“Supreme Court nominee John Roberts worked behind the scenes for a coalition of gay-rights activists, and his legal expertise helped them persuade the Supreme Court to issue a landmark 1996 ruling protecting people against discrimination because of their sexual orientation,” reports the LAT via The Seattle Times.
However, “[p]erhaps because he didn’t argue the case or play a leading public role,” observes ABC’s The Note,
Well, Roberts DOES have a short memory. (Who? Me? Federalist Society?). And the pro bono work was clear back in the 1990s.
ABC’s The Note speculates further:
Was he a senior enough partner to decline to do the pro bono work?
Or did he accept the assignment with relish? Or somewhere in between?
We are breathless in wondering why the Times article does not include reaction from conservative activists or the White House or Sam Brownback? (We are trying to get us some reax our own ourselves.) Which conservative legal groups who support Roberts for the SCOTUS slot filed amicus briefs in that case against his side?
This thing could explode or go nowhere.
Oh, let’s let it explode.
Again, from the LAT article via The Seattle Times:
Then a lawyer specializing in appellate work, the conservative Roberts helped represent the gay activists as part of his law firm’s pro bono work. While he did not write the legal briefs or argue the case before the Supreme Court, he was instrumental in reviewing the filings and preparing oral arguments, according to several lawyers involved in the case.
The coalition won its case, 6-3, in what gay activists described at the time as the movement’s most important legal victory. The three dissenting justices were those to whom Roberts is frequently likened for their conservative ideology: Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
Roberts’ work on behalf of gay activists, whose cause is anathema to many conservatives, appears to illustrate his allegiance to the credo of the legal profession: to zealously represent the interests of the client, whoever it might be. …
[………]
Jean Dubofsky, lead attorney on the case and a former member of the Colorado Supreme Court, said she came to Washington to prepare for the U.S. Supreme Court presentation and immediately was referred to Roberts.
“Everybody said Roberts was one of the people I should talk to,” Dubofsky said. “He has a better idea on how to make an effective argument to a court that is pretty conservative, and hasn’t been very receptive to gay rights.
“John Roberts … was just terrifically helpful in meeting with me and spending some time on the issue. He seemed to be very fair-minded and very astute.”
Dubofsky said Roberts helped her form the argument that the initiative was illegal because it violated the “equal-protections” clause of the Constitution.
In a blistering dissent in the case, Scalia, joined by Rehnquist and Thomas, had said that “Coloradans are entitled to be hostile toward homosexual conduct.” Scalia added that the majority opinion giving the victory to the gay-rights activists “has no foundation in American constitutional law, and barely pretends to.”
Stouter souls than I can check out the Free Republic boards for their reactions. Should be fun.
Maybe Roberts is a closet liberal. 😉
Well, Roberts DOES have a short memory.
Snort.
This is definitely interesting.
(Hey, Susan? Could you make a quick stop by the cafe this morning? See if there’s anything else I should add to it. Thanks!)
Giving away valuable billable hours?!?!
He’s a traitor, a traitor to the cause, I say!</snark>
Seriously though, one has to wonder about the interesting intersections between the Bush administration and gays that keep turning up.
At what point do they reach critical mass and cause fundamentalist heads to explode?
You certainly don’t see that kind of thing with, say, environmental issues or abortion rights.
Curious…
Cross-posted at DKos where, sigh, someone said this wasn’t important at all because he just did it for the law firm… so I pointed out that the STRATEGIC reason this is important to publicize is that it’ll mess with the minds of his ‘winger supporters.
Sad that you had to explain this.
Well, it likely won’t ruin Roberts’ chances … but it’s always fun to have some fun at the ‘wingers’ expense.
And there may be an inkling of hope that that experience will have had some small effect on Justice Roberts.
It’s also suspect that he didn’t include it in his submissions. This guy is a liar.
This is also worthwhile because it offers an interesting insight into Roberts’ character. Assuming that he worked on this case willingly, we’re left with a few possibilities. The least likely is that he is an honest federalist, and believe that the government should stay out of people’s lives as much as possible. His opposition to privacy rights and women’s rights seem to contradict this. Perhaps he simply thinks that the government should stay out of men’s lives as much as possible?
