There was one remark in last night’s GOP debate that we here at PFAW whole-heartedly agreed with. Asked about his view on judicial appointments, Mitt Romney said:

Let me note that the key thing I think the president is going to do, is going to be with the longest legacy. It’s going to be appointing Supreme Court and justices throughout the judicial system. As many as half the justices in the next four years are going to be appointed by the next president.

Judicial nominees will indeed be the most lasting legacy of the next president. And that’s why we can’t afford to hand over those decisions to Mitt Romney.

At last night’s debate, Romney joined his fellow candidates in praising Justices John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court’s ultra-conservative base. Under these justices, the Court has moved farther to the right than it has in decades, consistently privileging big corporations over individual Americans. When Romney declared this summer that “corporations are people, my friend,” he was summarizing, and approving of, the Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC.

But it’s not just that Romney wants more Alitos and Thomases on the Supreme Court. Romney sent a signal that he would move the federal courts even farther to the right than they are today when he took on Robert Bork as his campaign’s chief legal advisor. Bork’s conservativism is so extreme that a bipartisan majority of the Senate rejected him for the Supreme Court in 1987. He was against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He thought it was just fine to criminalize homosexuality. He was a professed fan of censorship. And since then, he has become even more extreme in his defense of corporate power and dismissal of individual rights. But not, apparently, too extreme for Mitt Romney.

Romney is absolutely right that appointing judges will be “the key thing” the next president will do. And it’s exactly the reason why he shouldn’t be president.

More on Robert Bork … here

Posted by Gypsy Chief

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Justice For All

This week’s Book of the Week is “Justice For All: Earl Warren and The Nation He Made”. The author is Jim Newton. This book was featured on Book TV on C-Span2 on Saturday, April 25, 2009.

Ask anyone what are the three most lasting achievements of the Eisenhower Administration. The Interstate Highway System is one, another is Eisenhower’s farewell address, the most memorable since George Washington. Eisenhower warned about the power of a military-industrial complex. The third, though President Eisenhower didn’t think so, was his appointment of Earl Warren as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Earl Warren was the longest serving governor of California. He was, as Governor, a moderate centrist Republican in the tradition of Hiram Johnson. Warren won reelection as governor one time by winning both Republican and Democratic party nominations.

On the Supreme Court, Warren used his considerable political skills to build consensus. In the larger society the Warren Court was characterized by some on the right as a liberal activist court intent on legislating from the bench. Gideon vs. Wainwright (372 U.S. 335) for example extended Sixth Amendment right to counsel to states under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Then Miranda vs. Arizona (384 U.S. 436) required notifications regarding right to silence, right to an attorney, etc. in cases involving police interrogations and confessions.

As a demonstration of Warren’s consensus building skill Newton cites the 9-0 decision in Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka (347 U.S. 483). Warren got Justice Reed to concur in the opinion.

Was the Warren Court liberal, activist, intent on legislating from the bench? Newton says no. He says that Earl Warren believed in conservative reform not liberal activism.

Gradual, conservative constitutional reform has a long tradion in thought. See, for example, Edmund Burke’s “Reflections on the Revolution in France”.

The subject is timely for today because President Obama may have more than one Supreme Court nomination to make. Warren believed that the Court exists to strike a balance between the weak and powerless versus the rich and powerful.

Posted by Gypsy Chief