Bush sneaks racist judge onto federal court
By Heather Cottin
On the day after the 75th anniversary of Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, President George W. Bush
appointed Mississippi Judge Charles W. Pickering Sr. to the
U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. This court covers three of
the states with the most right-wing political officeholders in
the country: Mississippi, Texas and Louisiana.
Advocacy groups opposing Pickering's appointment included
the NAACP, National Organization for Women, the AFL-CIO and the
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
Pickering left the Democratic Party in 1964 when Fanny Lou
Hamer and the Freedom Democrats demanded representation for
Black people in Mississippi at the Democratic National
Convention in Atlantic City, N.J. Pickering opposed "one
person, one vote" and in a law review article called the
practice "obtrusive." After 1965, he did everything he could to
prevent Mississippi's compliance with the Federal Voting Rights
Act. (www.now.org)
Pickering's judicial record illustrates his right-wing
politics. In his youth, he wrote law review articles supporting
laws against interracial marriages in his home state of
Mississippi.
Pickering opposes the Equal Rights Amendment, opposes the
Roe vs. Wade decision that protects the right to abortion, and
he has called for a constitutional amendment barring abortion.
He voted to stop funding for family planning in
Mississippi.
In 1994 Judge Pickering went to considerable lengths to
reduce the sentence of a man convicted of burning a cross on
the lawn of a mixed-race couple.
None of this is any obstacle to support from the Bush
administration. Vice President Dick Cheney went to Mississippi
no less than five times in the past year to support Pickering's
appointment to the federal bench.
The method of judicial appointments was a procedure created
in 1789 to deny the people the right to elect their own federal
judges.
While elections under capitalism are no guarantee that
judges will answer to the people, having them appointed by the
president and approved by the Senate guarantees control by the
rich. The Senate, the upper house of Congress whose members
have always been wealthy and with very few exceptions have been
white men of property, was set up to ratify presidential
appointments.
But popular opposition to such an outrageously reactionary
choice as Pickering forced even the Senate to oppose his
nomination. So Bush placed Pickering directly on the appeals
court when the Senate was out of session. Now Pickering will
serve at least until 2005.
Reprinted from the Feb. 5, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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