John Roberts is going to be the next Chief Justice of the United States, and according to his relatively youthful age, he is going to be there for awhile, maybe as long as thirty years or more. It's only natural that a good many politicians, especially the Democratic members of the "loyal oppossition" would want to know as much about him as they can possibly gleen. But Judge Roberts has not exactly been forthcoming. On the other hand, he has given us some telling glimpses into his psyche and his temperament, and in fact his judical philosophy as a whole is crystal clear. He is a conservative. He will rule the bench of the highest court of the land, as a conservative. Still, he has given some Democrats reason to breathe sighs of relief. He has even gone so far as to say he considers Roe v. Wade to be settled law, and in the same breathe goes further by suggesting that he has a respect for legal precedent, and that it is not to be lightly thrown out. He further expounded his acceptance of the belief in an implied constitutional right to privacy, more good news.
But no matter what especially the Democrats on the committee says or does, he is simply not going to give his personal opinions on any kind of subject matter that might at any time stand a chance of coming up before the court. His reasoning is that he wants any future litigant to feel that his case is being fairly considered. He further went on to assure the committee that he would never let personal opinion of a matter influence his decision as a judge on a case. Of course, this is so much bull shit. There are widely divergent views on the Constitution, to the point you cannot engage in any matter that requires it's oversight without having an opinion on how it should be viewed. You either see the Constitution as a living document, whose founders meant for it to grow and evolve over time and circumstances, or you view it with the mind of a strict construtionist. It means exactly what it says, and nothing else, in other words. Any variance would therefore require an amendment, if necessary, but certainly not an adaptive interpretation of what might be all ready there. Unfortunately, not all strict constructionists have that view on all matters, nor do all "living document" adherents have that view in every single case. It seems to come down to a matter of, yes, personal opinion, of the issue involved that is, as to which view applies, in all too many cases.
And this is precisely what has certain members of the committee practically besides themselves with Roberts obstinence, or what they obviously view as such. He feels evidently that he should be take at his word as regarding his promises of impartiality, but politicians are a suspicous bunch by nature, rightly so in most cases.
On the other hand, Joe Biden of Delaware is obviousy trying to score early points in his soon to probably be Quixotic bid for the Democratic Presidential nomination for 2008, with his accussations of purposely avoiding answering direct questions Biden just can't understand what his problem is in answering.
The same goes for Russell Feingold, who made me want to throw up yesterday when he suggested that Roberts should not have held back certain members of the Reagan administration from reassurring the public as to the true nature of the HIV virus and AIDS. It was widely feared at one time to be as easily caught as the common cold, and Roberts warned Reagan against issuing any information to the contrary, until the facts were known for certain. This seemed like a common sense approach to me, but Feingold is evidently the kind of prick who would rather feed people what might turn out to be in the long run misinformation (so far as was known at the time in question) just in order to avoid panic. The hell with the facts, in other words, we will worry about them later and hope for the best. Well, this is the kind of person I precisely do not want to see leading the country, so if you are running for president, Russell, guess what, you just lost my vote (in the primaries, at least) .
It is easy to see why Roberts is so impressive to so many people as to his nature, his intelligence, his capacity for thoughtfulness, and his judicial temperament. It would take a hell of a lot of patience to keep me from pouncing on this crew. But Roberts is a jouster, and I bet he's a bit of a chess player. I can spot them a mile away, but most people seem surprisingly to have missed his little verbal joust, which happenned the very first day of the Senate confirmation hearings. But it was a telling blow, and may say quite a bit about the true nature of his temperament.
A judge, he said, has to look at the law and apply it as written. A judge, he continued, is not a politician, who can promise people things in return for their votes. Ouch!
