posted on July 10, 2005 07:50:50 AM new
Bush's Judges Already Making Their Mark By NANCY BENAC, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 36 minutes ago
No need to wait until President Bush appoints a Supreme Court justice to see how he will make his mark on the federal judiciary. One level down, dozens of conservative appeals court judges appointed by Bush already are helping to shape the law in ways that ultimately could have as much, and in some ways even more, impact than the nine justices of the nation's highest court.
Since Bush's appellate judges have only gradually taken their seats on benches around the country, and the cases that they draw run the gamut, it's still early to chart their impact on specific issues. But already it is clear that these judges make up a solidly conservative crowd that tends to lean Bush's way on the big issues of the day.
So far, Bush's appointees to the appeals court are showing patterns very close to judges of his Republican predecessors in ideologically contested cases, according to law professor Cass Sunstein at the University of Chicago, where the Chicago Judges Project is tracking the federal judiciary.
"There's no discernible rightward shift by the Bush appointees compared to the Reagan and Bush I appointees," said Sunstein. Still, he rejected Bush's contention that the president looks solely for judges — and Supreme Court justices — who will strictly interpret the Constitution rather than parsing their views on hot issues such as abortion.
"There may be no litmus test, but the president will appoint someone who is in the conservative mold," said Sunstein. "When the president talks about strict construction, everyone knows what he's talking about."
Because appeals courts rule on thousands of cases each year, compared to only about 75 a year decided by the Supreme Court, the impact of Bush's appellate judges could be far-reaching.
"There's a tremendous amount of space for circuit judges to interpret Supreme Court decisions," said Frank Cross, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. For example, he said, they have considerable latitude in interpreting the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.
And according to NARAL Pro-Choice America, appeals court judges appointed by President Reagan and the two Bushes have been four times more likely to issue "anti-choice rulings" than judges appointed by other presidents.
On another matter, two of Bush's nominees to the D.C. Circuit are poised to have significant impact on a pair of cases involving challenges to the U.S. military's detention of foreign nationals at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Janice Rogers Brown and Thomas B. Griffith, both just placed on the bench last month, were picked at random to sit on a three-judge panel that will hear the cases this fall.
Overall, in his four-plus years in office, Bush has pushed a Republican-leaning federal judiciary farther to the right with more than 200 appointments to appellate and district courts.
His district court appointees have been "dramatically conservative but not off the board — not so bizarre that the other judges wouldn't know them or speak to them," said Robert A. Carp, a political scientist at the University of Houston who has studied the federal judiciary extensively. Bush's district appointees stand out as particularly conservative on civil liberties cases such as abortion, freedom of speech and gay rights, Carp found.
On these matters, Bush's district judgeships were rated 28 percent liberal in Carp's study. That put them well to the right of jurists appointed by Presidents Nixon, at 38 percent, and Ford, at 40 percent, and slightly to the right of Reagan and the first President Bush, both of whom were rated 32 percent liberal.
By the end of his second term, Bush could eclipse Presidents Clinton and Reagan in the number of judges selected — and leave an ideological imprint on the courts for generations to come.
Since 1968, when Nixon was elected, Republican presidents have appointed 1,040 judges; Democrats have named 625. While many of the Bush appointees are replacing jurists named by previous Republican presidents, toward the end of his term Bush could have more opportunities to replace some of the Clinton judges, which would have even greater impact.
The cumulative effect, said political scientist Donald Songer of the University of South Carolina, is that "the last three Republican presidents' nominees control virtually the whole judiciary."
Interest groups on the left and right, predictably, have alternately cast Bush's judicial appointees as either ideological extremists or principled jurists untainted by politics.
People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group, titled its 2004 study of Bush's judicial appointees "Confirmed Judges, Confirmed Fears." It concluded that Bush appointees already have moved to limit significantly congressional authority and protection of individual rights.
"For many, many of the nominees in the lower courts, the Bush administration has been decidedly pushing toward judges with a pretty firm right-wing ideology," said Elliot Mincberg, the group's legal director.
On the other end of the ideological spectrum, conservative groups have credited Bush for selecting judges who "adhere to an apolitical, non-results-oriented way of reading the law," in the words of Sean Rushton of the conservative Committee for Justice. Liberals, Rushton said, look at judges' rulings "through the lens of results rather than asking is it good law."
Wendy Long, counsel for the conservative Judicial Confirmation Network, said that when it comes to the courts, Bush "gets it" in a way that even his father and Reagan did not. His nominees "understand the problems with the way the Constitution has been interpreted and will go about fixing that in their own decisions," she said.
___
Associated Press writer Donna Cassata contributed to this report.
