Mr. Roberts' Neighborhood
By Marjorie Cohn
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Thursday 21 July 2005

Who leaked the name of John G. Roberts before Bush's official prime
time revelation Tuesday night? My guess: Karl Rove. He had the most to
gain from an early announcement. Rove knows the mainstream media has a
very short attention span. What better way to deflect our attention away
from Rove's crime in leaking the identity of a CIA operative than to leak
a potentially contentious nomination for the High Court?

What we'll never know is whether, absent Rove's scandal, Bush
would've nominated someone else. Other candidates would probably have
drawn a virulent response from Democrats, who have taken a cautious but
muted stance toward Roberts's nomination. Many talk of his scant paper
trail; they call him a "stealth candidate." But Roberts's record is
clear.

As a lawyer for the Reagan and Bush I administrations, and later for
his corporate clients, Roberts displayed a consistent commitment to
conservative doctrine. In both abortion cases he handled, he maintained a
legal attack on reproductive rights. In one case, Roberts argued that
Operation Rescue's routine - sometimes violent - blocking of clinics
where abortions were performed constituted protected free speech.

In Rust v. Sullivan, Roberts co-authored a brief in support of
regulations prohibiting family planning programs that received federal
aid from providing any abortion counseling. In that brief, he wrote: "We
continue to believe that Roe was wrongly decided and should be overruled
... The Court's conclusion in Roe that there is a fundamental right to an
abortion ... finds no support in the text, structure, or history of the
Constitution."

During his Senate confirmation hearing for appointment to the Court
of Appeals in 2003, Roberts changed his tune - apparently. When asked
about his views on abortion, Roberts assured the senators, "Roe v. Wade
is the settled law of the land. There's nothing in my personal views that
would prevent me from fully and faithfully applying that precedent." But
his personal views wouldn't keep Roberts from unsettling Roe as the law
of the land, consistent with his statement in Sullivan that there is no
right to an abortion in the Constitution. Roberts would likely vote to
overturn Roe v. Wade if presented with the opportunity as a Supreme Court
justice.

Roberts has had other opportunities to demonstrate his partisanship.
As a judge, he ruled against requiring ***** Cheney's energy task force to
release its records to the public. He opposed protections in the
Endangered Species Act. Displaying a clear conflict of interest, Roberts
ruled against environmentalists seeking increased government regulation
over copper smelters that emit toxic lead and arsenic pollutants; many of
those smelters were owned by members of the National Mining Association.
Just four years before, Roberts had filed a brief against citizens
opposed to the coal industry's destructive mountaintop removal, on behalf
of the same National Mining Association.

Last Friday, Roberts voted to support Bush's military commissions to
try suspected terrorists, finding that the protections of the Geneva
Conventions do not apply to anyone the administration believes is a
member of al Qaeda. Bush established those commissions to deny the
accused due process protections that are well-established in US and
international law. Although he would probably recuse himself from this
case if it reached the Supreme Court, Roberts is likely to walk in
lockstep with the Bush administration in its "war on terror" and
concomitant war on civil liberties in the years to come.

Roberts also showed his true colors when he argued for the expansion
of religion in public schools, against a woman with carpal tunnel
syndrome who was fired by Toyota, against federal affirmative action
programs, and against a congressional effort to enable minorities to
enforce the Voting Rights Act.

But Roberts is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative. He was a member of
"Lawyers for Bush-Cheney" and served as a legal advisor to Jeb Bush
during the recount in the 2000 presidential campaign. He has donated to
the political campaigns of several Republican candidates, including one
senator on the Judiciary Committee that will vote on Roberts's
nomination. He has spent most of his career as a corporate lawyer, and he
comes to the Court with a partisan agenda.

At the end of the Supreme Court's 2000 term, Roberts told a reporter
for the Baltimore Sun, "The conventional wisdom is that this is a
conservative court. We have to take that more skeptically. On the three
issues the public was most interested in - school prayer, abortion and
Miranda rights - the conservatives lost on all." Sounds like wistful
thinking.

It is incumbent upon the senators on the Judiciary Committee, and in
the full Senate, to demand all pertinent records on Roberts from the
Republican administrations in which he served. Senators must thoroughly
interrogate Roberts about his views that could affect his lawmaking as a
member of our highest court. They should ask him, for example, whether
the Constitution has a right to privacy, and whether a woman's
reproductive freedom is entitled to constitutional protection.

Roberts is not brash and outspoken. But he may well be the iron fist
in the velvet glove. Having spent his entire professional career as a
hired gun for the right-wing, Roberts is unlikely to betray his social
and political constituency.

Those who think Roberts is a moderate who will generate little
controversy need only notice the reactions of Bush's conservative
religious backers. "The president is a man of his word," said Tony
Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a right-wing Christian
organization. "He promised to nominate someone along the lines of a
Scalia or a Thomas, and that is exactly what he has done." Operation
Rescue President Troy Newman agrees. "We pray that Roberts will be
swiftly confirmed," he announced.

It's payback time, and Bush has delivered.

And by the way, Bush is a president who insists he is firmly
committed to diversity. There have been 109 justices on the Supreme
Court. Roberts will be the 105th white male. He will replace the first
woman ever to sit on the High Court. That leaves only one.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/072105A.shtml