Showing posts with label judicial restraint. Show all posts
Showing posts with label judicial restraint. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Review of Thomas Healy's The Great Dissent

What Democracy Requires. By Joshua
Review of Thomas Healy's The Great Dissent
Justice Holmes changed his mind about free speech—and rediscovered the original intent of the First Amendment.
The Wall Street Journal, August 23, 2013, on page C5
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324108204579022881137648134.html

In the working sections of the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., the quiet places where the justices have their chambers and the staffs go about their work, portraits of the former members of the court peer out from almost every room and hallway. I used to find myself, when I worked there some years ago, pausing beneath the past luminaries and wondering what they might have to say about the court's current cases.

I never got very far with Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935). His portrait didn't invite inquiry. He sat straight-backed in his judicial robes, his lips pursed beneath a virile white mustache, eyes boring directly ahead. He conveyed simultaneously grandeur and skepticism, as if he might interrupt you at any moment to say, "That's nonsense." This is Holmes in his Solomonic pose, the man hailed as the "Master of Sentences," lionized in an early biography as the "Yankee from Olympus," his life made the subject of a 1950s Hollywood film. It was an image that Holmes spent nearly the whole of his adult life cultivating, driven on by his galloping ambition. "I should like to be admitted," he told a correspondent in 1912, "as the greatest jurist in the world."

Holmes would surely have approved of Thomas Healy's "The Great Dissent." The subtitle conveys the narrative's gist: "How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind—and Changed the History of Free Speech in America." Mr. Healy recounts Holmes's emergence late in his career as a champion of free speech and tells the story of the coterie of young intellectuals, led by Felix Frankfurter and Harold Laski, who worked assiduously to shape Holmes's views. It is a fascinating tale—and a charming one, of an aging and childless Holmes befriended by a rising generation of legal thinkers, surrogate sons who persuade him over time to take up their cause.

Mr. Healy, a professor of law at Seton Hall, is at his best detailing the younger men's campaign to win Holmes to their view of the First Amendment. In March 1919, Holmes still believed that the government could punish "disloyal" speech and wrote an opinion supporting the 1917 Espionage Act, which made it illegal to criticize the draft or American involvement in World War I. In Debs v. United States, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the prosecution of Socialist Party leader Eugene Debs for his critical statements about the war. Less than nine months later, Holmes had changed his mind, dramatically. In Abrams v. United States, he broke with his colleagues and with his own earlier views and argued that the Constitution didn't permit the government to punish speech unless it posed a "clear and present danger" of public harm. Laws penalizing any other type of public speech were unconstitutional. Holmes's Abrams opinion is the "great dissent" of Mr. Healy's title.

The youthful acolytes had made the difference. As Mr. Healy elaborates, Holmes had developed a knack for collecting young admirers in his years on the Supreme Court (1902-32). In 1919, Holmes's circle included Frankfurter, a junior professor at Harvard Law School serving in the Wilson administration, and the Englishman Harold Laski, just 25 and like Frankfurter a Jew and a teacher at Harvard. Both men would go on to illustrious careers—Frankfurter on the Supreme Court and Laski as a political theorist and chairman of the British Labour Party. Both admired Holmes for his modernist intellectual outlook: for his skepticism about moral absolutes and dislike of formal legal doctrine; and for what they believed (mistakenly) to be Holmes's progressive political views.

Even before the Debs case, Laski had been plying Holmes with arguments about free speech. After Holmes's disappointing opinion in that case, Laski redoubled his efforts, assisted by letters from Frankfurter and well-timed essays from the pair's allies at the New Republic magazine. As it happened, both Laski and Frankfurter suffered professionally in 1919 for their sometimes outspoken political views—both were briefly in danger of being dismissed from Harvard. Mr. Healy implies that their ordeal may have heightened Holmes's appreciation for free speech. But the more likely turning point came in the summer of 1919, when Laski forwarded to Holmes an article defending freedom of speech for its social value and then introduced Holmes to its author, another young Harvard law professor named Zechariah Chafee Jr.

