By Brendan O’Reilly
The Harriet Miers nomination did not fail because Miers has no judicial experience. She was not the first Supreme Court nominee who had not been a judge prior to being selected by the president. The last chief justice, William H. Rehnquist, was never a judge before he was confirmed to be an associate justice.
Miers withdrew her nomination because President Bush was receiving harsh criticism from his base, the far right. There was considerable evidence Miers was a moderate or even liberal on the issue of homosexual civil rights, and the Republican base would have none of that. Replacing a female moderate justice with a moderate, right-leaning woman was not good enough for them.
The nomination of Samuel Alito was Bush sucking up to the hardline conservatives he upset when nominating a moderate. The nearly party-line split Senate confirmation vote shows that Alito’s views may be in the conservative mainstream, but are offensive to moderates and liberals.
Bush’s camp claims Alito is objective and a strict constructionist. Of course, the Republican definition of an “objective justice” is conservative, and a true “strict constructionalist” justice would be a Libertarian, not a Republican.
Sam Alito’s supposed objective interpretations of the law resulted in him voting to uphold the FBI’s video surveillance without a warrant, and to uphold the strip search of a mother and 10-year-old daughter without their names on the search warrant. Alito was a dissenter in the latter example, but with the majority in the former. His record shows he has no respect for the fourth amendment’s protection against unreasonable and unwarranted searches.
His job application to work in the Reagan White House and even his own mother both said he opposes abortion. Time will tell whether his personal viewpoint is also his “objective” opinion. I predict he will vote to rescind reproductive rights as he has done in the past. In 1991 he ruled that women seeking abortions must notify their husbands, and stands by that decision today. The Senate Judiciary Committee should have grilled Alito on this topic, as well as others, instead of taking “I would keep an open mind” as an answer. Sadly, with a job appointed for life, he’ll remain a threat to women’s rights.
Only 24 Democrats voted against the motion to close debate on the nomination of Alito, but 40 voted against his confirmation. The Democrat Party should have been united against Alito. His credentials and experience on the bench may have made him professionally qualified, but his ideology made him a bad choice to replace Sandra Day O’Conner.
Civil liberty fans can take comfort that the midterm election is only nine months away. Disillusioned Republicans, Democrats and Independents can unite in November to take the Senate majority away from the right. That is the only way to prevent Bush from filling the Supreme Court and lower courts with conservative justices who have more interest in executive power than individual rights.