November 24, 2018
Is Justice Roberts an 'Obama Judge'?
By Daniel John Sobieski
A
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/11/is_justice_roberts_an_obama_judge.html
If the Kavanaugh hearings showed Chief Justice Roberts anything, it should have been that the notion that the Supreme Court is in a pristine bubble immune from political considerations and thoughts is false and has been at least since the days that the character assassins of Robert Bork made his name a verb in the dictionary his failed nomination left on the ash heap of history:
It had dawned on the Democrats that they could bypass the cumbersome legislative process still tied to that inconvenient “consent of the government thing” by concentrating on the courts and populating it with judges who believed in the “living constitution” which was to be interpreted in the context of the times inflamed by public passions and the liberal cause du jour. Original intent was an anachronism.
Bork’s nomination scared the hell out of Democrats who thought the unalienable right to life Thomas Jefferson placed in the Declaration of Independence didn’t really mean that:
Bork was an originalist, meaning that he believed the Constitution contained no “penumbras” and “emanations” one could hang an imaginary right to an abortion on, a fact which prompted Chappaquiddick’s champion of women’s rights, Sen. Ted Kennedy, to cross that bridge when he came to it in his epic rant on Bork’s nomination:
With a Senate cowed by political considerations and the passions of the moment, we got Anthony Kennedy’s America, a land of weather-vane SCOTUS decisions and coat-hangers continuing to be beaten into scalpels. Thanks to President Trump, who realized that the Supreme Court was and still is a political arena, at least for those who confirm SCOTUS picks, the appointments of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh have shifted SCOTUS back in an originalist direction. Are they “Trump” justices per se? Perhaps not, but they share his views on the role and limitations of the Supreme Court.
Roberts’ rebuke of President Trump for saying there was such a political animal as an “Obama judge” makes him a poster child for hypocrisy harkening back to the day that he sat silent as President Obama scolded the Supreme Court during the State of the Union address over the Citizens United victory for free speech:
Some would say that makes Roberts an “Obama judge” and the case could be made that his subsequent role in judging the constitutionality of ObamaCare.
Roberts was rebuked for caving in to Obama by Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia (who would make a damn good attorney general):
Roberts capitulated and said ObamaCare was constitutional because it was a tax, a gross distortion that injected into the law the false notion that government could legally force people to buy a product they did not want. He knelt before the power of the state and not before the Constitution, the document that is supposed to limit government power that he was sworn to uphold and protect. In this instance at least, John Roberts became a judicial activist aiding and abetting a community organizer. He became an an Obama judge.
Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.
Is Justice Roberts an 'Obama Judge'?
By Daniel John Sobieski
A
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/11/is_justice_roberts_an_obama_judge.html
If the Kavanaugh hearings showed Chief Justice Roberts anything, it should have been that the notion that the Supreme Court is in a pristine bubble immune from political considerations and thoughts is false and has been at least since the days that the character assassins of Robert Bork made his name a verb in the dictionary his failed nomination left on the ash heap of history:
It had dawned on the Democrats that they could bypass the cumbersome legislative process still tied to that inconvenient “consent of the government thing” by concentrating on the courts and populating it with judges who believed in the “living constitution” which was to be interpreted in the context of the times inflamed by public passions and the liberal cause du jour. Original intent was an anachronism.
Bork’s nomination scared the hell out of Democrats who thought the unalienable right to life Thomas Jefferson placed in the Declaration of Independence didn’t really mean that:
Bork was an originalist, meaning that he believed the Constitution contained no “penumbras” and “emanations” one could hang an imaginary right to an abortion on, a fact which prompted Chappaquiddick’s champion of women’s rights, Sen. Ted Kennedy, to cross that bridge when he came to it in his epic rant on Bork’s nomination:
With a Senate cowed by political considerations and the passions of the moment, we got Anthony Kennedy’s America, a land of weather-vane SCOTUS decisions and coat-hangers continuing to be beaten into scalpels. Thanks to President Trump, who realized that the Supreme Court was and still is a political arena, at least for those who confirm SCOTUS picks, the appointments of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh have shifted SCOTUS back in an originalist direction. Are they “Trump” justices per se? Perhaps not, but they share his views on the role and limitations of the Supreme Court.
Roberts’ rebuke of President Trump for saying there was such a political animal as an “Obama judge” makes him a poster child for hypocrisy harkening back to the day that he sat silent as President Obama scolded the Supreme Court during the State of the Union address over the Citizens United victory for free speech:
Some would say that makes Roberts an “Obama judge” and the case could be made that his subsequent role in judging the constitutionality of ObamaCare.
Roberts was rebuked for caving in to Obama by Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia (who would make a damn good attorney general):
Roberts capitulated and said ObamaCare was constitutional because it was a tax, a gross distortion that injected into the law the false notion that government could legally force people to buy a product they did not want. He knelt before the power of the state and not before the Constitution, the document that is supposed to limit government power that he was sworn to uphold and protect. In this instance at least, John Roberts became a judicial activist aiding and abetting a community organizer. He became an an Obama judge.
Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.