My last Roberts story, I promise. Michelle Malkin:
Michelle’s longer version is below. Some of it indicates a level of conscience and compassion roughly equivalent to our president’s. Take this, for example:
I added the bold face – susanhu.
Tony Mauro of the Legal Times reported in February 2005 that SCOTUS nominee John Roberts’ votes “have mainly fallen on the conservative side, but not always:”
Last December, in United States v. Mellen, Roberts ruled in favor of a criminal defendant who challenged his sentence in a fraud case. Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson — yes, an appointee of the first President Bush — dissented.
In the July 2004 decision Barbour v. Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), Roberts joined Merrick Garland — a Clinton appointee — in deciding that sovereign immunity did not bar a D.C employee with bipolar disorder from suing the transit agency under federal laws barring discrimination against the disabled. Conservative Sentelle dissented.
But then there was another WMATA case — known as the french fry case — which some critics point to as a sign of a certain hard-heartedness in Roberts’ decision making.
In the unanimous ruling last October in Hedgepeth v. WMATA, Roberts upheld the arrest, handcuffing and detention of a 12-year-old girl for eating a single french fry inside a D.C. Metrorail station. “No one is very happy about the events that led to this litigation,” Roberts acknowledged in the decision, but he ruled that nothing the police did violated the girl’s Fourth Amendment or Fifth Amendment rights.
Roberts also displayed what some viewed as insouciance toward arroyo toads in a 2003 case, Rancho Viejo v. Norton. Roberts wanted the full D.C. Circuit to reconsider a panel’s decision that upheld a Fish and Wildlife Service regulation protecting the toads under the Endangered Species Act. Roberts said there could be no interstate commerce rationale for protecting the toad, which, he said, “for reasons of its own lives its entire life in California.”
In another decision last June, Roberts went even further than his colleagues in supporting the Bush administration in a case that pitted the government against veterans of the first Gulf War. American soldiers captured and tortured by the Iraqi government during the first Gulf War sued the Iraqi government in U.S. court and won nearly $1 billion in damages at the district court level.
But once Saddam was toppled in 2003, the Bush administration wanted to protect the new Iraqi government from liability and intervened to block the award. Roberts, alone among the circuit judges who ruled with the government, said the federal courts did not even have jurisdiction to consider the victims’ claim. An appeal is before the Supreme Court.
Mauro quotes Mark Levin, author of “Men in Black,” praising Roberts. “In the short period he has been on the court, John Roberts has shown he does not bring a personal agenda to his work,” Levin told Mauro. “He follows the Constitution, and he is excellent.”
Levin’s colleagues at Bench Memos also seem to have positive impressions.
Mauro reports that Roberts is on good terms with Elliot Mincberg of People for the American Way, a key liberal interest group. The two men worked together years ago and Mincberg likes him personally. “He’s a very smart lawyer and easy to work with, but there is no question he is very, very conservative,” says Mincberg.
Roberts will probably have less luck with The Alliance for Justice, which opposed his nomination to the D.C. Circiut Court of Appeals two years ago, and NARAL, which objects to the work he did as Deputy Solicitor General under Bush I. Both groups say Roberts is hostile to reproductive rights.
There was some very useful discussion of Roberts at The Volokh Conspiracy back in May. See here. Orin Kerr wrote on May 24:
I am repeatedly struck by how people from across the political spectrum are tremendously impressed by him and his work. Especially as a replacement for a conservative Chief, Roberts seems like the best shot at a consensus candidate.
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Props to Bradford Berenson, who predicted Roberts’ nomination several weeks ago. “If I had to pick, I’d say it will be John Roberts,” Berenson told the L.A. Times. “Roberts “is young, conservative, a Bush appointee — and his would be an easier confirmation.”
Frank J. at IMAO, on the other hand, was not even close!
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Hugh Hewitt’s having a radio marathon tonight on the SCOTUS nominee.
Confirm Them has posted Roberts’ intros from his SJC hearing.
The indefatigable N.Z. Bear has already set up a John Roberts tracking page here.
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