'Contempt' From Catherine Crier

Despite the tough line of questioning that he has been facing on Capitol Hill, Federal Judge John Roberts is expected to be confirmed as the next chief justice of the United States.

Most legal experts believe he will bring a conservative philosophy to the bench. Court TV's Catherine Crier, a former judge herself, has written a new book about what she believes is a concerted effort by ultra-conservatives to influence the federal judicial system.

"The founding fathers had some real trouble with religion in Europe," Crier tells The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith. "When they got over here, they said, we are going to make sure we have a secular government. That doesn't mean moral or immoral. It's based upon all of the values and principles that we love and hold so dear. But we are not going to have a religion influence dictating the direction of the government."

Her book is called "Contempt: How The Right Is Wronging American Justice."

Read this excerpt of Chapter 1:

BE VERY AFRAID

On August 14, 2005, at 7:00 p.m. EDT, the Family Research Council aired a television special watched by an estimated seventy-nine million viewers (twenty-seven million more viewers than watched the last episode of Friends). And you may not have even heard of the program — Justice Sunday II.

Taped at the Two Rivers Baptist Church in Nashville, Tennessee, it featured born-again religious leaders, ultraconservative politicians, and right-wing special-interest-group directors. The promotional flyer proclaimed, "How activist judges subvert the family, undermine religious freedom, and threaten our nation's survival." The producers said their show concerned "the absence of evangelical beliefs in our country's judicial branch." Their first installment, Justice Sunday, which aired April 24, 2005, had been just as popular.

James Dobson, founder of the fundamentalist religious group Focus on the Family, wasted no time as the broadcast began. America's judges are "unelected, unaccountable, and arrogant," he charged, and " … believe they know better than the American people about the direction the country should go." Michael Donohue, president of the Catholic League, demanded a constitutional amendment that would state that "unless a [Supreme Court] judicial vote is unanimous, you cannot overturn a law created by Congress." The Court, he bellowed, is trying to "take the hearts and soul of our culture."

To hear the Justice Sunday people tell it, judges are outlaws and murderers, part of a conspiracy that sabotages people of faith and rejects the sanctity of life. They echo Pat Robertson's sentiment: "These judges actually despise the country and all it stands for; therefore, they believe that the best way to undermine and humiliate America is to break down its laws, morals, beliefs, and standards, and to bring about as much cultural anarchy as possible, so that the nation will eventually destroy itself."

Though members of this radical faction constitute a minority in America, they wield a great deal of clout. Their influence is disproportionate to their size; but their power comes from their organization, their commitment, and their unshakeable sense of righteousness.

The extreme Right has conquered the executive and legislative branches of government, but it has not been able to bring the federal courts to heel … yet. Undoubtedly, this group has a prodigious impact on the Supreme Court and the other federal courts, but it wants so much more. Its leaders have taken an entity that innately resists politics and turned it into a highly politicized battle zone. They seethe over this unelected, independent third branch of government, the last bulwark between the American people and their attempted coup. That some federal judges have proven well educated, fair, and unintimidated by these voices and methods has further stymied their best-laid plans. The extreme Right may control a good part of the castle, but they have yet to breach the citadel. Only, make no mistake, they mean to bring every last wall crashing down.

And if they manage this, what will they do?

Most of them would like to see the United States under biblical law. Comparable to countries like Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, all of which live by Sharia (the strict Islamic code of the Koran), America's right-wing fundamentalists seek a nation governed by Old and New Testament scripture. Born-again Christianity will supplant the Constitution. This is no exaggeration — purchase a DVD of either Justice Sunday event, buy a book by one of their ministers, or simply go to one of their web sites. They do not make a secret of it. What's more, they demand that all Americans adhere to their rigid and reactionary beliefs.

Some readers may stop reading at this point, unwilling to listen to some "liberal" blast the extreme Right, but I beg your indulgence for a few lines more. I began my career as an assistant district attorney in Dallas County, Texas, and am responsible for criminals serving thousands of years in the Texas Department of Corrections. I was an elected Republican judge in Texas from 1984-1989. Suffice it to say, I was not then, nor am I now, some radical lefty out to denounce every position expressed by the conservatives in this country.

I am, however, a long-time student of the political system in this country, with an obvious focus on our judiciary. I have lectured for years on the importance of the courts and the need for American citizens to understand the role judges play in our government. I wrote the book The Case Against Lawyers in 2002. This book castigated behavior on the left and the right of the political spectrum. I raised objections to certain government regulations of business and education, challenged particular restrictions on law enforcement, and pointed out much-needed tort reforms. On the other hand, I criticized the death penalty, sentencing guidelines, environmental abuses, and infringements on personal liberties. One of my favorite book reviews called me a "non-ideological basher" regarding problems in our institutions of government and justice.

