JANUARY
29, 2006 --
The
weekend included comments from Democratic senators about a
filibuster to prevent confirmation of Judge Samuel Alito to
the Supreme Court.
Last week, LPR attended two sections of the New York State Bar Association
annual meeting.
Nan Aron, of the Alliance for Justice, was on a panel discussing Supreme Court
appointments and commented that she wished presidents would look beyond judges
for Supreme Court nominations -- to lawyers who are acquainted with the
daily lives or ordinary Americans.
LPR is concerned that the nomination process has turned into a search for result-oriented
jurists.
Leonard W. Levy, the Pulitzer Prize winning historian commented in his book "Original
Intent and the Framers' Constitution" -- "Result-oriented jurisprudence,
whether liberal or conservative, is a gross abuse of judicial office."
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LPR
recommends that this statement be visible at all future hearings
at the Senate Judiciary Committee on judicial nominations.
LPR notes that Dean Levy does not put much stock in the concept of "original
intent." Our reality is" not the original intent of the Framers."
Dean Levy noted at the conclusion of his book this statement from Chief
Justice Earl Warren, at his 1969 retirement: "'We serve only the public
interest as we see it, guided only by the Constitution and our own consciences.'"
LPR, however, is not convinced that is
an improvement on the counsel of Chief Justice John Marshall, at the conclusion
of Gibbons v. Ogden, "to recur to safe and fundamental principles, to
sustain those principles, and, when sustained, to make them the tests of the
arguments to be examined."
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