I would appreciate any feedback on this editorial on S.Ct. nominee Roberts

[Czolgosz]

John Roberts was a law clerk for William Rehnquist, associate counsel to Ronald Reagan’s White House Counsel’s Office during the Iran-Contra scandal, the Political Deputy Solicitor General under Ken Starr during the first Bush administration, and legal adviser to Jeb and George Bush in Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board and Bush v. Gore. Although Roberts is the protégé of Rehnquist and Starr, he holds even more radical views on restricting the First Amendment and imposing new limitations on Congress’s power to regulate improper conduct that may be tolerated by individual states.

Roberts Disrespects the First Amendment

As the Political Deputy Solicitor General, Roberts played a key role in defining the first Bush administration’s legal policies when intervening in cases pending before the Supreme Court. Opposition to all facets of the First Amendment was a unifying theme of Roberts’s work as Political Deputy Solicitor General.

With regard to free speech, Roberts filed a brief in favor of restricting speech in United States v. Eichman (the Supreme Court, including ultra-right wing Anton Scalia, rejected Roberts’s call for judicial activism limiting free speech).

With regard to the separation of church and state, Roberts filed a brief in favor of disregarding the First Amendment’s barriers in Lee v. Weisman (the Supreme Court rejected Roberts’s call for judicial activism allowing the intermingling of church and state).

With regard to the right of privacy, Roberts filed briefs in favor of eliminating women’s reproductive self-determination in Rust v. Sullivan and Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic (the Supreme Court rejected Roberts’s calls to overrule Roe v. Wade).

Roberts’s radically narrow view of the First Amendment is extreme even when compared against the most right-wing Justices of the current Supreme Court. The prospect of an activist judge this far to the right of Scalia with regard to the First Amendment should deeply concern everyone with a love of the Constitution.

Roberts Would Turn Back the Clock 70 Years on Congressional Power

Many of Roberts’s critics have focused on the anti-environmental aspect of his dissenting opinion in Rancho Viejo v. Norton, a case where he disagreed with the rest of the (very conservative) DC Circuit Court because he would have rejected the use of the Endangered Species Act to protect a threatened habitat. On its face, this dissenting opinion shows a lack of respect for the environment, but the reasoning behind this opinion shows a more troubling lack of respect for Congress’s regulatory authority.

Roberts would have rejected the use of the Endangered Species Act in the Rancho Viejo case based on an extremist view that Congress lacks constitutional authority to regulate anything that does not directly affect interstate commerce.

70 years ago, back before the New Deal, there was a vigorous debate in the courts about the scope of the Constitution’s “commerce clause” and Congress’s authority to regulate actions in the various states. The New Deal legislation and the many court decisions which approved that legislation resolved the debate about the scope of the commerce clause. Since then, this broad interpretation of Congress’s authority to regulate actions in the states has been used to lift the country out of depression, to pass labor protections, racial desegregation, civil rights, and consumer safety laws among other important and well-established legal standards.

Roberts’s dissent in the Rancho Viejo case confirms that he would turn the clock back 70 years to the narrow interpretation of the commerce clause that was rejected decades ago and by thousands of legal decisions. Imagine an America where Congress could not impose child work standards or environmental regulations or racial equality unless the parties being regulated sought to violate the standards while actually crossing state lines for business purposes. That is the America Roberts envisions.

Roberts has denied having ever been a member of the Federalist Society, a group of right-wing lawyers devoted to an extremist view of the Constitution that would deny the federal government power to regulate corporate misconduct on the national level. Contrary to Roberts’s statements, he is listed in the Federalist Society's 1997-1998 leadership Directory as serving on its Steering Committee.

[wli]

1. it's like the hair club for right-wing Christian fundamentalist extremists

"He's not only a member, he's also on the Steering Committee."