legal basis. Four years later -- in its Hamdan ruling -- the Supreme Court, with Justice Stevens in the majority, held that Bush lacked the legal authority to create military commissions without approval from Congress, i.e., the Court (and Stevens) found Bush lacked exactly the "legal authority" which Sunstein vehemently insisted he possessed. Had Sunstein been on the Court then instead of Stevens, that decision presumably would have come out the opposite way: in favor of Bush's sweeping claims of executive authority.

Worse still, in 2005, Sunstein became the hero of the Bush-following Right when, in the wake of revelations that the Bush administration was illegally eavesdropping on Americans, he quickly proclaimed that Bush was within his legal rights to spy without warrants in violation of FISA. Sunstein defended Bush's NSA program by embracing the two extremist arguments at the core of Bush/Cheney lawlessness: that (1) the AUMF silently authorized warrantless eavesdropping in violation of FISA and, worse, (2) the President may have a plausible claim that Article II "inherently" authorizes warrantless eavesdropping regardless of what a statute says.

More at.........

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/03/26/court?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+salon%2Fgreenwald+(Glenn+Greenwald)

[hlthe2b]

1. Ugggh...

I'm glad Greenwald has started to take a look and get this out there...

[Peregrine Took]

2. Why I do believe there's some "triangulatin'" going on by Obama & Co. /t

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. Sunstein is a mixed bag.

In addition to the quite valid criticism by Greenwald, there is also the interesting fact that he is an advocate for animal rights and believes animals should have legal standing. He's also married to Samantha Powers.

[BlueMTexpat]

8. Interesting.

We just had a referendum on something quite similar in Switzerland, i.e., that a public prosecutor would defend animal rights, "animal" being defined as anything vertebrate. There is, in fact, such a position in Zurich. In one case, that prosecutor advocated on behalf of a dead pike. The fisherman who caught it was charged with "torture" because it apparently took a "long" time to land the fish once it had taken the bait. This is NOT a joke.

The referendum to apply this on a federal level so that it would apply to all cantons failed by a very wide margin. Oh, and the suit on behalf of the pike failed too.

I would be much happier to read that he is an advocate for human rights and believes that all human beings (including so-called "enemy combatants") have legal standing. I don't like most of what I have heard about him.

[Grand Taurean]

4. I am ALL FOR a FILIBUSTER if Cass Sunstein is nominated.

No way he goes to the USSC!

[babylonsister]

5. Wow, Greenwald agrees with Beck?

I think I'll wait til others weigh in on this 'possibility'.

Beck continues to attack Cass Sunstein, calls him "the most evil man, the most dangerous man in America"

http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201003180062

[leveymg]

6. Cass was the house "liberal" at Univ. of Chicago Law, which means he's no liberal at all.

I agree with Greenwald. The idea of Justice Sunstein would be a major "ugh" moment for progressives.

[gtar100]

7. Interesting that the powers see the need to appeal to liberal values for nominations.

But the moment their elected we get an earful of how conservative this country is. I'm so sick of seeing the manipulation in the media and from the political whores.

They even had the gall to list Sunstein's name *in the middle* of the two other. As if the Koh and Karlan were shields. Either they are hiding their shame or trying to pull a fast one. From what you have written, it seems to be the latter.