L.A. Times, Apparently in Jest, Says Obama Will Not Put Liberals On Supreme Court

Posted by Bill Dupray on Nov 17 2008 Filed under Constitution, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

There is a funny piece in the L.A. Times today discussing Obama’s possible picks for the Supreme Court. It is not ha-ha funny, it is funny because it shows how far-left liberals distinguish themselves from one another; sort of like a zebra saying another zebra has a slightly wider stripe.

Barack Obama’s election probably does not herald a new liberal era at the Supreme Court, since none of the conservative justices — who are in the majority — is expected to retire in the next four years.

But if liberals cannot take control, Obama’s win has them pushing for a strong voice for social justice on the high court.

“I think Obama would want to make a statement with his Supreme Court justices. We hope for a justice who can replace the lost voice of an Earl Warren or Thurgood Marshall or William Brennan,” said Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice, a coalition of public interest and civil rights groups. “It’s critically important to have an Obama justice who can be a counterpoint to [Chief Justice John G.] Roberts and [Justice Samuel A.] Alito.”

I guess Obama is going to disappoint these folks. The L.A. Times thinks it will be hard right wingers right down the line.

It is not clear that Obama hopes to put the kind of person on the court that Aron and other liberals are dreaming about.

In an interview with the Detroit Free Press editorial board in October, he described Warren, Brennan and Marshall as “heroes of mine. . . . But that doesn’t necessarily mean that I think their judicial philosophy is appropriate for today.”

He credited the Warren court with ending segregation and opening doors for African Americans. “The court had to step in and break that logjam. I’m not sure you need that. In fact, I would be troubled if you had that same kind of activism in circumstances today,” he said.

Yeah, Obama doesn’t want activist Justices on the bench. He likes folks like Ginsberg and Breyer.

President Clinton named the only two Democrats to the court since the 1960s, and he steered away from strong liberals, instead choosing veteran appeals court judges with moderate to liberal records. Ginsburg, soft-spoken and measured, is a champion of women’s rights. Stephen G. Breyer is a pragmatic problem-solver. Neither has been in a position to shape the court’s work.

Do they mean the moderate to liberal Ginsburg and Breyer who tried to strike down the 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms? Or perhaps they mean the moderate to liberal Ginsburg and Breyer who effectively repealed the 5th Amendment right to private property by allowing cities to take private property and give it to another private party.

But the L.A. Times thinks there is a difference between those Constitution-shredding moderate to liberal Justices and the “real” liberals of the late 20th century.

By contrast, Warren, Marshall and Brennan were leaders of the court in its liberal era. They pressed for civil rights for minorities and women and strengthened rights for criminal defendants. Brennan and Marshall led the court in halting the death penalty for a time in the early 1970s and in striking down laws banning abortion.

Not sure I see much of a difference here. The death penalty was carried out in colonial times and the practice was far more, shall we say . . . politically incorrect, than it was in the 1970s. The Constitution specifically allows for capital punishment, but the Warren Court found it unconstitutional anyway. They, like their progeny, Ginsberg and Breyer, ignored the plain English of the Constitution.

Abortion rights are nowhere to be found in the Constitution, and neither is the permissible age at which people can marry, the proper sentence for manslaughter, and whether gambling should be allowed. Those issues are for the states to decide. And yet, the 1970s Court made up the right to an abortion, thereby depriving voters in the states of the freedom to decide the issue for themselves.

The bottom line is that Breyer and Ginsburg are every bit as far left as Warren, Marshall, and Brennan were. They disregard the text of the Constitution and legislate from the bench, substituting their own judgment for that of the Founding Fathers, thereby depriving Americans of sacred Constitutional rights and the freedom to choose the laws under which they are to be governed.

Barack Obama will only add to the problem with his judicial selections and further reduce our freedom and liberty.

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