I invite you to read this history of his cases compiled by The New York Review of Books. It's long, so here are a few excerpts in hopes of hooking your interest.
Nowhere in any of the memos that have been made available did John Roberts acknowledge the effect of the many years of disenfranchisement on black citizens. Instead his concern was about the effect of an imagined quota system on whites, a concern that twenty-five years later has proved to be groundless.
After three and a half years in private practice, Roberts returned to the federal government in 1989 as principal deputy solicitor general, under Kenneth Starr. In this new capacity, while he supported civil rights claims in one case before the court, arguing that desegregation obligations be strengthened at colleges and universities in Mississippi, his work was mostly a resumption of his campaign against extending remedies for civil rights violations.
Some have said that Roberts's views expressed in government briefs during his time in the solicitor general's office should not be held against him because he was "just a lawyer representing a client." While that view may be persuasive when it involves lawyers who were civil servants in that office and were bound to follow government policy if they wanted to hold on to their jobs, it is unconvincing in the case of John Roberts. He held the number two position in the office—principal deputy solicitor, popularly known as the "political deputy." He was a policy maker, not a policy follower.
There is another reason why Roberts should be held accountable for his actions in the solicitor general's office. That office, while part of the executive branch, has a unique responsibility to guide the Supreme Court to the "right" result in cases before them (a responsibility that has led some to dub the office "the tenth justice"). At least three times in the past, solicitors general have refused to participate in cases where they believed the policies they were directed to follow by the administration were wrong. That was not a dilemma faced by John Roberts. Indeed in several civil rights cases his briefs were merely extensions of policies he had advocated in his previous stints at the Justice Department and the White House. Indeed, in the unlikely event that Roberts had changed his mind on a policy, and the expressed views in the case were dictated by Solicitor General Starr, Roberts could simply have refrained from signing the briefs.
Nowhere is there a statement of the values that animate Roberts's apparent belief that government should play only the most limited part in helping or protecting people. From the record we have,[*] we can only conclude that there is not a large space in his thinking for Madison's concerns about the dangers of dominant majorities or the concerns in the Bill of Rights for the rights of minorities to speak, assemble, and practice their religion.
[*] The record on the other side is almost bare. It consists of his handling of a few pro bono cases, one of them involving public assistance benefits that had been denied in the District of Columbia. He also participated in a preparatory session and gave other advice to help lawyers arguing for recognition of gay rights in the Supreme Court.
Like it says up above there, I may be wrong, and it looks like I kinda have to hope that I am. But I truly think that this man is a Trojan horse. And once he gets in, there's no getting him out, and our children are going to have to live in a world that he will to a very large degree shape.
Are you fine with that?
1 comment:
Trouble is, so far as I know, there is no mechanism, none, that allows for the recall of a supreme couty justice, let alone the chief justice.
Even though the recall, impeachment, or even censure of Bush is--sadly--extremely unlikely, it is at least possible if, as you say, the people finally snap.
And even if not, his second term will eventually end. But an SPJ will be there forever and a day.
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