Another possibility is that he was once more liberal (slightly to the left of Atilla the Hun?), but, like Dubya, has had a “rebirth” since then. This would definitely explain how he got the White House’s backing – his credentials with the Fascist Fundamentalists would be impeccable. And, unfortunately for us, this brief would be largely irrelevant, as anything done before his “rebirth” is ignored by these loons.
The third possibility I can think of is that he’s simply an opportunist, and tries to involve himself in the background with any big-name case, simply to make a name for himself in the legal opportunity. Not much traction there, but there might be some.
The final one is, of course, that he wrote this brief despite believing that it was wrong because he was ordered to.
The least likely is that he is an honest federalist, and believe that the government should stay out of people’s lives as much as possible. His opposition to privacy rights and women’s rights seem to contradict this.
I read somewhere that strict constructionists don’t believe “privacy” is provided for by the Constitution, because it is nowhere stated that we have a right to “privacy.” The problem with this interpretation is that when the Constitution was crafted, the word “privacy” referred to the use of the outhouse, and privacy as we understand it, would have been addressed as “security.”
[nod] Which is true, but only in a very limited sense. I’m going to start some 9th Amendment advocacy. Every time someone brings up that argument, I’m going to quote the 9th Amendment at them: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
Thus, I think the burden is actually on them to somehow prove that people don’t have a right to privacy.
I seem to remember that the original federalists (Adams and co, weren’t they?) were aristocrats in all but name. The modern version appears to have become fascists in all but name. I think it’s worth noting that, based on my understanding, they don’t deny a right to privacy because they dislike abortion. They deny a right to privacy because they don’t believe it exists. Roe is merely collateral damage, a coincidental casualty of their philosophy that they can exploit to recruit allies among the Fascist Fundamentalists.
Keeping in mind that I’m not an American, the 9th Amendment seems to me to have been the result of some very clever legislative sleight-of-hand. It basically transforms the Constitution from an enumeration of the rights of the people to an enumeration of the rights of the government. (Though that commerce clause is generally interpreted as being really broad, and rightly so)
I don’t think it was sleight of hand. It’s an explicit limitation of government. In plain language it says that spelling out some of the people’s rights in no way limits their rights to only those spelled out. The 9th Amendment is a clear and explicit rebuttal to any argument that something is not a right if it doesn’t happen to be spelled out in the Constitution.
Nobody can honestly claim to be a “strict Constitutionalist” if they try to make that argument, because they’re blatantly ignoring the 9th Amendment.
The most they can honestly say is that there’s no explicit enumeration of a “right to privacy” in the Constitution. Which is true, but not terribly important. Even if a right to privacy wasn’t strongly implied in the Constitution — and it is — that’s irrelevant to any discussion about whether such a right can be said to exist.
Clearly supporting the 9th Amendment could push right-to-privacy opponents away from their (so far successful) obfuscation of the issue into trying to argue directly against a right-to-privacy, which would go over like a lead balloon in the US. (As they know damn well, or they wouldn’t be pulling this shit.)
I was referring to the method used to slip it into the Constitution, and the about-face it pulls on the usual enumerations of rights of the people.
a lot of stuff about how smart Ann Coulter is and how she smelled a rat in Roberts. Also many saying it is just a liberal plot to divide the undividable.
The freepers are going at it with with gusto.
We can only hope that the moral dissonance this creates, also causes them to explode in moral outrage that a constitutional lawyer actual supported the basic constitutional principle of equal protection under the law.
Do piranhas eat their own if they get a nick and bleed?
Do barracudas?
Just wondering.
Should have paid more attention to those Jacques Cousteau shows when I was a kid.
😉
Yes.
So do sharks.
When the frenzy’s on it’s literally eat or be eaten, there’s not much getting away and NO middle ground.
with their black/white thinking they will be unable
to compromise. It will confuse them because Roberts’
support of gay rights will not fit their image of him.
They will have to find a way to mitigate his involvement.
James Dobson’s not going to like this one bit!
I posted this comment over at DKos, but thought it worth repeating (never sure if I should or not when things are cross-posted.)
