Emily's List
When you do a piece criticizing the Supreme Court over a decision, it's okay to argue for your side. But if you write an article about prospects for Supreme Court nominees, you should try to look at it objectively. Unfortunately, Emily Bazelon writing in Slate fails in this task. Her article is more a preemptive attack on Republicans who may be planning tactics she'd rather they not try.
Alas, I'd written a long piece on her article but lost it, so let me summarize my conclusions:
Yes, Republicans won't be able to stop Obama's nominee short of something weird happening simply because they don't have the numbers. However, Obama will not pick a "liberal-to-moderate," though Bazelon will characterize his pick as such; it will be someone far to the left of the American people and probably to the left of the entire Court.
Most of the tactics Bazelon claims will fail are ones Republicans have never tried on a Court nominee but, in fact, would be fairly popular if they did. The reason they probably won't now is it's not worth it if they can't win in the end.
Finally Bazelon claims Republicans would go after Diane Wood on abortion when, in fact, the case Bazelon discusses (in a highly dishonest manner, seems to me) is not about abortion (except through "empathy") and is an example of a pretty extreme decision by Wood that was beaten down by the Supreme Court 8-1 and 8-0.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:19 AM
2 Comments:
Thinking about judges in right-left terms is mind bogglingly inapposite
Anonymous,
You should read "The Vote," a collection of essays presented by Cass Sunstein. The essays are by various legal authorities that Sunstein respects - and they come out on very different sides of the debate over whether the S.Ct ruling in Bush vs. Gore was correct. The most interesting thing I found was Sunstein's introduction, where he seemed to come to the realization that lawyers, even judges, can honestly come to very different conclusions presented the same facts based on their political inclinations.
President Obama is looking for the liberal minded judge who can make the best legal arguments on the court that reflect his (and the judge's) approach to law. He may want a firebrand, to counter Scalia. Or he may want a compromise builder, like Roberts, who can perhaps win Justice Kennedy over on a few key decisions. But there will be a litmus test (unspoken for sure) as to how the justice will rule, and I bet he will do a much better job vetting his candidate than the Republicans did when nominating the departing Justice Seuter.
Not only the Congress resembles a sausage factory.
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