Chafee, who was no sort of progressive and whose specialty was business law, argued that free speech advanced a vital social interest by promoting the discovery and spread of truth, which in turn allowed democracy to function. Holmes had never been much of a proponent of individual liberty, but he was profoundly committed to majoritarian democracy. Free speech as a social good was a rationale he could buy. And in his Abrams dissent a few months later, he did. He would eventually conclude that the First Amendment shielded speech from both federal and state interference.

Mr. Healy tells this conversion story well, bringing the reader into Holmes's confidence and into the uneasy, war-weary milieu of 1919 America. "The Great Dissent" is compelling, too, for the glimpses it gives of the human Holmes rather than the Olympian public figure. Here is Holmes standing at his writing desk to compose his court opinions, keeping them brief lest his legs tire; waxing rhapsodic each spring about the bloodroot flowers in Rock Creek Park. He was unfailingly decorous to his colleagues—even as he was indifferent to his wife—but quivered and fumed at the merest hint of criticism, unable to acknowledge that he had ever been mistaken about anything of importance.

All too often, however, Mr. Healy lapses into hagiography and an annoyingly Whiggish mode of storytelling, in which our modern free-speech doctrine —which protects the right of individuals and corporations to speak on most any topic at most any time—is portrayed as the Inevitable Truth toward which constitutional history has been marching all along. In this story, Holmes's embrace of free speech emerges as the very culmination of his life's work and its linchpin. "It was almost as if Holmes had been working toward this moment his entire career," Mr. Healy says triumphantly.

Not quite. Holmes's endorsement of free speech as a constitutional principle was far more ambivalent than Mr. Healy lets on and in considerable tension with the rest of his jurisprudence. This is precisely what makes it so interesting. Holmes's struggle to reconcile freedom of speech with his other legal ideas helped him to see connections that contemporary Americans are apt to miss.

Holmes made his name on the court as an advocate of judicial restraint. He thought courts should overturn the judgment of democratic legislatures in only the most extraordinary of circumstances. He was a skeptic. He believed law didn't have much to do with morality—"absolute truth is a mirage," he once said—or even logic. As he saw it, law was nothing more than "the dominant opinion of society." The Constitution placed no firm bounds on the right of the majority to do as it pleased. It was "made for people of fundamentally differing views," he said. The majority could choose the view and pursue the policies it wanted, for the reasons it wanted.

All this being true, the judiciary had no business substituting its views for those of the public. If law was based merely on opinion and raw preference, the people's preferences should count, not judges'.

How then did Holmes come to hold that the First Amendment could be used to strike down laws of Congress and even of the states? The answer is that Holmes came to see the principle of free speech as an essential part of majority rule; it was valuable because it helped majorities get their way.

Mr. Healy notes the influence on Holmes of Chafee's "social argument" for free speech but fails to explain just how central it was to his conversion experience. In his dissenting opinion in Abrams, Holmes wrote: "The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market." Truth was whatever the majority thought it was, but if the majority was going to make up its mind in a sensible way, it needed to have as many options before it as possible. Then too, majorities changed their minds, and protecting speech that was unpopular now preserved opinions that the majority might come to favor in the future. "The only meaning of free speech," Holmes wrote in 1925, is that every idea "be given a chance" to become in time the majority creed.

Such reasoning tethered free speech to majority rule, but it was less than perfectly consistent. Even as he valorized the right to speak, Holmes continued to insist that "the dominant forces in the community" must get what they wanted. Yet if free speech were to mean anything at all as a constitutional right, it would mean that majorities could not get their way in all circumstances. From time to time, Holmes recognized as much; in one of his last opinions he wrote that the "principle of free thought" means at bottom "freedom for the thought we hate." How forcing the majority to tolerate speech it hated facilitated that same majority's right to have its way is a formula Holmes never quite explained.

Mr. Healy suggests that with Holmes's dissent in Abrams, the modern era of First Amendment law had arrived. But Holmes's majoritarianism didn't prevail as the principal rationale for free speech at the Supreme Court, which has instead emphasized individuals' right to speak regardless of the social interests involved. Still, for all its internal tensions, Holmes's unfinished view—he continued to puzzle over the problem right through his retirement from the court in 1932—captures something that the contemporary adulation of free speech has hidden.

