Last Thursday, the nomination of John Roberts as the next Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court passed the Senate Judiciary Committee with a final vote of 13-5. The following Democrats on the committee opposed the passage: Kennedy, Schumer, Feinstein, Biden and Durbin. These Democrats voted for Roberts: Leahy, Kohl, and Feingold.
Today, the debate about the nomination begins in the full Senate at 1 pm ET. You can watch or listen online at C-SPAN 2. The final vote will be held this Thursday.
All Republicans are expected to vote to confirm and, as Senator Schumer notes, “Republicans are saying take the politics out of it, but they all marched in lockstep. Democrats made their mind up independently.” Some believe that the fact that the Republicans are voting as a bloc shows that Roberts may not be the safe bet to protect peoples’ rights that some of the Democrats voting for him expect him to be. Time will tell but, given his non-responsiveness to crucial questions in committee and the fact that the administration refused to release all of the documents related to his tenure in Reagan’s Solicitor General’s office, that gamble may be bigger than many want to admit.
To date, according to this AP story, the following Democrats have announce that they will be voting against Roberts confirmation this Thursday (14):
These Democrats will vote for Roberts (12):
That leaves 18 Senate Democrats either undecided or holding out on announcing their intentions, including Lieberman.
This week’s debate ought to be feisty and thorough, considering the importance of the position of Chief Justice. It ought to be because Roberts has positioned himself as a consensus builder who is unhappy with the many 5-4 split decisions that have come out of the court in the recent past. He subtly gave everyone a warning that he will take on the task of some serious arm-twisting in order to achieve that, but the message seems to have been missed by the Dems and the press. Perhaps some let it go as a message from someone who is naive with little judicial experience – who is he to think he can cajole the other justices? On the other hand, what it says about Roberts is that he is a man who is not afraid to attempt to exercise the power that comes with the office. That is not the overall impression he left during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, preferring instead to wow with his intellect and self-proclaimed sense of fairness.
So, yes, this debate ought to be feisty and thorough. I’m not confident that it will be though because, in order to have a thorough debate, you must have two opposing sides with equally strong positions. Those who are in favour of the Roberts confirmation have yet to prove the strength of their arguments. I doubt that will change before the vote is finally held.