n our own times, a coherent socialist movement is nowhere to be found in the United States. Americans are more likely to speak of a golden past than of a golden future, of capitalism's glories rather than of socialism's greatness. Conformity overrides dissent; the desire to conserve has overwhelmed the urge to alter. Such a state of affairs cries out for explanation. Why, in a society by no means perfect, has a radical party never attained the status of a major political force? Why, in particular did the socialist movement never become an alternative to the nation's established parties?That may just be impartial legal scholarship... one certainly hopes. But it's damn suspicious.
In answering this question, historians have often called attention to various charcteristics of American society... an ethnically-divided working class, a relatively fluid class structure, an economy which allowed at least some workers to enjoy what Sombart termed "reefs of roast beef and apple pie"--prevented the early twentieth century socialists from attracting an immediate mass following. Such conditions did not, however, completely checkmate American socialism.... Yet in the years after World War I, this expanding and confident movement almost entirely collapsed....
From the New York socialist movement's birth, sectarianism and dissension ate away at its core. Substantial numbers of SP members expressed deep and abiding dissatisfaction with the brand of reform socialism advocated by the party's leadership. To these left-wingers, constructive socialism seemed to stress insignificant reforms at the expense of ultimate goals. How, these revolutionaries angrily demanded, could the SP hope to attract workers if it did not distinguish itself from the many progressive parties, if it did not proffer an enduring and radiant ideal? How, the constructivists angrily replied, could the SP hope to attract workers if it did not promise them immediate benefits, if it did not concern itself with their present burdens?...
Through its own internal feuding, then, the SP exhausted itself forever.... The story is a sad but also a chastening one for those who, more than half a century after socialism's decline, still wish to change America. Radicals have often succumbed to the devastating bane of sectarianism; it is easier, after all, to fight one's fellows than it is to battle an entrenched and powerful foe. Yet if the history of Local New York shows anything, it is that American radicals cannot afford to become their own worst enemies. In unity lies their only hope.
Here’s why I preferred Obama to McCain: The GOP gave up all pretense of any limited government principles. They’re no longer trustworthy on the issues where they’re supposed to agree with me. Obama, on the other hand, made some promises about government transparency, hinted at a less bellicose foreign policy, and I like what he said about Guantanamo, torture, and executive power. In other words, he was better on the issues where Democrats are supposed to agree with me. It’s really that simple.Yet we no longer agree where we were supposed to agree.
Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander said Thursday he would support Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court, breaking with Republican leaders who have questioned whether she would bring a bias to the bench.Earlier: A Republican Obama would vote against Sotomayor.
Alexander, the No. 3 Republican in Senate leadership, said that her “political and judicial philosophy may be different than mine, especially regarding Second Amendment rights.”
[..] Alexander criticized then-Sen. Barack Obama and Democratic senators for voting against John Roberts’s nomination for chief justice in 2005, “solely because they disagreed with what Sen. Obama described as Roberts’s ‘overarching political philosophy’ and ‘his work in the White House and the solicitor general’s office’ that ‘consistently sided’ with ‘the strong in opposition to the weak.’”
“Today, it would be equally wrong for me to vote against Judge Sotomayor solely because she is not on my side on some issues,” Alexander said.
“It is my hope that my vote now not only will help to confirm a well-qualified nominee but will help to return the Senate to the practice only recently lost of inquiring diligently into qualifications of a nominee and then accepting that elections have consequences, one of which is to confer upon the president the constitutional right to nominate justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.”
The Wall Street Journal helpfully reprints, without direct comment, Barack Obama’s written justification for voting against John Roberts for the Supreme Court.My sense is that Obama, the man, would have liked to vote to confirm Roberts, understanding their political disagreements to be normal and unavoidable.
After reading Obama’s justification, I’m pretty sure anyone opposing Sonia Sotomayor could simply cut-and-paste the argument, make a few slight changes and call it a day. Why? Because Obama’s entire written statement is just an elaborate way to say “I’m voting against him because I disagree with his politics.” And if political incongruity is a justifiable reason to oppose an otherwise highly qualified candidate, then Obama can’t rightly expect any Republicans to vote for Sotomayor.
In the justification, Obama says Roberts too often sided with the powerful over the weak. But his examples are nothing more than a check-list of liberal political beliefs (affirmative action, abortion, strong centralized government). Couldn’t any conservative justify his or her opposition to Sotomayor by saying she too often sides with special interests over the general interest and then list the exact same policy points, albeit with the implication that conservative are on the proper side of them?
That’s the danger of making political congruity the key factor in voting for or against a judge. It renders all other qualifications moot. If Obama can praise Roberts experience, temperament, intellectual rigor and statements in front of the Senate and yet still oppose the man, then the confirmation process is just a tedious lead-up to a party-line vote.
I guess Obama’s lucky his party has the numbers to win such a vote. If the Republicans controlled the Senate and were to apply Obama’s own logic, there would not be a single compelling reason they should vote for Sotomayor.