So Roberts did some pro-bono work for gay rights activists. Why? He was a senior partner in a major DC firm with considerable experience in front of the Supreme Court; the firm had taken on a high-profile case, and a fellow partner had asked for his input. He could have said no, true, but does the fact that he assisted really have any bearing on his own views, should a similar question come up during his tenure as a Judge–or a Supreme Court Justice?
I’ve worked in law firms; I’ve worked for litigators. Attorneys are professionals, specialists for hire in their respective fields of expertise. It isn’t personal (at least, not most of the time). Some attorneys take on cases they care very much about. Some take on cases because they’re paid to do so. Some take on cases because the senior partner told them to do so. It isn’t personal. It’s their job. Whether a litigator is acting on behalf of a big corporate client, an industry trade association, an individual, or the state, he or she is working as a professional advocate for the client. It’s their job to present the best case possible, using all their expertise, understanding of the law and its precedents, and their own innate powers of persuasion and personality to be the voice for the client’s point of view.
I’ve seen litigators on opposite sides of a case argue vociferously with each other in court, then meet for golf the following weekend. It isn’t personal. I’ve known attorneys with strong environmentalist views who represented industry clients they disagreed with on a number of issues.
So the news that Roberts once gave some pro-bono advice on a case advocating gay rights does not carry much weight with me insofar as my concerns about seeing him on the Supreme Court. He was a logical person to go to for that advice, under the circumstances described. He could have said no, sure. But unless he was a rabid homophobe or total asshole (which to give him due credit, he doesn’t seem to be on either count), he would have had no reason to. Attorneys consult with each other all the time. And the case might have interested him on a purely intellectual level. Building a case, finding the right legal precedents to make your points, the strategy involved in setting forth one’s arguments and conclusions in a convincing manner, is an intellectual exercise, a challenge that most litigators relish. If they didn’t like challenge and debate, they would be in another branch of the business. Ideology and personal beliefs don’t enter into it.
He could have deliberately left it out (as I suspect he did on the Federalist Society membership matter – or perhaps he thought that if he didn’t pay dues, his participation didn’t technically “count” as being a member). Or he could have just not considered this one incident of “advice” to fellow attorneys (one of doubtless many in his career) as all that significant.
This information may make some of the right-wing froth at the mouth — but that’s their problem. It sure as hell isn’t sufficient to make Roberts any less unacceptable as a Supreme Court Justice. One very minor intellectual exercise in favor of a progressive cause (in which he really had no personal or professional stake) does not negate a lifetime of far more troubling conservative positions when his opinion carried significant weight.
you can reason that most of the time Roberts was against defending human rights. But wingers are too rigid. This will really upset them.
Amazing, Bush puts up a nominee that both sides can find intolerable. Perhaps this is his bid to be a “uniter”?
I don’t know what to make of Robert’s pro bono work-and it’s hard to know if it’s a good sign or not. His view of privacy and the can of worms that opens is more than enough for me to find him a bad choice.
it will be another knife in his back, or as he might state, “a knife in the back of family values.”
This means that Roberts worked for those who are a Dobsonian threat to The Family, the institution of marriage, and the children. <gasp>
Strange that Roberts is not proud of one of his few human rights’ defenses, maybe his only one.
Focus on the Family for his possible reaction to the news on Roberts, ( I saw none) I was aghast to find his Focus on Social Issues where there are links to curing homosexuality.
Basically, the site preaches that as Christians they must love homosexuals, because Christ teaches them to love sinners. But those homosexuals must have no rights such as adopting children, marriage, education etc.
There is the heartbreaking story of little Jimmy who is different, intelligent and sensitive unlike his “healthy” brothers. His crime? He tried on his grandmother’s earrings. The Dobson treatment recommended sending him to a sports camp to make him more manly.
One can only hope that these children break with their families and find love and support outside of them.
I apologize for this seguey but I am somewhat in a state of shock after visiting such a slimy site.
I always have to take a shower after I have visited one of these so called Christian sites. I always feel like I was just dragged through a dung pile and I smell awful and feel awful.
Dobson doesn’t even begin to know what it means to be a Christian following the discipline of christ. I know many Christians that find him a blight upon the word of christ.
– a whitened sepulchure. You are so right, their sites give one a creepy feeling.