Ashcroft Cited 'Judicial Tyranny'

Attorney General-designate John Ashcroft complained in a 1997 lecture of "judicial tyranny" by judges who ruled in favor of school desegregation, the right to an abortion and affirmative action.

Ashcroft, who told his Senate confirmation hearings last week that his views would not govern his decisions as attorney general, complained in the lecture that too many "renegade judges" were imposing their personal will in activist rulings.

The remarks to the conservative Heritage Foundation were provided Monday to the Senate Judiciary Committee. The panel had asked Ashcroft for his speeches, writings, financial information and a range of other documents prior to a still-unscheduled vote on his confirmation.

Ashcroft's financial disclosure form showed he owns more than $1 million in real estate, including a $500,000 house in Washington, a $250,000 lake house and a $450,000 farm. He listed his net worth at more than $3 million and only one liability, a $158,000 home mortgage.

In the lecture delivered nearly four years go, Ashcroft, who at that time was a Republican senator from Missouri, called for a "dialogue" between President Clinton and the Senate on judicial nominees. "And if the White House fails to solicit our advice, perhaps we should withhold our consent," said Ashcroft, who would be expected to play a role in President Bush's judicial selections.

One of the most controversial aspects of Ashcroft's confirmation hearing was his opposition to a black Missouri Supreme Court judge, Ronnie White, who earlier had failed to win confirmation to the federal bench. Ashcroft insisted he was troubled by White's record, but opponents questioned whether race was a factor.

Ashcroft said in the lecture that Americans could end "judicial tyranny" by "asking ourselves why modern judicial activism exists in the first place. Could it be that we have been lax in demanding that judges place our constitutional rights before their policy objectives? Could it be we have failed to reject judges who are willing to place their private preferences above the people's will?"

Contending "the federal judiciary has strayed," he offered these examples of judicial activism:

In 1987, U.S. District Judge Russell Clark ordered a tax increase to "remedy vestiges of segregation" in the Kansas City school system. Ashcroft, who was Missouri governor at the time, called the ruling "appalling judicial activism" and said it imposed on taxpayers a $2 billion cost that "turned the city's school district into a gold-plated Taj Mahal."

A ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson in 1996 that temporarily prohibited California officials from implementing Proposition 209, a voter-approved initiative that prohibited preferences for women and minorities in state and local contracting, employment and eduation. While Henderson ruled that minorities would face "irreparable harm" from the initiative, Ashcroft denounced the decision, saying: "What of the irreparable harm racial preference programs are inflicting right now?"

The initiative went into effect after Henderson's ruling was overturned by a federal appellate court and the U.S. Supreme Court let the appeals court decision stand.

The Supreme Court in 1992 reaffirmed a woman's right to an abortion, with three judges appointed by President Ronald Reagan joining the majority. "So much for recapturing the court," Ashcroft complained.

He said the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion, along with the 1992 ruling that reaffirmed Roe — Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey — "and their illegitimate progeny have occasioned the slaughter of 35 million children — 35 million innocents denied standing before the law."

Ashcroft asked whether "people's lives and fortunes been relinquished to renegade judges — a robed, contemptuous, intellectual elite."

During his confirmation hearings last week, Ashcroft pulled back on some of the views he expressed as a Republican senator from Missouri — saying his role as attorney general would be different.

He promised not to seek Supreme Court reversal of a woman's right to abortion. He declared that no part of the Justice Department is more important than the civil rights division. And, he said, as governor of Missouri he followed court orders on desegregation of Kansas City schools.

But in the 1997 lecture, Ashcroft called rulings on such issues "a page of snapshots in an album of liberties lost."

He argued, "Over the past half century, the federal courts have usurped from school boards the power to determine what a child can learn, removed from the people the ability to establish equality under the law, and challenged God's ability to mark when life begins and ends."