With the future of women's rights, civil rights, and privacy rights at stake, I cannot vote to confirm John Roberts.You can bet that nearly every Republican Senator who might face a contested primary (be it for the presidency or another term) will vote against Sotomayor for congruent reasons—even if they thought she were every bit as qualified as Roberts.
I have an obligation to my constituents to make sure that I cast my vote for Chief Justice of the United States for someone I am convinced will be steadfast in protecting fundamental women's rights, civil rights, privacy rights, and who will respect the appropriate separation of powers among the three branches. After the Judiciary Hearings, I believe the record on these matters has been left unclear. That uncertainty means as a matter of conscience, I cannot vote to confirm despite Judge Roberts' long history of public service.
In one memo, for example, Judge Roberts argued that Congress has the power to deny the Supreme Court the right to hear appeals from lower courts on constitutional claims involving flag burning, abortion, and other matters. He wrote that the United States would be far better off with fifty different interpretations of the right to choose than with what he called the "judicial excesses embodied in Roe v. Wade."
When questioned about his legal memoranda, Judge Roberts claimed they did not necessarily reflect his views and that he was merely making the best possible case for his clients or responding to a superior's request that he make a particular argument. It is hard to believe he has no opinion on so many critical issues after years as a Justice Department and White House lawyer, appellate advocate and judge.
It is telling that President Bush has said the Justices he most admires are the two most conservative justices, Justices Thomas and Scalia. It is not unreasonable to believe that the President has picked someone in Judge Roberts whom he believes holds a similarly conservative philosophy, and that voting as a bloc they could further limit the power of the Congress, expand the purview of the Executive, and overturn key rulings like Roe v. Wade.
I will, therefore, vote against his confirmation. My desire to maintain the already fragile Supreme Court majority for civil rights, voting rights and women's rights outweighs the respect I have for Judge Roberts' intellect, character, and legal skills.
[Sotomayor] went to Princeton. She graduated first in her class it said. But she herself said she read, basically classic children’s books to read and learn the language and she read basic English grammars and she got help from tutors. I think that, I mean if you’re, frankly if you’re in college and you’re working on Pinocchio or on the troll under the bridge, I don’t think that’s college work.Yglesias responds:
Learning a foreign language, if you’ve ever tried, is really hard. Meanwhile, it’s clearly also important for people living in the United States of America to do their best to learn to speak and read standard American English. But this takes hard work. Sonia Sotomayor, like many Americans, was born into a Spanish-dominant family. But she worked hard, learned English, went to Princeton, then Yale Law School, then had a successful career as a lawyer, as a District Court judge, as an Appeals Court judge, and now as a [nominee for] Justice of the Supreme Court. This is, as I’ve said before, a good inspirational story that parents are going to tell their kids to encourage them to work hard in school.I think the most unfortunate thing about The American Conservative (which Buchanan co-founded) as well as paleoconservatism in general is its association with Mr. Buchanan's classless racism (including antisemitism).
Unless, that is, you’re Pat Buchanan in which case you take a cute story about Sotomayor spending her summers re-reading classic children’s books she hadn’t had a chance to read as a kid and turn it into a pretext to mock her:
[..] normally Buchanan claims that Hispanics need to work harder to learn English. But faced with an actual example of someone working to learn English, he has nothing but scorn and spite.
At the time of Souter's appointment, John Sununu assured President Bush and conservatives that Souter would be a "home run" for conservatism In his testimony before the Senate, Souter espoused the concepts of originalism (as Bork had) and was thus thought by conservatives to be a strict constructionist on Constitutional matters. However, as a state's attorney and state Supreme Court judge, he had never been tested on matters of federal law.Predictions are that Obama is likely to appoint a woman to replace him.
Initially, from 1990 to 1993, Souter tended to be a conservative-leaning Justice, although not as conservative as Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, or William Rehnquist. In Souter's first year, Souter and Scalia voted alike close to 85 percent of the time; Souter voted with Kennedy and O'Connor about 97 percent of the time. The symbolic turning point came in two cases in 1992, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which the Court reaffirmed the essential holding in Roe v. Wade, and Lee v. Weisman, in which Souter voted against allowing prayer at a high school graduation ceremony. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Anthony Kennedy considered overturning Roe and upholding all the restrictions at issue in Casey. Souter considered upholding all the restrictions but still was uneasy about overturning Roe. After consulting with O'Connor, however, the three (who came to be known as the "troika") developed a joint opinion that upheld all the restrictions in the Casey case except for the mandatory notification of a husband while asserting the essential holding of Roe, that a right to an abortion is protected by the Constitution.
