Leahy: Roberts Ads A Waste Of Time
Advocacy groups running ads for and against Supreme Court nominee John Roberts are wasting their money, the Senate Judiciary Committee's top Democrat says.
The Roberts nomination is seen as a mini-presidential campaign, with organizations on both sides expected to spend millions of dollars fighting or endorsing him. The abortion rights group NARAL Pro Choice America started running television ads opposing Roberts this week, while the conservative Progress for America has begun a counteroffensive.
"These outside lobbying groups, whether on the right or the left, have become, for me anyway, basically irrelevant," Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy said. "They will probably be offended by that and I am not saying they shouldn't do what they do. I just wish they didn't."
Leahy, who has met privately with Roberts, called him extremely bright, very pleasant and "definitely somebody who has a very clear philosophical legal view."
"There are two kinds of very clear philosophical legal view," Leahy said in an interview this week with The Associated Press. "One that totally shuts out the possibility that you can even consider anybody else's view. The other says I have a clear view, convince me of yours; that says I have my own philosophy but I will listen to arguments."
Leahy said Sandra Day O'Connor, the retiring justice who Roberts was picked to replace by President Bush, falls into the latter category, as do Justices David Souter and Stephen Breyer. Souter was chosen by President George H.W. Bush and has become one of the most liberal members of the court.
Conservatives hold up Souter as an example of what can go wrong when too little is known about a nominee. Roberts has been an appeals court judge for just two years so his record is relatively thin, prompting groups on both sides to look closely at his writings and rulings to try to determine what sort of justice he would be.
According to an Associated Press survey, 33 senators already say they will vote to confirm Roberts or are leaning that way. All but one are Republicans.
Leahy said it's foolish to take a stand on Roberts before the Judiciary Committee holds its confirmation hearing, scheduled to begin Sept. 6.
"There are some people it would be tempting to pass early judgment on because of some of the positions they have taken ... but I don't think Roberts falls into that category," he said.
Leahy is a veteran of this process. While half the senators have never voted on the confirmation of a Supreme Court justice, Leahy has voted on all nine justices during his 30 years in the Senate.
He voted against the elevation of William H. Rehnquist to chief justice in 1986 and against Clarence Thomas, who narrowly won confirmation in 1991. He also opposed the nomination of Robert Bork, who was defeated 58-42 in 1987.
"Bork really is a good example of how important it is not to prejudge a nominee," he said. "I assumed I was going to vote for Judge Bork. You go back to those hearings. Bork killed himself. Bork was so arrogant and so condescending and then so contradictory in his own statements. Republicans ended up voting against Bork as well as Democrats."
Leahy said he has developed a routine for reviewing Supreme Court nominations. He retreats to his 1850 family homestead, pulls an Adirondack chair out on the lawn, and reads binders full of the nominee's writings.
"I read everything I can," he said. "I try to the extent possible to think like the nominee thinks. I make out a list of the pluses and the minuses and then there will be a third column for the unanswered questions, and it is in that area I will ask the most questions."
He said he will ask Roberts about his opinion on various cases, starting with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling striking down school segregation.
"You can't ask how are you going to rule on upcoming cases, but there is no reason you can't ask about various cases from the past," Leahy said.
During the confirmation hearing for Thomas, Leahy's questioning prompted Thomas to say he had never participated in any discussions about the Roe v. Wade legalizing abortion and did not have a personal opinion of the decision, a statement that helped fuel opposition. Leahy figures to ask Roberts about Roe as well.
"There are a lot of good legal thinkers who question the reasoning that went into Roe, not the result, but the reasoning," Leahy said. "Is this, in his mind, settled law? He is going to be asked that by a number of people."
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that when Roberts was working in the Reagan administration in 1981 he advised O'Connor not to tell senators at her confirmation hearings how she might vote in cases likely to come before the court.
"The proposition that the only way Senators can ascertain a nominee's views is through questions on specific cases should be rejected," Roberts wrote in a memo to O'Connor.
The memo, one of hundreds of documents just released on the National Archives Web site, suggests that Roberts may himself resist answering questions about specific cases when his confirmation hearings begin Sept. 6.
Roberts, then a special assistant to Attorney General William French Smith, also helped O'Connor plan how to steer clear of sharing her views on abortion – a subject senators are certain to press Roberts on at his confirmation hearings.
According to a 1981 memo by Carolyn Kuhl, a colleague in the attorney general's office, she and Roberts helped O'Connor formulate "reasons for declining to answer questions concerning Roe v. Wade, and several other topics."