Roberts pressed on Roe v. Wade

[veronica_rich]

John Roberts apparently has said he'll stand by previous Supreme Court rulings on the right to choice for an abortion as cited in the following article I found:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/13/politics/politicsspecial1/13cnd-confirm.html

Sorry, not going to cut and paste for the link-phobic; this is worth your time to click on and read. I will, however, cite one paragraph I found exceedingly interesting:

The judge, who now sits on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, said several times that the views he conveyed more than two decades ago as a lawyer in the Reagan administration should be regarded as the views of the administration, not necessarily his own.

So ... who's to say he can be trusted this time around? Compared to Dubya, the Reagan administration's views were positively progressive. Is he simply going to parrot back another misguided administration's views, when the going gets rough?

Comments

[firesignwriter.livejournal.com]

I dunno, dude...I was listening to some of the confirmation hearing today on NPR, and I...kinda liked the guy. He's definitely not sounding like what I feared; nor is he sounding like the type of judge I would've expected Bush to nominate (and the sort I understand he's put up for lower federal benches).

Legal ethics are tricksy things. When a lawyer is hired by a party and charged with seeing to the interests of that party, he's ethically obligated to zealously defend the interests of his client. A judge is an entirely different animal. Roberts said something about, on a federal bench, his only client is the Constitution. I wish I could remember the exact words; it was kinda inspiring.

He also said explicitly that he finds a privacy right in the Constitution, and he went into detail about wherefrom it emanates. He didn't consistently hide behind the "that may come up before the Court, so I won't comment" excuse (though he did go that way often enough). As the night wore on he became less reserved in his answers. The last bit of questioning (with IL Senator Durbin, I believe) was really interesting. It made me rather like Senator Durbin, anyway. *g*

Tomorrow's questioning should be interesting. They're starting at 9am EST.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

I'm instantly suspicious of anyone Bush nominates/appoints for any post. In five years, I'm trying to think of ONE he called correctly, and I'm having a hell of a time doing it.

If Roberts seems kosher ... I dunno. There's something we don't know yet.

[haldir-fancier.livejournal.com]

Bush's ratings are lower than Regan's when he resigned. 38%.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

You mean Nixon, right? (Otherwise, I slept through an important part of the 80s. LOL)

Then again, I'd take Nixon over Reagan any day. I won't go into my big long rant/explanation about Nixon's political demise; suffice I have questions about the severity of what he actually did, if he actually did it, and know quite well before the whole stupid Cambodia decision, he actually tried to pull us OUT of Vietnam (which he did not start).

[haldir-fancier.livejournal.com]

Whoa, whoa, I did mean Nixon. Sorry. My mind blipped. I do approve of the pulling out of Vietnam, though. He didn't start it, but damn he tried to do something about it. Good show for him.

[captsparrow4evr.livejournal.com]

From what I've heard about Roberts, I'm not too thrilled with him. OTOH, he doesn't seem to be a Scalia or Thomas redux so I'll take a bit of a wait-and-see attitude. Heck, didn't Reagan or Bush1 nominate Breyer? And he's proven to be quite a friend to personal freedoms. Sandy O'Connor was also nominated by Reagan. Sometimes the conservative presidents name people to the court and it backfires on them. Let's hope that's the case here.