Supremacist Court

On July 15, Judge John Roberts gave the Bush administration a judicial victory, joining a unanimous three-judge panel to rule that the prisoners of war being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have no rights under the Geneva Conventions. On July 19, the former lawyer, who once represented Fox Television, became Bush’s choice for the Supreme Court.

There is no doubt among the far right that Bush has fulfilled his promise to choose someone who is “like” Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. The Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chair of the Traditional Values Coalition, says Roberts is an “all-star” on key social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. (Los Angeles Times, July 20)

Roberts, the son of a manager at Bethlehem Steel in Buffalo, N.Y., has been a right-wing activist since “he became interested in conservative politics after seeing—and not liking—anti-war sentiment on the [Harvard] campus” when he was a student in the 1970s. (Chicago Tribune, July 20) In the early 1980s he became a clerk for William Rehnquist and a member of the Federalist Society. Self-described as a “right-wing cabal” (Associated Press, July 18), the society is an activist organization aimed at ridding law, the courts and Congress of “liberal bias.” Its members include Scalia, Thomas and Robert Bork.

NARAL Pro-Choice America was among the first to respond to the nomination: “We are extremely disappointed that President Bush has chosen such a divisive nominee for the highest court in the nation.”

That’s probably because in 1991, he wrote a high court brief arguing that Roe v. Wade “was wrongly decided and should be overruled.” Also, his spouse, Jane Marie Sullivan, has served as executive vice president of an anti-abortion group, Feminists for Life. (Philadelphia Inquirer, July 19)

Roberts’ sordid record speaks for itself.

* Roberts was the personal private counsel for Gov. Jeb Bush during the 2000 presidential elections, advising him at the time when the votes of the Black population of Florida were being stolen and Jeb’s brother George was given the presidency by the U.S. Supreme Court. (Washington Post, July 20)

* Roberts, according to a report by the Alliance for Justice (www.allianceforjustice.org), has compiled a staunch record of hostility to civil rights. He has consistently opposed affirmative action and he was actively involved in the effort by the Reagan administration to overturn the Voting Rights Act.

One of his rulings as a federal court judge was against a 12-year-old girl who had been shackled and arrested on the Washington, D.C., Metro train because she ate a single French fry. Roberts found that her rights had not been violated.

* Roberts as a lawyer for Toyota won a Supreme Court ruling to deny disability benefits to an assembly line worker who had been fired because of her carpal tunnel syndrome. (Alliance for Justice)

Roberts is on the Legal Advisory Council, a group that is hostile to “environmental and worker protections” and committed to “an ultra-conservative” agenda, reports the Alliance for Justice. In addition, the alliance says, “Mr. Roberts states in his Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire that he ‘regularly participate[s] in press briefings sponsored by the … Washington Legal Foundation,’ a rigidly right-wing legal organization that litigates on behalf of corporate interests and wealthy property owners challenging environmental and other regulations.”

Roberts himself is reported to be worth more than $6 million. (Chicago Tribune, July 20)

He has regularly complained in the media that the Supreme Court is not “conservative.” At the end of the 2000 Supreme Court term, Roberts, then in private practice, was interviewed by the Baltimore Sun: “The conventional wisdom is that this is a conservative court,” he said. “We have to take that more skeptically. On the three issues the public was most interested in—school prayer, abortion and Miranda rights—the conservatives lost on all.” (Los Angeles Times, July 20)

So what is with the top leaders of the Democratic Party, not one of whom has said they will oppose Roberts’ nomination? They’ve quickly put out an official stand that Roberts has no record, that his years as a lawyer don’t count because then he was only a “hired gun,” as if a hired gun does not choose who to work for.

The fact is, it would have been hard for Bush to have found anyone more right-wing. Roberts stands against the working class, against women, against civil rights and against all that is progressive. He should be opposed unequivocally.

The Democrats certainly aren’t doing that. It will take an independent rank-and-file upsurge to put the brakes on the runaway right-wing train that is in control of the White House, Congress and Supreme Court.