Today, I consider myself a true independent with some libertarian leanings. Thoughtful conservatives are not the target of my contempt. I have praise as well as criticism of the Rehnquist court. Instead, I am concerned about the activist, reactionary, radical group far to the right of Justice O'Connor, Kennedy, or in many instances, even Rehnquist. And despite my concerted attack on religious fundamentalists and ultraconservatives in these pages, it is not their personal religious beliefs that I challenge; it is their stated intent to foist those beliefs on the rest of us by overthrowing our judicial system and America's constitutional democracy.

Though the debate over judges has only recently come up on the national radar, it has been quite heated in legal and political circles for several decades. An activist judge, or one who "makes law," is frequently called "liberal" and denigrated, while "originalists," or those who "strictly interpret" the Constitution, are usually deemed "conservative" and revered, at least by the very vocal extreme right wing that is putting American justice on trial. But these terms ignorantly pit political ideology against legal realities. As weapons, this rhetoric sounds quite damning, but the words are meaningless.

When opinions are analyzed, judges regularly move from one camp to another regardless of their labels or stated philosophy. "Originalists" have discovered meaning in the Constitution that does not exist, and "activist" judges have exercised considerable restraint when asked to strike down or change our laws. Often, judges render decisions that cannot be explained by their legal philosophy because they are more interested in justice than rigid consistency with a theory of constitutional interpretation. Ultimately, these categories are effective buzzwords used to inflame an uninformed electorate. In recent years, the Far Right has utilized this tactic for one purpose alone: to capture the last somewhat-independent branch of our government.

The Far Right wants to control our federal judiciary in order to enact its specific reactionary agenda. At first blush, this agenda would seem to center on social issues — abortion, gay rights, affirmative action, and religion in schools. These items certainly garner the most press attention, but don't be fooled. There is another insidious aspect to their designs. Economic and political issues are crucial to them as well. If they are successful in our federal courts, this plot will have a profound impact on citizens in every arena. They are making efforts to curtail federal regulation of businesses, environmental protections, worker's rights, bankruptcy laws, tort liability, and property interests, among other causes.

This radical group also wants much more control exerted by the states. For over a century, the federal courts have built a safety net in order to uniformly protect the constitutional rights of every American. But as Edwin Meese began arguing in the 1980s that the Bill of Rights does not apply to the states, the extreme Right believes that such Constitutional protections only exist to inhibit action by the national government. They want our individual guarantees surrendered back to the states, where enforcement will diminish and maybe disappear altogether.

Despite the Far Right's claims that they want the courts to leave Congress alone, they actually aim to reduce congressional authority. They want ultraconservative judges to strike down a great deal more federal legislation and to negate decades of legal precedent — the very definition of "reactionary." The extreme Right may argue against judicial "activism," but they certainly know how to practice it.

And through it all they camouflage these issues under a shiny veneer of values, morality, and religion.

Should the nation have minimum wage laws? Should corporations be held responsible when they commit serious wrongs? Should our environment, the air and water, be protected from polluters large and small? Should the Bill of Rights apply to all of the states, or should we have fifty different fiefdoms wherein a simple majority of state legislators can decide our fates?

For the first time since the early twentieth century, these items are actually in play.

Of course, the key to each and every one of these issues is the federal courts. And this drives the extreme Right to distraction. They have nothing but disdain for the founding fathers' belief in three branches of government and the prescient system of checks and balances. Indeed, they are rewriting America's revolutionary
history to accommodate their point of view.

In the wake of the Terri Schiavo debacle, I wanted to write a book in defense of the federal court system and its judges and to explain how, though imperfect, the system has evolved very much as the founders intended.

But I don't want that anymore. Now I want this book to be a wake-up call, a warning flare, a political stun grenade that provokes the silent majority of this country to stand up and take notice.

When I was campaigning for the 162nd Dallas Court in the spring of 1984, I used to tell voters, "You may never meet your senator or congressman, you many never need these people, but you will need your judge. Whether your child gets in trouble with the law, a business deal goes bad, there is a divorce in the family, or someone dies and a will must be probated, at some point you will likely need our courts. That is not the time to discover the character and quality of the bench." While I was referencing the state courts rather than a federal bench, the argument is the same — but the impact on each citizen is immeasurably greater.

Judge John Roberts has been nominated for our highest court. With apologies to the remaining eight justices, it is likely that President Bush will have the opportunity to promote one or more additional judges to the Supreme Court before his term ends on January 20, 2009. I cannot overemphasize the importance of these appointments to our nation's future.

For all of those Americans who believe that our democracy is safe, you are wrong. Today, the radical Right is winning, and they know it. Sooner rather than later, we may be living in a very different country, a country that had been ours, a country that will be theirs.

The foregoing is excerpted from "Contempt: How the Right is Wronging American Justice" (Rugged Land 2005). All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission from Rugged Land Books.