Yet Judge Alito should be confirmed, both because of his positive qualities as an appellate judge and because of the dangerous precedent his rejection would set.
I would submit that, unfortunately, that "dangerous precedent" has been set, as one-sided as it may be. Republicans continue to follow the historical precedent of voting to confirm the nominee of another party even if they strongly disagree with his/her jurisprudence—so long as that nominee is adequately qualified. The nominations and confirmations of President Clinton’s Supreme Court nominees, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, bear this out.
Democrats on the other hand poisoned the well nearly twenty years ago with the rejection of Reagan appointee Robert Bork. Judge Bork was a legal genius and one of the most qualified and thoughtful Supreme Court nominees in the nation’s history. He had a constitutionalist/originalist record and jurisprudence however which conflicted with the Democrats’ own, often extra-constitutional, jurisprudence. As a result Judge Bork was slandered, nearly the minute his nomination was announced, as someone who would turn back the clock decades on civil rights (a term regrettably still employed against all nominees with a jurisprudence similar in some way to Judge Bork’s).
What we are left with are confirmation votes decided on largely party line votes determined by the nominee’s supposed ideology as opposed to their qualifications, temperament, and integrity. That precedent The Washington Post fears is a current reality. The Post need not fear any "dangerous precedent" to be realized in the future, for that precedent has been a reality for nearly twenty years now. What the Post really needs to fear, and I suspect what it does actually fear, is that Republicans will grow tired of this double-standard and treat the Supreme Court nominees of Democratic presidents in the same churlish manner as Democrats treat the nominees of Republican presidents.
No comments:
Post a Comment