Sorry couldn't post the URL because it was so long, but it can be found under the Yahoo search in news.
posted on July 10, 2005 09:18:34 AM new"For many, many of the nominees in the lower courts, the Bush administration has been decidedly pushing toward judges with a pretty firm right-wing ideology,"...His nominees "understand the problems with the way the Constitution has been interpreted and will go about fixing that in their own decisions,"...
This of course, will in no way be "activism".
____________________________________________
Fue por lana y salió trasquilado...
posted on July 10, 2005 12:05:25 PM new
Nope, it sure won't be, profe. Any judge who rules by what our Constitution actually says.....rather than their own ideological platform/bias will not be considered an activist.
But we all know....that the left will see anyone that has been seated or will be seated as being 'an activist' because they support a 'living/changing constitution'.
"Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. This is their essence." --Ann Coulter
And why the American Voters chose to RE-elect President Bush to four more years. YES!!!
posted on July 10, 2005 01:39:54 PM newAny judge who rules by what our Constitution actually says..
And as any fool knows, what our Constitution actually says, is what "judges with a pretty firm right-wing ideology"say it says. Right, Linda?
____________________________________________
Fue por lana y salió trasquilado...
posted on July 10, 2005 02:04:18 PM newNot fools, profe, but VERY misinformed.
So you're saying, people who accept conservative judges' interpretations of the Constitution are misinformed? My goodness, you're confusing me.
____________________________________________
Fue por lana y salió trasquilado...
posted on July 10, 2005 04:17:39 PM new
No need to be confused profe, I've made the same point with you before and I think what I said is really very clear.
"Any judge who rules by what our Constitution actually says.....rather than their own ideological platform/bias will not be considered an activist.
"Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. This is their essence." --Ann Coulter
And why the American Voters chose to RE-elect President Bush to four more years. YES!!!
posted on July 10, 2005 04:20:50 PM new
No, I'm saying -- I'm merely -- I'm saying what I'm saying. I don't know why I'm always having people say, are you trying to say -- you know what you can do if you want to know what I'm saying is listen to what I'm saying. What I'm saying is what I said ...
posted on July 10, 2005 05:02:55 PM new
The Constitution is as open to interpretation as the bible is Linda. Why do you suppose law schools spend so much time on the differences between the letter and the spirit of the law? Conservatives have no more of a grasp of the "correct" interpretation of the Constitution than liberals do. It's just different, that's all. A "strict" interpretation of the Constitution is, when all is said and done, just another opinion.
The notion of strict interpretation, in other words, if the Constitution doesn't mention it, it's not to be considered law, is silly on it's face anyway. As has been mentioned here before, the Constitution as it was writtten by the founders did not grant civil rights to minorities, nor suffrage to you wimmin. Seems to me that a "strict" or conservative interpreter of the Constitution would understand the problems with the way the Constitution has been interpreted and will go about fixing that in their own decisions..
Doesn't matter if it's conservative or liberal judges, when their decisions are colored and influenced by their political bias, it makes them activists, plain and simple.
____________________________________________
Fue por lana y salió trasquilado...
posted on July 11, 2005 06:33:48 PM new
"Any judge who rules by what our Constitution actually says.....rather than their own ideological platform/bias will not be considered an activist."
Then why did all those on the right call the judges that said gay marriages should be allowed in Massachusettes "activist judges"
The 14th amendment says: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
I guess the right considered them activist judges because they did not like the judges' decision
Linda they were just following what was written in the constitution for the state of Massachusettes.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
----------------------------------
President George Bush: "Over time the truth will come out."
President George Bush: "Our people are going to find out the truth, and the truth will say that this intelligence was good intelligence. There's no doubt in my mind."
Bush was right. The truth did come out and the facts are he misled Congress and the American people about the reasons we should go to war in Iraq.
First the conservatives are the ones who more often, when compared to liberals, keep to the letter of our Constitution.
Second those who are labeled as 'strict constructionists or strict constitutionalists' use an example in our Constitution that speaks to [paraphrasing here] any issues not mentioned in our Constitution are to be decided by the individual states themselves. They believe our founders wanted a small Federal government with the states making their own laws....as they more represent those who live there than does our Federal government.
Whether the left likes Scalia or Rehnquist or not...their rulings most often follow our Constitution as written.
O'Connor sometimes did and sometimes didn't and that's why most 'arguments' before the USSC basically spoke to her....she was the swing vote....never knew which side she'd come up on. But even she in her most recent ruling on the property issue....said the Constitution did not grant either the Federal government nor local governments the 'right' take private property from one citizen and give it to another citizen. That's ruling BY the Constitution....not as the liberals did/do....by the seat of their pants rather than by the Constitution....a 'living constitution'.
"Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy. This is their essence." --Ann Coulter
And why the American Voters chose to RE-elect President Bush to four more years. YES!!!
