You may have seen this article on Meridian Magazine. I thought it was timely and worth linking. it was written by an LDS couple who clerked together for Judge Alito. Here’s one of the highlights:
Third, Judge Alito is a man of integrity and fairness. Among his clerks, the Judge has hired Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. And these former clerks universally attest to his unwavering commitment to follow the law and the Constitution and to keep his personal views out of the courthouse. Regardless of your political or philosophical viewpoint, you can trust the Judge to be honest and fair. He is a man of his word. We have seen that he does not pre-judge cases or use them to advance an ideological or political agenda. He is even-handed and thorough, and his passion is to get it right.
And on the other side, we have Harry Reid opposing the nomination, but I don’t suppose we’ll be seeing his words in Meridian anytime soon.
Will, Meridian is what it is. I’ll be interested to see how many Democrats actually vote against Alito. I’m guessing in the range of 30 or so. I would expect him to be confirmed pretty easily. We’ll see. But thanks for posting Reid’s comments.
And if I might, I’d like to speak to the character of those that wrote the article, John and Hanna Smith. You’d be hard pressed to find better people–which gives the praises they sing to Alito even more credence.
Harry Reid can’t support the nomination, he’d get lynched. Just like Orin Hatch can’t oppose it.
Let me second what CJ says. John Smith was in my Guard unit. He was a wise, gentle, holy man.
Did Harry Reid clerk for Alito? Wow!
I think highly of both John and Hannah and think their piece is well written. However, I’m not sure it tells us very much or is very instructive as to whether Alito should be confirmed. Clerks often love their judges (though that fact certainly reflects well on the judge) and it certainly is very important that a judge believes in following the law. However, the brouhaha over supreme court nominees comes more from the fact that at that level, while a majority of the cases have a clear legal answer, many cases on the margins re legal principles still in dispute. The justice creates the law and so while we should care about how a judge enforces the law, we should also care about what kind of law that judge is likely to create. Some agree with the kind of law Alito is likely to create, others don’t. Ultimately that is a political question on which great minds, even great moral minds, can disagree.
My post was a snarky stab at Meridian, which wears its political agenda on its sleeve. I have no opinion either way on Alito.
I’m not sure whether to be more impressed by the legal resumes of the authors, or the fact that he is in the bishopric and she the RS president while both young associates. When do they sleep?
Would it be difficult to find clerks of any Supreme Court nominee that spoke highly of the judges they worked for? This would be more interesting to me if some of those Democrat or Independant clerks were writing this article in Meridian.
Hyrum, you’re wrong about one thing, Harry Reid can support the nomination of Alito just as Hatch supported Justice Ginsberg and Justice Bryer. This idea of politicizing the nomination rather than checking that the nominees are qualified and not crazy fringe has been the work of the Left.
Personally I think the reaons more conservative Justices turn to liberals is a conservative cannot get by the Senate without being somewhat of a Stealth Candidate, see Souter. Ginsbert and Bryer openly stated their preferences for liberal positions because they knew Hatch would ensure their passage because they were qualified. Even thought they held a majority in the Senate, the Republicans voted to approve these nominees, I think both Bryer and Ginsberg passsed in the 90% range. It bothers me that a republican President and Senate must resort to stealth candidates in comparison to Clinton and the Republican Senate he had to deal with. No one questions where Ginsberg or Bryer will come down on a decision in 9 out of ten cases. Republicans are relegated to seeking swing voters so as to not upset the delicate balance on the court.
If my memory serves only 2 of the members of the currtent court were nominated by Democrats, yet the Court seems to lean remarkably to the left.
Heli, I think you have your facts a little off. The idea of politicizing the nominee has been the work of both parties for over 100 years now. The more recent trend since Bork of vetting the candidates more closely has been an attempt to push or not accept (depending who’s pushing the nominee) more ideological candidates–both sides seem more interested in ideologs now days. The story of Breyer is an easy one: he is very moderate and the republican controlled senate was quite happy that he was nominated–many in fact believed (based on his past scholarship) that he would turn out to be a conservative, which he has on all issues financial and regulatory. And Ginsburg’s story is really the political genius of Clinton (it makes you wonder what he could accomplish if he didn’t have so many personal problems). Clinton brought in Hatch, asked him for ideas, Hatch said Ginsburg so Clinton ran with her. This meant that Hatch got credit, which he wanted, and he couldn’t oppose her because she was his idea, which Clinton wanted.
I’m also not so sure the Court leans very left at all. Evidence for this is abortion and gay rights. The Court does seem to be a bit left leaning on gay rights but abortion is now more a symptom of precedent than ideology or jurisprudence. On regulation, financial issues, property, and many other issues the Court is quite right leaning. In fact, only Souter and Ginsburg vote anywhere close to consistently liberal. I’m not saying that is either good or bad. On the abortion issue most interestingly even if the COurt gains an anti-Roe vote from Alito they will probably still be 5-4 for affirming Roe–the power of precedence. And that is assuming Roberts will vote to overturn Roe which is questionable as he is a conservative in jurisprudence as well as politics and so will likely uphold the precednce (most likely he will vote sucessively in ways that will erode Roe slowly and not overturn it suddenly).
Kelo is right-leaning?
What do you mean by right-leaning? Has Kelo developed from a conservative jurisprudence? yes. Does it make Republicans warm and tingly? no. But it has the same effect on democrats. Is Kelo Lockean? no. But not all conservative thought springs from Locke (though libertarianism does). In fact, Kelo is squarely anti-libertarian. But there are few real libertarian conservatives left in the main stream. Thomas is one. Scalia will trend that way sometimes but only when supported by a textualist argument. Judge Brown on the DC Cir. actually quickly dropped from the Sup. Court short list when republicans realized she was more libertarian-conservative than republican-conservative.