Republicans have this wretched record of picking judges who then turn around and sit on their bottoms for life dispensing liberal justice.
For 50 years, Republican presidents have been giving themselves hernias trying to pick jurists who will safely reflect the philosophies of their conservative wing. By 1952, they were desperate to reverse the packing of the judiciary with Democrats that occurred during the 20 years spanning the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.
This has often had embarrassing results. Seemingly safe Republican appointments to the Supreme Court have more often than not produced the landmark liberal opinions joined by Earl Warren, William J. Brennan, Harry Blackmun, Lewis Powell. Or they have instead produced such obstinate fence-sitters as Sandra Day O'Connor and David Souter.
I suppose if the 2000 elections had been a straight referendum on whether the U.S. judiciary should become more liberal or more conservative, the unambiguous victory would have been for the liberals. Al Gore got more votes. With his ambiguous, not to say pathetic, mandate, George W. Bush has set out to fashion an all-right-wing bench.
That, at least, is the signal that can be taken from his moves to protect the selection of judges from contamination by opinions of the American Bar Assn. If his intention is to turn the U.S. judiciary into a bench of mincing ninnies, he may succeed where his recent Republican predecessors failed so miserably. Anyway, the ABA's influence in judicial selection has been largely exaggerated. It basically screens out the crazies in advance, often saving a president Democrat or Republican from actually nominating borderline nut cases who would have proved a political embarrassment.
Actually, purging the judiciary of liberals was going on long before this latest Bush became president. It is a process both obvious and subtle. It was naked, unsubtle partisanship that provoked Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch to sit on selected judicial nominations during the Clinton presidency. But less obvious has been the screening out of all sitting judges federal and state who might ever have issued a courageous or controversial opinion that could be selectively quoted by right-wing ideologues to prove they were raving examples of judicial instability.
Today our prisons bulge beyond capacity with inmates serving long terms who were convicted under liberal rules of evidence and interrogation that critics of the Warren Supreme Court said would lead to rampant acquittals of the guilty. More than a few prisoners have been mistakenly convicted and sentenced to death under liberal Supreme Court guidelines. And if Bush succeeds in putting his thumb on the scales of justice, the odds will be tilted in favor of more.
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