Holmes saw that the Constitution's commitment to freedom of speech is inextricably bound up with the project of self-government that the Constitution was designed to make possible. That project depends on an open exchange of ideas, on discussion between citizens and their representatives, on the ability of everyday Americans to talk and reason together.

This sort of government is a way of life, and the First Amendment helps makes it possible by prohibiting the state from censoring the organs of social communication. The government may not control newspapers or printing presses or stop citizens from stating their views. Government may not halt the dissemination of ideas.

In the past half-century, however, the Supreme Court has increasingly spoken of the right to free speech as a right to free expression. Under that rubric, it has expanded the First Amendment to cover all manner of things unconnected to public life, be it art or pornography or commercial advertising. This trend has been even more pronounced in popular culture, where the right to express oneself is now widely regarded as the essence of the freedom to speak.

And to be sure, individual expression is a valuable thing. The danger is in coming to think of free speech as merely expression. That reductionism encourages Americans to see freedom of speech, and freedom generally, as mainly about the pursuit of private aims. But in the end, such thinking represents a loss of confidence, or worse, a loss of interest in the way of living that is self-government—in the shared decisions and mutual persuasion that is how a free people makes a life together. Ours is a country saturated with talk and shouted opinions and personal exhibitionism but one less and less interested in the shared civil discourse that democracy requires.

Holmes wouldn't have described free speech or self-government in such elevated terms. He was too much the skeptic for that. But he came to understand, in his own way, the profound value of free speech to a free people. The story of this discovery is worth revisiting.

—Mr. Hawley, an associate professor of law at the University of Missouri and former judicial clerk to Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts Jr., is the author of "Theodore Roosevelt: Preacher of Righteousness" (2008).

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest Memorial Lecture. By Michael Howard, MP. July 6, 2006

Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest Memorial Lecture. By Michael Howard, MP
http://web.archive.org/web/20070505062753/http://www.michaelhowardmp.com/speeches/lampeter060706.htm
July 6, 2006


It is a great privilege to have been invited to give this lecture.

Lord Morris of Borth-y-Gest – or John Willie as I recall him being almost universally referred to – was one of the giants of the law when I studied it at Cambridge and during the years when I was making my way as a Junior Member of the Bar.

Superficially we had quite a few things in common. We were, of course, both Welsh. We were both members of the Inner Temple. We had both been Presidents of the Cambridge Union. And we both, and this may be particularly encouraging to some, took second-class degrees in law.

But there, I fear, the similarities come to an end. I could not hope, even to begin to match the distinction of John Willie’s attainments at the Bar, on the Bench and as one of our great appeal judges. Nor, let’s be frank about this, could I aspire to his hallmarks of gentleness, patience and universal popularity.

He was a legend in the land. And not just, of course, for what he achieved in his legal career. At the outbreak of war in 1914, at the age of 17 he joined the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, saw service in France, reached the rank of Captain and was awarded the Military Cross. And it is said that, after being appointed a Law Lord in 1960 he walked down Whitehall to the House of Lords every day, lifting his hat as he passed the cenotaph.

Sadly I never had the honour of appearing before him. But I did meet him. When I was an undergraduate at Cambridge he came to see us to encourage us to go to the Bar.

I cannot pretend that this was a decisive influence on my own career because I had already made up my mind that that was what I wanted to do. So none of the blame for my subsequent career can be laid at John Willie’s door.

The Dictionary of National Biography, in describing his judicial characteristics, says that he was 'vigilant in protecting the freedom of the individual when threatened by the executive' and adds that 'he exhibited judicial valour consistently and in full measure.'

These statements are justified. But they must be interpreted in the spirit and context of their time. Thirty years ago judges were also conscious of the constraints which were imposed on their role.

Since then, that role has been greatly expanded, first as a consequence of the enlargement of judicial review, more recently as a result of the Human Rights Act. It is to that trend, its implications and its consequences that I intend to devote the rest of my remarks this evening.

Over thirty years ago, on a visit to Philadelphia, I fell into conversation with a woman who had recently been given a parking ticket. She had been incensed, so incensed that she decided to go to Court to challenge it.

