Judge advised Governor Bush in 2000 battleBy Peter Wallsten, Los Angeles Times | July 23, 2005
WASHINGTON -- As the 2000 presidential recount battle raged in Florida, a Washington lawyer named John G. Roberts Jr. traveled to Tallahassee, the state capital, to dispense legal advice.
Article Tools
He operated in the shadows during at least some of those 37 days, never signing a legal brief and rarely making an appearance at the makeshift headquarters for George W. Bush's legal team.
But now Roberts has been selected for the very Supreme Court that settled the recount by putting Bush into office, chosen by the president to replace the swing vote in the 5-to-4 decision. And his work in Florida during that time is suddenly coming into focus, giving critics some ammunition to paint a respected jurist with an apparently unblemished legal career as an ideological partisan.
Republican lawyers who worked on the recount said Wednesday that Roberts advised Governor Jeb Bush on the role that he and the Florida Legislature might play in the recount battle. At the time, when GOP officials feared that Vice President Al Gore might win a recount battle in court, Republican state lawmakers were devising a plan to use their constitutional power to simply assign the state's electoral votes to Bush -- a plan that drew a sharp rebuke from Democrats.
more Roberts Gave GOP Advice in 2000 RecountAlito one of the original architects of signing statement:
The founding fathers never conceived of anything like a signing statement. The idea was cooked up by Edwin Meese III, when he was the attorney general for Ronald Reagan, to expand presidential powers. He was helped by a young lawyer who was a true believer in the unitary presidency, a euphemism for an autocratic executive branch that ignores Congress and the courts. Unhappily, that lawyer, Samuel Alito Jr., is now on the Supreme Court.
Question: Why did Roberts and Alito turn out so conservative? Answer: Partisan entrenchmentUnitary executive anyone?