From: sunder@altair.crhc.uiuc.edu (Srinivas Sunder)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections
Subject: Re: Supreme Court qualifications
Date: 22 Jul 1992 18:20:20 GMT
Organization: Center for Reliable and High-Performance Computing, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Distribution: world
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In article <1992Jul22.121301.14062@husc3.harvard.edu>, koumis@husc4.harvard.edu (Anthony Koumis) writes:
|> In article <l6po41INN4kb@roundup.crhc.uiuc.edu> sunder@altair.crhc.uiuc.edu (Srinivas Sunder) writes:
|> >In article <9207220116.AA19713@cs.utexas.edu>, PLAWS@UAFSYSB.UARK.EDU (Peter Laws) writes:
|> >|> Never mind ideology (was: You may not like Clinton but...).  How about we
|> >|> appoint Justices who are *qualified* for the job?  "Justice" 
|> Yeah, I remeber hearing about his last case -- he withheld the result of
|> it so it couldnt be used against him in the confirmation hearings.  I
|> read that in one of the American Lawyer papers and rumors of it in
|> I believe, the Boston Globe.

i) There is no evidence of that. Decisions are delayed for a variety of reasons
and Judges are under no obligation to anyone to release them at any given time.

|> 
|> BUt he was clearly unqualified.  The ABA gave him the lowest rating 
|> of any Supremem Court nominee in 50 years, lower than Bork.  In
|> the first round of COnfirmation hearings he claimed he never thought
|> about Roe v. Wade.  What crock of lies that is.  No one can go through

ii) He said that he didn't have a firm opinion on Roe v Wade. There was an 
ad placed in the Legal Times by a group asking anyone who had discussed the
case with him to come forward and expose him. No one did (I assume that most
lawyers do read the Legal Times). He didn't say that he had never discussed
it (which you can do without having an opinion on it), just that had never
DEBATED it (you have to have an opinion to debate something). 

|> law school and be a lawyer without discusiing that.  He was lying!


|> The guy is unqualified.  How Bush could say with a straight face that
|> he picked the most qualified person for teh job is beyond me, but then
|> again nothing is beyond Bush's slimey, weasel-like actions in all 

iii) "Qualifications" is a vague term. What should you use to decide if
or not a man is qualified? What qualified Earl Warren for the job? 
The fact that he was a Governor of California and managed to cut a deal
with Ike during the 1952 Presidential campaign? What qualified Hugo Black? The
fact that he had led FDR's fight in the Senate to pack the court or his
past membership in the KKK? 

Sure, Bush was lying about the fact that race had nothing to do with it,
but if he hadn't chosen a minority (Hispanic/woman/black) he would have 
caught fire from every group that exists. After all, there were even 
responsible people like Charles Ogletree who said that being Black HAD
to be one of the qualifications for an SC nominee to replace Marshall.

Thomas had worked for Monsanto, as an Asst. Secretary of Education for
Civil Rights, Chairman of the EEOC and as a Federal Judge. There are 
many many cases of Supreme Court Justices with not much  legal experience
and far more political experience. There are things more than
simply legal qualifications that makes a person qualified for the job.
Thomas's being Black and someone who shared Bush's view of the role of the
Judiciary made him qualified in Bush's eyes. Earl Warren's willingness to
cut a deal with Ike made him qualified in Ike's eyes. Hugo Black's being a
crony of FDR's made him qualified. And so on. That's the way everyone
chooses SC Judges -- to make a political point. Sometimes, it works out
OK for them, as it has for Reagan-Bush (kinda). Sometimes, it doesn't (Warren
and Brennan for Ike).

-- 
Srinivas Sunder                                         sunder@crhc.uiuc.edu

If my employer shares these opinions, he deserves them.
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Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections