Sauron

Yes, and attempts by Clinton/Gore and other Democratic administrations have been referred to as attempts to "pack the court" with liberals. The Christian Coalition, the NRA, and other conservative organizations use such claims as a rallying cry to their voter base, and as a way to spur donations.

The phrase "pack the court" has been used by both sides, and everyone understands its daily usage.


No one made any such comparison of methodology, Layman. All that copernicus said was that :

Bush wants to pack the Supreme Court as badly as FDR did.

That's a comment on Dubya's desire and willingness, not a game plan outlining how Dubya plans to get it done. FDR was willing to go to extreme measures, even outrageous measures, to get the court that he wanted. Evidently, Dubya will do the same, although within tighter Constitutional boundaries than FDR had to deal with.

Layman

And do you have even a shred of evidence for this? You were aware that the post that got this little tangent started was about the most famous plan of any President ever to pack the Court with ideological cronies? And that President was a Democrat--President Roosevelt?

Very amusing Toto.

Evidence? Either that previous presidents did this or Bush doesn't?

The ABA is free to give its endorsements, but its increasingly partisan approach to its jobs justifiable meant that it was not included in the formal selection process. The ABA has become little more than a liberal lobbying group. It is the state bars that actually regulate the practice of law.

Yeah, and I could spout conservative ideology to justify packing the Court with conservative justices. But that's pretty pointless, isn't it? Because we know we disagree with each other politically.

The reason the comparison is not "exact" is because Roosevelt wanted to change the law so we could increase the total number of justices on the Court and he would be able to appoint them all at one time. There is no comparison.

You live by the Courts you die by the Courts. The people had a chance to reject Bush in the recent midterms. But, in a very historic election, the confirmed their faith in him. AND, Bush expressly run on the idea of appointing conservative judges and justices and the nation gave him the Senate to do it with.

Try again.

Bush is not seeking to change the law or increase the number of justices on the Supreme Court. He is doing what Presidents' are constitionally given the authority to do: appoint judges and justices with whom they agree. It is the lifetime tenure and wage controls that give the courts their independence. The President is given the appointment power.

And the Democrats were worse than the Republicans. The Senate is given the Constitutional athourity of "advise and consent." No one broke the law or did anything unconstitutional on either side of the aisle by playing politics with the judges. I may think its bad policy, but its entirely legal and constitutional.

I never claimed to be a particularly imaginative fellow. However, the reason it is dishonest is because the the very term used -- "pack" the Court -- has nothing to do with what Bush has been or will be doing. Roosevelt tried to "pack" the Court by ADDING justices to it. He was not content to wait and appoint replacements to retiring justices. His plan would have diluted the constitutionally excercised appointments of previous adminitrations.

Sauron

Your evidence for these allegations?

Sauron

Your entire argument hangs on the semantic point that the phrase "pack the court" only applies to what FDR did - and therefore copernicus' comment of Dubya's activity is invalid.

However, that's another straw position, Layman.

The term "pack the court" has already passed into the common political vernacular to mean an attempt to appoint as many judges as possible of a particular (usually non-center) political philosophy.

I think copernicus was speaking more to the intensity of this president's desire, and his willingness to get creative about how to get it done. Bush may be constrained by a maximum number of SC judgeships, but within that constraint he is trying every trick in the book to appoint people of his extreme conservative agenda.

Nor is your protest that "well, every president does this" even true; Clinton appointed several centrist (or mildly liberal) judges, as opposed to really trying to find the most liberal ones possible.

There's nothing wrong with the phrase, nor with the comparison to FDR.

Layman

I've been following the ABA with varying degrees of interest since going to law school. It was one reason I decided not to join the National Bar.

Here are some articles on the issue:

http://www.nationalreview.com/nr_com...t032101b.shtml

http://www.nationalreview.com/nota_b...ta040201.shtml

Layman

And Bush has appointed some of the judges Clinton nominated--liberal/moderates.

Unless you can prove every Bush appointee is a rigid ideolouge -- which no one has done -- you have failed to distinguish Clinton's practice from Bush's.

And when you use "pack" the Court in comparison to Roosevelt's literal attempt to "pack" the Court without noting the completely different nature between the two situations, you are omitting the very fact that gives Court historians heartburn.

Toto

Okay, I should have qualified that to exclude Rooseveldt. All presidents try to pick someone they feel compatible with, but the current extreme politicization of the court picks started with Reagan and the attempt to reverse Roe v. Wade (or the use of Roe v. Wade as a political hot button to get conservatives elected, but that's another story). My evidence - I lived through this time, read the newspapers, listened to news and commentary, read a lot of Supreme Court opinions in my day.

As to the rest, we'll just have to agree that we disagree.

Sauron

I'm sorry, I should have been clearer. Do you have non-biased, non-conservative sources for these claims? A centrist think-tank, or something in that line?

Quoting the National Review would be sort of like me quoting from Greenpeace or Mother Jones - I doubt you would accept such a source as unbiased, even though I could provide such quotes readily.

Sauron

I was speaking about SC judges. Bush has not appointed any. Clinton did.


No. In point of fact, one would only have to prove that *more* of Bush's appointees were idelogues than were Clinton's appointees, in order to distinguish Bush from Clinton. There is no need to prove that "every" Bush appointee was a rigid ideologue. You overstated yourself again.

But as I said: my comment was about SC judgeships and appointees - not about the set of all federal judgeships.

So court historians wince whenever someone says "packing the court" these days. Interesting, but irrelevant. The discussion here was about whether or not copernicus' characterization was inaccurate.

A court historian, whose life and business are the dull minutiae of the court, will be supersensitized to such a term as "packing". The term has already passed into the political vernacular of both conservatives and liberals, and the common usage is well understood. That is the usage that was in play here, in this thread.

I find your semantic quibble about copernicus' otherwise interesting post to be a pointless distraction to the central discussion.

MarkW

Layman:

Of the two articles you link to, only the firrst is concerned with the ABA's evaluations of judicial nominees. Most of the article contains little more than rhetorical allegations--e.g., "If the ABA is just another liberal interest group--which it plainly is..." Such claims are, of course, not evidence.

There is one paragraph, in the entire article, which goes somewhat beyond rhetoric--the one beginning "Ratings from the Committee show exactly how politically and ideologically divided the ABA evaluation process is." Author Melissa Seckora
then lists 14 Republican judicial nominees and 14 Democratic nominees, and notes the ABA's evaluation of each. Since the Democrats listed received higher evaluations, she obviously wants readers to conclude that the higher ratings for Democrats are proof of her claims of bias.

There are a couple of problems with this. First, Seckora has listed only 28 judicial nominees. Her list of nominees goes back at least to the Carter Administration, but it is far from complete--there have been far more than 28 judicial nominees since then (her list includes only 1 of 9 Supreme Court nominees since 1977). Need I point out that it would be very easy to skew this sort of incomplete sampling.

Another problem is that, in order to conclude that the differences in ratings are evidence of bias, you have to assume that there is no other factor that can account for the differences. Seckora provides no basis for this assumption. She doesn't even attempt to make any sort of comparison of the qualifications of the various candidates. Without such a comparison, conclusions about a supposed "bias" of the ABA are unjustified.

If you want to persuade anyone who isn't already on your side of this issue, you're going to need better evidence than you've cited so far. I'd suggest, as Sauron already has, that you go to a source other than National Review, as my experience with NR (I've subscribed for over 20 years, with a couple of interruptions) is that they seldom rise above ideological boilerplate.

Mark