Justice Roberts

The joke circulating about one of President Bush’s potential Supreme Court nominees holds that "Gonzales" is Spanish for "Souter". This caused consternation among advocates of a judiciary which pays attention to the Constitution rather than setting itself up as a super legislature. As it should. New Jersey residents know only too well the baleful results of an arrogant, irresponsible, out of control judiciary: high property taxes, uncontrolled sprawl, illegal redistricting, illegal borrowing.

President Bush's nominee for the US Supreme Court John Roberts appears to be something of a cipher, too. Here’s hoping that the Bush chooses better than his father. (‘Course, Bush, Sr., DID appoint Clarence Thomas, one of the two acknowledged stars on the Court)

Roberts may prove a brilliant choice. Confirmed by the Senate just two years ago sans filibuster, it will prove difficult for any of the Democratic dilettantes to argue that he’s "too extreme". And, in that short period of time, he’s had little opportunity to truly tick anyone off. Too, anyone who so irks Alliance for Justice merits the benefit of the doubt.

Already, of course, the liberal media attaches the "conservative" label to this nominee. While the media most certainly IS liberal, words like "conservative" and "liberal" lack much in the way of descriptive power when applied to judges. Those terms connote a political philosophy and, done right, judging involves no such activity.

Examples abound. Some years back, Justice Scalia wrote the majority opinion in a case which invalidated, on Fourth Amendment grounds, the use by the police of thermal imagers to track down marijuana growers. It’s possible, I suppose, that Scalia supports marijuana growers. More likely, he simply went where the text and history of the Constitution compelled him to go.

Political liberals care only about results and, as far as concerns the federal judiciary, primarily about abortion. Any serious student of the Constitution who reads the opinion in Roe (or its progenitor, Griswold, of "penumbras and emanations" infamy) without sighing in disbelief simply isn’t paying attention. Or, by definition, isn’t serious. Nothing therein points to so much as a sentence in the document which supports the conclusion at which the Court arrived. The Court simply annunciated abortion on demand as a desirable policy outcome (at least insofar as seven old men were concerned) and constitutionalized that policy on a whim.

Whether one believes abortion to be mortal sin or sacrament, honesty compels that conclusion that such a "right" utterly lacks even a hint of constitutional support. No judge who could attach his/her name to the opinion in Roe is qualified to sit on any court.

Perhaps, twenty years hence, when abortion has been evicted from the constitution, judicial confirmation hearings will, once again, turn on the issues of whether a judge agrees to be bound to the text and history of the document presented for interpretation.

I’ll wager that neither "side" will find Roberts so objectionable as to warrant more than a bit of hyperventilating by Ted Kennedy and Chuck Schumer. The best we, as a nation, can hope for is that in Judge Roberts, President Bush has found a judge who understands the job description.