Here’s the problem with John G. Roberts, the Supreme Court nominee.
When it comes to legal opinions, he’s practically the invisible man.
Or the phantom.
He’s the ultimate among dutiful conservative warriors. They’ve carried so much water for their right-wing heroes (Roberts had Reagan, Bush the First and Rehnquist), who knows what they themselves personally stand for, or how they feel on anything.
But in the politics of confirmation, a blank slate like Roberts seems like the perfect nominee.
For Bush, maybe. But not for the rest of the country.
Still, Roberts is a known quantity among Washington insiders.
And even I have had a brush with Roberts in my life.
When Roberts stood before the cameras with President Bush last week, I knew I had seen that face before.
It was more than 30 years ago. (My, how time flies when you’re white and conservative in America).
He wouldn’t remember me. But John Roberts and I were at Harvard College at the same time with almost the same credentials.
We both had advanced standing due to our AP credits in high school, which means we entered as sophomores. We both graduated from the college in three years.
That’s where our storyline departs.
Roberts, was a go-getter who followed his ambition to Harvard Law and became the earnest and brilliant conservative D.C. attorney and jurist with little paper trial and no identity other than as the capable attorney who will dutifully argue for his conservative clients.
I became your lovable and endearing Asian American gadfly railing out and opining on behalf of a broad, yet mostly stoic minority community.
And boy, do I have a paper trail.
So unfortunately, I will not be able to assure the nation that for the next several decades abortion will remain legal, or that affirmative action will stay intact, or that gays should have the right to marry, or that presidential candidates who won the popular vote actually get to become president.
There will be no Supreme Court Justice Emil Guillermo.
But the president did tap Roberts, roughly the same age as myself, and who is now on the verge of becoming a member of the high court, ready to rule supreme on every hot button issue imaginable until he can withdraw from his 401K without penalty and maybe years beyond that.
Is this the best we can do for America’s new “Boomer Court?” Doesn’t our generation rate more than a Roberts and Clarence Thomas?
It’s almost enough to make you learn the words to “O Canada.”
Roberts has that clean-cut, conservative bobble-head look (the better to nod “yes” with). He worked in the Reagan administration –– his detractors are trying to make things stick so the man knows his Teflon.
Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, executive vice president of the National Lawyers Guild, and author of Payback Time? sees Roberts this way: “George W. Bush is paying back his right-wing religious and corporate backers by nominating a conservative who served in the Reagan and George Bush I administrations.”
As Deputy Solicitor General, Roberts wrote in an amicus brief the following:
“‘We continue to believe that Roe [v. Wade] was wrongly decided and should be overruled.”
Was Roberts merely a dutiful employee? Or does it indicate an ideological stand that could be potentially dangerous to women’s rights?
Cohn doesn’t especially like Roberts’ tenure on the Court of Appeals, saying Roberts ruled against civil liberties, criminal justice, and voted to keep Dick Cheney’s energy task force records secret.
In the following weeks, you’ll hear a lot about cases Roberts has ruled on as a judge. One of the more famous ones is his rejection of the Fourth Amendment claims of a 12-year-old girl.
The Fourth, you’ll recall is the protection against unreasonable search and seizure. The 12 year old was arrested for eating a French fry in a subway.
Roberts is a hard-ass law and order guy.
And as far as the War on Terror goes, Roberts recently ruled with two other judges in Hamdan v. Rumsfield that allowed the administration to try suspected terrorists before military commissions without constitutional protections.
When it comes to the Constitution, Roberts is said to be an “originalist,” which is like a Christian fundamentalist who takes the Bible literally.
Considering that most of the framers never imagined people of color as anything but savages, I don’t know if an “originalist” is exactly what modern American society needs.
There is one point about Roberts. As a private lawyer, he knows his paying clients deserve a good show. And in 2000, Roberts did go to bat for the state of Hawai‘i, arguing that a Hawaiian law that let only native Hawaiians vote in certain elections was constitutional.
Of course, when Roberts was on our side, he lost by a 7-2 vote.
Let’s hope the Senate puts Roberts through the ringer and makes him reveal his true nature.
He’ll be determining the relevant facts in our lives for another 30 years or so.
We deserve to know as much as possible about him.
So far, he doesn’t strike me as “our guy.”
Reach Emil at emil@amok.com.