Sunday, October 02, 2005
No more Supreme Court Justices
Now that we are facing a second Supreme Court nomination, everyone should read a very important article by Ronald Dworkin in Volume 52, Number 16 · October 20, 2005 of the New York Review of Books on John Roberts
Senate Democrats believe that a president has a right to nominate whoever he will and that all but the worst should be accepted. Michael Brown and Michael Chertoff illustrate how very wrong, how criminally reckless that standard is. Dworkin says:
according to any plausible view of democracy the public has a right to know his views on matters affecting their fundamental rights in some detail before their representatives award him lifetime power over those rights....The Senate has no right to gamble with the nation's constitution and its future.
There is no legal requirement that the Court have 9 justices. It would do fine with eight. Probably better.
The whole argument for not opposing Roberts but then opposing whoever is slated to take O'Connor's seat is itself based on a contradiction. Or misapprehension. Or whatever you want to call it.
ReplyDeleteThe argument goes like this: "Okay, we'll let Bush have Roberts replace Rehnquist because they're both conservative and that won't change the makeup of the court; and besides, Bush will never nominate somebody who isn't a hard rightie. But we'll fight to be sure Bush puts someone in who is just as 'centrist' as O'Connor!"
A free kitten from Kitten War to anyone who can spot the problem with that argument.
As Charles says, better to let the SC stay at eight than elevate another Bush selection.
(a) Bush will never nominate somebody who isn't a hard rightie, but the Vichy Democrats are holding out for Bush to nominate a centrist?
ReplyDelete(b) O'Connor was such a 'centrist' she voted with the pro-dictatorship side in Bush v. Gore.