When she appeared in Court she was rather surprised when the magistrate called all the defendants who were due to appear that day to the bar of the Court. He told them his name and asked them to remember it. Then he said, “All cases dismissed.”

The astonishment of my acquaintance at this development was tempered somewhat when she discovered that a few days later the regular election of magistrates in the city was due to take place. The magistrate before whom she had appeared, albeit rather briefly, was re-elected with the biggest majority in the history of the Philadelphia magistracy.

When I was told that story I reacted, I am sorry to say, with a rather superior disdain. “What can you expect” I asked, “if you elect magistrates and judges? We in Britain would never contemplate any such step.”

Thirty years on I am much less sure. The truth is that during that time the power of judges in this country was increased, is increasing and will increase further, if nothing is done to change things.

For the most part this increase in power has been at the expense of elected Governments and elected Parliaments. Our judges, of course, are unelected. They are unaccountable. They cannot be dismissed, save in the most extreme circumstances, and in practice never are.

Moreover they are appointed without regard to their political background and views are without any public scrutiny, parliamentary or otherwise. I believe that this has, in the past, been one of the great strengths of our judiciary. But as they move, increasingly, to the centre of the political stage how long can this state of affairs continue?

It would be wrong to suggest that this shift in power is entirely new or that it is entirely due to the coming into force of the Human Rights Act.

The Courts have traditionally had the power to curb the illegal, arbitrary or irrational exercise of power by the Executive. But, traditionally this power was exercised with restraint.

The Courts would be careful not to quash decisions because they disagreed on the merits with the decisions under challenge.

There is common consent that during the last 50 years this restraint has been eroded. As the previous Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine put it, in his 1995 Address to the Administrative Law Bar Association:
“The range of circumstances in which decisions may be struck down has been extended beyond recognition.”

That address was essentially a plea for judicial restraint. Indeed in it the future Lord Chancellor referred to what he described as the “constitutional imperative of judicial self-restraint.”

He gave three reasons for it. First he referred to the constitutional imperative – the fact that Parliament gives powers to various authorities, including Ministers, for good reasons and in reliance on the level of knowledge and experience which such authorities possess. Secondly, he referred to the lack of judicial expertise which, he said, made the Courts ill-equipped to take decisions in place of the designated authority. Thirdly, and most pertinently, he referred to what he called the democratic imperative – the fact that elected public authorities derive their authority in part from their electoral mandate.

It is worth quoting his words in full: “The electoral system,” he said, “also operates as an important safeguard against the unreasonable exercise of public powers, since elected authorities have to submit themselves, and their decision-making records, to the verdict of the electorate at regular intervals.”

With respect to Lord Irvine, I couldn’t have put it better myself.

Remarkably enough he even prayed in aid, as one of his arguments against judicial intervention, the fact that it would strengthen objections to the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into our law – the very Human Rights Act which he did so much to introduce.

Rightly describing it as a step which would hugely enhance the role and significance of the judiciary in our society he said this:- “The traditional objection to incorporation has been that it would confer on unelected judges powers which naturally belong to Parliament. That objection, entertained by many across the political spectrum, can only be strengthened by fears of judicial supremacism.”

Lord Irvine was right. My essential objection to the Human Rights Act is that it does involve a very significant shift in power from elected representatives of the people to unelected judges. Members of Parliament, and Ministers are, except for Ministers in the House of Lords like the Lord Chancellor, answerable to their electorates. As I know only too well they can be summarily dismissed by the electorate. They are directly accountable. Judges, as I have already pointed out, are unelected, unaccountable and cannot be dismissed.

The reason why this difficulty arisesin such acute form as a result of the Human Rights Act is because so many of the decisions which our judges now have to make under it are, essentially, political in nature.

Just this week, Charles Clarke, the former Home Secretary, complained that, and I quote:- “One of the consequences of the Human Rights Act is that our most senior judiciary are taking decisions of deep concern to the security of our society without any responsibility for that security.”

What on earth did he expect?

Of course that is one of the consequences of the Human Rights Act. It is an inevitable consequence. It is what the Human Rights Act obliges the senior judiciary to do. It is not the fault of the judges if they perform, as conscientiously as they can, duties which the Government has placed on them.

And it is not as though the Government were not warned.

To select a quote almost at random Appeal Court Judge Sir Henry Brooke predicted that judges would be drawn into making “much more obviously political decisions.” He pointed out that under the Act “for the first time judges would have to decide whether government interference with a human right was 'necessary in a democratic society.’ – and that, of course, is clearly a political value judgement.

How does this arise? In a nutshell the Act requires our courts to apply the European Convention on Human Rights in every decision they make. The rights which the Convention seeks to protect are framed in very wide terms. The Convention was drawn up in the aftermath of the Second World War. Its authors saw it as a safeguard against any revival of Nazism or any other form of totalitarian tyranny. I suspect that many of them would turn in their graves if they were able to see the kind of cases which are being brought in reliance on it today.

None of these rights can be exercised in isolation. Any decision to uphold one right may well infringe someone else’s right. Or it may conflict with the rights of the community at large.

The example that has most recently hit the headlines well illustrates the difficulties that arise.

As David Cameron pointed out in his recent speech on this subject life in the globalised twenty first century world presents two great challenges to governments. The first is to protect our security. The second is protecting our liberty.

We would, I suspect, all agree with his view that 'it is vital that free societies do all they can to maintain people’s human rights and civil liberties, not least because a free society is, in the long term, one of the best protections against terrorism and crime.”

As he said, “The fundamental challenge is to strike the right balance between security and liberty.”

The fundamental question is who is ultimately responsible for striking that balance: elected members of Parliament or unelected judges?

In the cases on terrorism, Parliament twice, after much anxious consideration by both Houses, reached its view. It was not always a view with which I agreed. But it was the view of Parliament.

Yet twice the Judges have held that Parliament got the balance wrong. They thought the balance should be struck differently.

And in doing so they were not deliberately seeking to challenge the supremacy of Parliament. They were simply doing what Parliament has asked them to do.

There are countless other examples. In his recent speech on the subject David Cameron discussed the way in which the Human Rights Act has made the fight against crime harder.

He cited the example of the Assets Recovery Agency, which was set up to seize the assets of major criminals.

The agency has been forced to spend millions of pounds fighting legal challenges brought by criminals under the Human Rights Act.

This has had bogged down cases for years, and the backlog in the courts has grown to 146 uncompleted claims.

The Director of the Agency has directly blamed the human rights “bandwagon” for thwarting its efforts.

He referred to the case of the convicted rapist, Anthony Rice, who was wrongly released on licence and then murdered Naomi Bryant.

The bridges Report set up to investigate the case makes clear that one of the factors that influenced the thinking of officials in dealing with Rice was a concern that he might sue them under the Human Rights Act.

As David Cameron acknowledged there were other elements in the case that had no connection to human rights.

And it is true that any legal challenge by Rice might well have failed.

But it remains the case that officials sought to protect themselves rather than risk defeat in the courts.

The Rice case illustrates a wider trend.

Even without actual litigation, some public bodies are now so frightened of being sued under the Human Rights Act that they try to protect themselves by making decisions that are often absurd and occasionally dangerous.

We saw this recently when the police tried to recapture foreign ex-prisoners who should have been deported and had instead gone on the run.

The obvious thing to do would have been to issue “Wanted” posters but police forces across the country refused to do so on the grounds that it would breach the HRA.

The Association of Chief Police officers says in its guidance to forces: “Article 8 of the Human Rights Act gives everyone the right to respect for their private and family life.....and publication of photographs could be a breach of that.”

According to ACPO, photographs should be released only in “exceptional circumstances”, where public safety needs to override the case for privacy.

These were criminals who had been convicted of very serious offences and who shouldn’t even have been in the UK.

Yet the Metropolitan Police said, “We will use all the tools in our tool box to try and find them without printing their identity – that’s the last recourse.”

Perhaps the most ludicrous recent example occurred a few weeks ago when a suspected car thief clambered onto the roof tops after a high speed chase and began pelting the police who had tried to follow him with roof tiles.