After the appointment of Clarence Thomas, Souter moved to the middle. By the late 1990s, Souter began to align himself more with Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg on rulings, although as of 1995, he sided on more occasions with the most liberal justice, John Paul Stevens, than either Breyer and Ginsburg, both Clinton appointees. O'Connor began to move to the center. On the abortion issue, Souter began to vote to override restrictions he believed in back in 1992. On death penalty cases, worker rights cases, criminal rights cases, and other issues, Souter began voting with the liberals in the court. So while appointed by a Republican president and thus expected to be conservative, Souter is now considered part of the liberal wing of the Court.
A number of names have been put into play already based on the assumption that Ginsburg will be the first to tender her resignation. Nearly all observers expect Obama’s appointment to be a woman with solid experience either on the bench or in the Justice Department. Harvard Law School dean Elena Kagan, circuit court judges Sonia Sotomayor and Diane Wood, and law professor Kathleen M. Sullivan figure among the names most frequently cited. Kagan has just been named Solicitor General. In the current political environment, Obama may even offer some surprises as part of his effort to break the political logjam in Washington.
On the campaign trail, Obama was asked repeatedly what kind of judges he expected to appoint to the bench. His answers were carefully framed to avoid committing him too much, but they were revealing. He would not focus on individuals based on their academic or judicial pedigree, he said, but would instead pay attention to how their views would affect ordinary Americans. While ambiguous, this comment may point to candidates different in timber than the two Clinton-era justices, Ginsburg and Breyer—two liberal figures accepted by many on the right because of their disdain for judicial intervention.
Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, then the leading Republican voice on the Judiciary Committee, claimed a measure of credit for both Clinton picks. Hatch pushed for justices from the “mainstream” rather than “doctrinaire liberals.” One of the issues facing Obama, who has recently touted his intention to govern from the center and reach out to Republicans, will be whether to follow the Clinton precedent—advocated by moderate Democrats like John Podesta (later Clinton’s chief of staff and now president of the Center for American Progress)—and allow leading Senate Judiciary Republicans to help shape his choices.
But a number of factors could weigh against such an approach. First, the Bush administration did not reciprocate by allowing Democrats influence in its Supreme Court picks, even when Democrats were in the majority. Bush picked John Roberts and Samuel Alito, candidates with a strong conservative movement orientation. Notwithstanding Clinton’s highly conciliatory approach, Republicans blocked approval of far more Clinton nominees to the federal bench than Democrats blocked approval of Bush nominees.
Second, public opinion now views the Supreme Court in particular and the federal bench in general as having drifted too far to the right. Polling also suggests that the public are tired of the hot button issues associated with prior Supreme Court picks (abortion and gay rights)—issues which in fact only very rarely figure on the Supreme Court’s calendar. Instead, public concern that the courts are failing to uphold “basic constitutional values” has soared to the front position. This concern may be linked to many issues, but most reflect a sense that the unilateral power of the presidency has grown at the cost of civil rights and liberties. The public today wants to see nominees who will be more protective of the rights of individuals than the two Bush era nominees.
Even before today’s sobering news that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is being treated for pancreatic cancer in a New York hospital, the only woman currently on the court had been routinely listed by court watchers as a likely candidate to retire from her lifetime appointment sooner rather than later.I wish her well, but she looks headed for retirement given the circumstances.
Her age (she is 75), past health scares (she was treated for colon cancer a decade ago) and more recently the ascension of a Democratic president and Senate served to fuel that speculation. And now this. The Supreme Court announced that she will be hospitalized for a week to ten days but the legal and political ripples caused by her illness are likely to splash around the nation’s legal system for weeks and months and years to come.
Before the sun sets today, indeed, between the time that I write this and the time it is posted online, there will be published and posted here, there and everywhere lists of potential Supreme Court candidates who would replace Justice Ginsburg should she retire or become too ill to serve. I refuse to go down that premature path except to say that there are many qualified candidates, including many brilliant women, who ought to be considered first to replace the second woman ever to serve on the High Court.
As it now stands, the departure of Ginsburg from the Court probably wouldn’t change its ideological dynamic very much. President Obama likely would select someone who would vote as Justice Ginsburg has; that is to say in a consistently “liberal” or “moderate” way against the expansion of capital punishment, against the restriction of abortion rights and with great suspicion toward the aggrandizement of executive branch authority and corporate protections.
If she were to retire, and be replaced by an ideological clone, we’d be seeing the liberal version of the Rehnquist-for-Roberts trade we saw a few years ago.
In other words, a Ginsburg retirement now would not be an earth-mover in the larger scheme of Supreme Court power. But let’s chew, law school style, on a hypothetical. Think about what a monumental story we would now have if John McCain were president. In that scenario, a Ginsburg departure from the Court, and the concomitant conservative successor who would arrive there under a McCain Administration, would reverse many of the Court’s recent 5-4 votes.
Conservative-moderate Justice Anthony Kennedy would no longer be the swing vote and the Court’s liberal wing would be down to three. The uneasy balance of power between right and left that currently exists on the Court would be gone for quite some time. This will not happen. But the thought of it—good or bad, depending upon your view—is yet another reason for us to remember how and why elections matter.
Political Browser | washington
