Judge Roberts is not qualified as a Supreme Court judge because he does not even have the most basic understanding of what the Constitution is all about or the context behind the writing of the Constitution.
In the Colonial period, the Colonists revolted against British taxation without representation. The problem with the British was that one person, King George III, determined what the laws and taxes were for the colonies; the local assemblies had no say.
In response, the Founding Fathers designed a system of checks and balances so that power would not be concentrated in the hands of one person. However, Roberts opposes this system of checks and balances and would transfer all the real power into the hands of the President while leaving the SCOTUS and Congress to act as rubber stamps for the Bush administration.
Hamden vs. Rumsfeld was a classic example of this. Stare Decisis, or the rule that judges are bound by legal precedent, works 99% of the time. However, every once in a while, or about 1% of the time, there comes a time when the rights of people are so threatened by the abuse of power by the government that a sua sponte decision which does not rely on legal precedent is justified.
The Warren Court’s decision overruling “Separate but Equal” was one such example. Hamden vs. Rumsfeld should have been another. It does no good to argue that lower courts are even more bound by legal precedent than the SCOTUS. An act of judicial courage by a lower court would have forced the SCOTUS to hear the case and to actively review whether the President’s policies were justified by the Constitution. A judge at any level must serve as the conscience of the rest of the government and aggressively put the brakes on excessive governmental infringement on human liberty.
But that is not the view that Judge Roberts takes. Instead, he favors what Arthur Sibler calls “the imperial presidency.”
Sibler writes as follows:
Moreover, the executive’s wartime power is not to be questioned or restrained by anyone or anything: not by the courts, and not even by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. From the commentary I’ve seen, it appears that many people still do not understand why that opinion is so crucial, or what its implications are.
In other words, Roberts advocates a return to the days when the Colonies were subject to the whims of King George III and Congress and the courts only served as a rubber stamp. Another model for Robert’s views is the Russian government, which has concentrated power in the hands of Putin, while leaving Parliament and the courts as mere rubber stamps.
Sibler gives the following example of how Roberts would concentrate power in the hands of the President similar to King George III. Quoting Bruce Shapiro on Democracy Now:
Well, one day after being interviewed by President Bush, a Federal Appeals panel, three judges of which Judge Roberts was a member, handed down a unanimous decision–all three judges, by the way, Reagan-Bush appointees–permitting the tribunals to go forward, reinstating them, and in particular, invalidating those Geneva Convention protections, and saying, in fact, that the courts had no business reviewing this question of Geneva Convention status, that it was purely a matter for the Executive Branch.
Courts have routinely reviewed international treaties we have signed on to and how other countries applied them in order to determine how properly to apply them ourselves. That is a long-held precedent of the courts. Yet Roberts would take that power away from the courts and give it to the President to pee on any way he darn pleases.
Predicts Shapiro:
There are a huge number of cases coming through the pipeline, cases from Guantanamo, cases involving the PATRIOT Act, cases involving prisoners in other U.S. facilities, cases involving rendition. All of these are going to come forward and having that kind of an ally who genuinely follows in the tradition of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who kind of cut his eye teeth as Deputy Solicitor General defending the Nixon administration’s invasion of Cambodia without Congressional approval, that is more than anything else, I think, what the Bush Administration wanted in this nomination.
I suggest that the reason Rehnquist is staying on is to groom Roberts as his successor. People may argue that Roberts, as a lawyer, was simply doing his job as a lawyer. But given the fact that Roberts is so closely associated with Rehnquist, there is every indication that Roberts will rule that it is OK for the President to do stuff without Congressional approval, given the fact that Rehnquist did so himself.
And furthermore, Roberts chose to join the Federalist Society, a right-wing think tank dedicated to getting right-wing judges appointed. If Roberts was simply doing his job as a lawyer for the Reagan and Bush administrations and not developing his reactionary views, he would not have joined the Federalist Society. The fact that he chose to join the Federalist Society shows that he went way above and beyond lawyers who simply represent their clients for a living and do not necessarily hold their clients’ views on things.
Along with his reactionary views of the Presidency, Roberts advocates a curtailment of civil liberties. For instance, he opposes affirmative action, claiming that it simply gives special rights to minorities when in fact they are designed to redress years of discrimination.
Roberts also supports the overthrow of Roe vs. Wade; he argued before the SCOTUS that Roe should be overturned as an attorney for the Reagan and Bush administrations. And Attorney General Alberto Gonzales stated publically that if Roberts thinks that Roe should be overturned, he would be justified in doing it.
This is all a matter of trust. George Bush has lied countless times, from the fixing of the facts in Iraq around the policy as documented by the DSM, to his broken promise to restore bipartisanship to Washington and any number of other things. So, given the fact that Bush has lied so many times, why should we trust him when he says Judge Roberts is the most qualified man to run the SCOTUS?
