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Wednesday, July 20, 2005
You've got to hand it to them
When I saw the title to Hammer's post below I thought it must be his take on Bush's Supreme Court nominee. It wasn't but might as well have been. You've got to hand it to these guys for their media manipulation skills--how else do you explain the fact that today we are all so surprised that W picked a conservative white guy to be his first nominee to the SC? If Roberts is confirmed the SC will be 88% white and 88% male. I'm assuming it's 100% straight tho I don't know what percent Christian it is. Now as a straight white male (but non-christian) maybe this shouldn't bother me but it does. The early returns (via left wing MPR that has chosen a former Scalia clerk to give us an analysis of what a great guy John Roberts is) it sounds like he is a well respected and well liked person and a first rate legal mind. The law professor on MPR even went so far as to say he was one of the ten best qualified judges in the country. Even if that IS the case I think the country would be better served by making the effort to make the court a little more representative of the nation as a whole. I remember back in the days when Alexander Haig was Secretary of State someone pointed out that he had finished something like 317th in his class at West Point and asked "Does this mean that there are 316 four star generals that are smarter than he is?" It was a funny line but still makes a good point about being "the best qualified". (And I'm not inviting a discussion on how qualified Haig was.) I'm guessing a four star general who finished 25th is not significantly different from one who finished 317th (and for what it is worth there are only about 40 four star generals at any given time) just as the 4th best qualified judge is not significantly different from the 18th best qualified judge.
Bottom line: There are plenty of non-white, non-male potential SC nominees out there who are for all intents and purposes just as qualified as John Roberts and I'm surprised Bush didn't pick one of them. But I really shouldn't be, should I?
[I just got off the phone with a very excited Libby Mae who was very disappointed when I told her, no, it's JOHN Roberts, not Bob.]
Update: My friend Newmy (Specializing in criminal defense and personal injury litigation! Call 612 -871-7000, operators standing by!) informs me that the current SC makeup is 22% Jewish and therefore one would assume 78% Christian, unless some stealth atheist made their way past the Senate. More related information can be found here.
Update, 7-21-05 Salon has a longer version of the above argument here.
3 Comments:
I don't know what kind of Justice Mr. Roberts will be. I don't know much about him at all, as a matter of fact. I'll no doubt learn some things as the Senate considers the nomination, and if the Democrats don't go into apoplexy I won't either. Truth is, it doesn't much matter what I think.
Having said that, the idea that it should be some kind of requirement that a woman be appointed - or a black, or a Native American, or a black person, or an Hispanic, or a gay or whatever strikes me as about as rediculous as requiring that a white male be appointed. The Warren Court as I recall was all white male. They didn't do such a bad job. Balkanizing the Supreme Court just isn't high on my list of priorities. The choice of Thomas to replace Marshall because Thomas is black didn't serve the Republic very well. Better if Bush the Elder had picked someone truly an heir to Marshall's intellectual and jurisprudential quality.
By 
, at
5:11 PM
I don't believe the court should be required to reflect the actual demographic breakdown of the country, and with the hodgepodge of classifications in America there is no way that a group of 9 ever could. (Cue old recording of Jim Watt saying "hey, I've got two blacks, a Jew, and a cripple!") But the SC is such am important institution in American life that it is shameful that it's makeup should be so homogenous. It would be one thing if the makeup changed on a more regular basis so that the representation of different groups waxed and waned over the years with one group being disproportionately represented some years and another group in others. But that is not the case and in a country where men are a minority of the population and whites soon will be it is wrong that both those groups make up almost 90% of the court.
(A friend this morning suggested that when the next seat is open W will use the lack of women on the court as an excuse to nominate an extremist and dare the Senate to not confirm her. When that happens you no doubt will hear Republicans (in fairness, not "real" ones tho) tell the American public that liberals somehow want to discriminate against women.)
I don't think the Democrats have given any indication of apoplexy so far. Some groups on the left are breathless, which concerns me. I don't think there's been time enough to process anything about Roberts.
Taking the cake, though, the commentary on NPR this afternoon. Daniel Schore (Shore? Schnoor? Whatever) was advising the Democrats against fillibustering Roberts, which they've given no indication of doing, in favor of a deliberative process, which most Senate Dems have indicated is their priority.
