Washington – The first day of confirmation hearings for Judge John Roberts to become the 17th chief justice of the United States proved to be a tepid opening to what once was billed as a battle of monumental proportions between left and right.
There may yet be some of the fireworks that were predicted when the first of two Supreme Court vacancies opened up two months ago, particularly this morning when members of the Senate Judiciary Committee begin to question Roberts. But with Roberts’ confirmation seemingly assured, some of the fight appears to have gone out of the Democrats, and they have been forced to shift their strategy.
The confirmation hearings now are only partly about Roberts and what he thinks about the law. Instead, they have become a prelude to the coming battle over President Bush’s coming choice to succeed Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and a forum for a debate about deep philosophical differences between Republicans and Democrats over the role of government and the courts in American society.
In laying out areas of potential inquiry, the Democrats were generally polite and, with few exceptions, largely devoid of passion.
However, an unwillingness on Roberts’s part to answer certain questions and a continuation by the White House to deny Senate Democrats documents from the nominee’s days as deputy solicitor general in the administration of Bush’s father is likely to raise the temperature of the opposition.
But the positive reaction to Roberts to replace the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist and the internal vote counts in the Senate have the Democrats taking a stance aimed as much at future elections as the question of whether Roberts should be confirmed.
Judging from the opening statements, Democrats and Republicans approached the first day of the hearings with far different goals in mind. Confident of the ultimate outcome of the Roberts confirmation battle, many Republicans came to the hearings with a set of procedural arguments aimed at encouraging Roberts not to answer the Democrats’ questions about his views on controversial issues.
That view was summed up most succinctly by Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, whose advice to the nominee was, “Don’t take the bait.”
Democrats came with the intention of talking about their values and their view of the courts as protectors of women’s rights and civil rights and of the importance of preserving an expansive view of the federal government’s powers in the face of a series of Supreme Court decisions limiting that power.
Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., said that with two vacancies, Bush and his conservative allies now have a “once-in-a-lifetime moment” to reshape the Supreme Court and to change the court’s view of the Constitution. “I believe with every fiber in my being that their view of the Constitution and where the country should be taken would be disaster for our people,” he said.
