Democrats set to let right-winger head Supreme Court

The widely hailed “brilliance” of John Roberts, President George W. Bush’s nominee for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, has been shown during Senate confirmation hearings to consist mainly of his ability to evade embarrassing questions and to manipulate the law for right-wing results.

For example, Sen. Joseph Biden asked him point-blank for his opinion of this statement by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: “Abortion prohibition by a state controls women and denies them full autonomy and full equality with men. It is unconstitutional.”

Roberts replied: “Well, that is an area where I think I should not respond.”

Roberts when working for the Reagan administration had declared Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to be “constitutionally suspect and contrary to the most fundamental tenets of the legislative process,” adding that “There is no evidence of voting abuses nationwide supporting the need for such a change.”

Sen. Edward Kennedy asked him about this "heated opposition" to a move that would prohibit voting practices having a discriminatory impact.

Roberts replied that at that time he had been a staff lawyer in the Justice Department—thus pushing responsibility onto the Reagan administration.

But later in the hearings, Sen. Russell Feingold confronted Roberts on this issue: “African Americans from Mobile, Alabama, had been unable to elect any candidates to the position of city commissioner for every election cycle for seven decades. They challenged the method of electing city commissioners all the time in at-large elections, and the evidence was clear that as a practical matter, although African Americans could register and vote, they couldn’t elect anyone.”

The people of Mobile “had to go to enormous effort and financial expense to prove discriminatory intent, including hiring a historian who could piece together the motivations of city officials who had designed the electoral system almost 100 years ago. … So why at this point did you want to make Section 2 cases so hard to prove?”

Roberts answered again, “I was a 26-year-old staff lawyer,” and refused to concede that African Americans were better off after his position was overturned.

Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee felt compelled to expose Roberts publicly because of the firm opposition of the entire progressive community, including women, the African American and Latino communities, environmentalists and labor.

As the hearings wore on, however, the Democrats were digging themselves a hole. Their questioning showed not only that Roberts was an ideologue of the right, a title he has vigorously denied, but that he was even to the right of the Reagan administration. It laid down a clear justification for making a mighty effort to block Roberts.

But the Democratic leadership, as loyal members of the capitalist establishment, have no intention of doing that.

Roberts more right wing than Reagan

Biden pointed out that Reagan’s right-wing attorney general, Bradford Reynolds, “decided that the federal government should take action against the state of Kentucky” because “there’s a very strong record that the Kentucky prison system discriminates against female prisoners.” The senator continued: “And you wrote to the attorney general that I recommend you do not approve intervention in this case.”

Roberts gave his usual answer about being a 26-year-old staff lawyer just following orders. Biden rejoined: “Your memo contradicted his recommendation to intervene. Why would that be if you just follow the policy of the office?”

Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois told Roberts: “You have the distinction of being opposed by LULAC. This, of course, is the first time this Hispanic organization has ever opposed a Supreme Court nominee … . I personally think that their feelings go beyond the comment, illegal amigos, that you talked about yesterday." That racist slur by Roberts had been brought up by Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

The Supreme Court in 1982 struck down as unconstitutional a Texas law permitting schools to forbid entrance to the children of undocumented workers. Durbin told Roberts: “[Y]ou co-authored a memo that criticizes the solicitor general’s office for failing to file a brief supporting the Texas law. … Your memo disagreed with the administration’s position on the case, so it isn’t as if you were arguing the Reagan administration’s position.”

Roberts again said he was just trying to make the administration’s position consistent—meaning Reagan should be racist 100 percent of the time instead of 95 percent. And he refused to say that he now disagrees with his old position. “It’s not an area I focus on,” he replied.

All this shows that Roberts was actually to the right of Reagan’s Justice Department and was fighting to overrule any Reagan administration concession to anti-racism.

In case after case, Roberts “brilliantly” exhibited his reactionary nature. Senator Leahy questioned him about a case involving the rape of a student. “She’d been taken out of class by this teacher, brought to another room, basically raped. And Justice White made it very clear, contrary to what you and Kenneth Starr had said, that she had a right for [legal] actions because of that abuse.”

Roberts replied: “It concerned an issue of statutory interpretation because it was unclear whether Congress had intended a particular remedy to be available or not.” Therein lies the so-called “brilliance” of this arch reactionary. He was able to find some legal excuse to prevent a girl from seeking justice for being raped.

The transcripts, taken from the Congressional Quarterly and published in the New York Times, repeatedly show Roberts being allowed to evade answering questions that would clearly reveal him to be a cruel and vicious right-winger.

He refused to disavow the president’s right to torture. He defended his removal of a line from a Reagan administration memo to the effect that AIDS cannot be caused by casual contact, even though the Centers for Disease Control had made that position public. He showed not one ounce of regret for defending an HMO that refused to pay for needed shoulder surgery for a patient in Illinois, even though Illinois law required the payment.

The Democratic Party leaders, their posturing notwithstanding, have already bowed to the opinion of the capitalist establishment and accepted Roberts’ nomination as a fait accompli. If they were to carry out any action commensurate with what Roberts deserves, they would not merely filibuster until hell froze over—they would call a mass demonstration in Washington, D.C., to protest until the Bush administration was forced to withdraw the nomination of this racist, anti-woman, anti-environment, anti-labor stooge of big business.