Obama's court pick: 'Real-world folks'
Posted May 4, 2009 7:30 AM
by Mark Silva
"This is going to be, I think, one of the most consequential decisions of the next president,'' then-Sen. Barack Obama said of Supreme Court appointments during his third and final campaign debate with Republican rival Sen. John McCain.
"It is very likely that one of us will be making at least one and probably more than one appointments, and Roe versus Wade probably hangs in the balance,'' Obama said at the time - asserting, as did his Republican rival, that he would not apply any "litmus tests'' to nominees for the high court.
Yet he made it clear in that debate - the only one of the three during the general election campaign where the question of Supreme Court nominations came up - what he would expect of any judge whom he seated on the court.
"This is going to be an important issue,'' he said of the abortion-rights debate. "I will look for those judges who have an outstanding judicial record, who have the intellect, and who hopefully have a sense of what real-world folks are going through.''
The issue probably won't "hang in the balance'' in the first nomination that Obama now faces, replacing the retiring Justice David Souter this summer. Obama will likely pick a judge of the same temperament of the narrow 5-4 majority of the court that stands in the way of repealing Roe v. Wade. With the next appointment, however, the president will have a chance to solidify that majority.
Yet the position of Obama's nominee on abortion rights probably will give challengers one of the clearest targets they have for opposing that candidate. That concern about "real-world folks'' is one of those questions of "empathy'' that critics call "code'' for an activist judge.
<SNIP>
http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2009/05/obamas_court_pick_realworld_fo.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