It ended with a siege that would waste the time of 50 police officers, close the street until 9.40pm and culminate in the spectacle of the suspect being handed a bucket of KFC chicken, a two litre bottle of Pepsi and a packet of cigarettes at tax payers expense – all apparently to preserve his “human rights.”

Of course there are examples of cases where the Act has led to results most of us would applaud. But we have to ask whether those results could not have been achieved by effective lobbying of our elected Parliament or a change of Government following an Election.

The Human Rights Act requires the Courts to interpret legislation so that it complies with the Convention if that is at all possible. If in the Court’s view any secondary legislation – passed after due consideration by both Houses of Parliament – is incompatible with the Convention that legislation can be struck down by the Court.

If any primary legislation is held to be incompatible there is a fast-track procedure which would enable the Government to short-circuit the normal processes of parliamentary scrutiny in order to amend or repeal any such legislation.

This surely a direct threat to the very democratic imperative on which the then Lord Chancellor waxed so eloquent 5 years ago.

One of the consequences of this is likely to be the increasing politicisation of judges.

How long, if the Act remains in force, will our present system of selection of judges survive? How long before the political backgrounds of candidates for judicial office become subject to Parliamentary scrutiny? How long before we see demands that these judges submit themselves for election?

The most common argument in favour of the Act is that it 'brings rights home.’ By that its supporters mean that since the Act could in any event be relied upon in an appeal from the English Courts to the European Court of Human Rights it is much better to allow English judges to apply it themselves. Indeed in presenting this argument the impression is sometimes given that the new jurisdiction of the English Courts will in some way replace the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights. This is of course quite untrue. The right to appeal to the ECHR will remain.

I would concede that the previous situation was not ideal.

The ECHR does sometimes reach decisions which are very difficult to understand and sometimes cause considerable frustration.

But there is a remedy for this which the last Government was pursuing. The ECHR recognises the existence of what it calls a 'margin of appreciation.’ By that it means that will make some allowance, in applying the Convention, for the local circumstances and traditions of the country from which the appeal is brought. The last Government had embarked on a campaign to increase this margin of appreciation so that the Court would give greater leeway to countries to decide things for themselves.

Now the very future of the margin of appreciation is uncertain. Academic controversy rages on to whether our courts will apply it. And the ECHR is much less likely to apply it to decisions of our Courts than to decisions of administrative bodies.

It is in this context that David Cameron’s proposal for a British Bill of Rights should be considered.

As Mr Cameron expressly said the existence of a clear and codified British Bill of Rights will tend to lead the European Court of Human Rights to apply, and I would add to enhance, the “margin of appreciation.”

This seems to me to be the key to the continuing application and acceptance of the European Convention. It was intended to be a backstop to ensure that there was no repetition in Western European of Nazi atrocities and to minimise, as far as possible, the danger of future totalitarian outrages. It was not intended to strike down carefully considered judgements by democratically elected authorities of where the balance should be struck between legitimate but competing interests.

The route to this more limited role for the Convention and the Court which adjudicates on it lies through an enhanced margin of appreciation. A British Bill of Rights may well help us to reach this very desirable destination.

It is of course true, as Mr Cameron himself acknowledged, that the drafting of such a Bill would represent a formidable challenge. But this is true of all charters of this kind. If it helps us to achieve a workable solution to our relationship with the European Convention the effort will be well worth while.

And if it also enables us to scrap the discredited Human Rights Act it would be doubly welcome.

As the distinguished Scottish judge, Lord McCluskey predicted, the Act has become:- “A field day for crackpots, a pain in the neck for judges and a goldmine for lawyers.”

It is an experiment that has failed. It should go.

Friday, July 5, 2013

On Mr Lafe Solomon's, National Labor Relations Board's acting general counsel, letter to Cablevision

The Lord of U.S. Labor Policy. By Kimberley Strassel
Lafe Solomon, acting general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, defies Congress and the courts on behalf of Big Labor.The Wall Street Journal, July 4, 2013, on page A9
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323899704578583671862397166.html

For a true expression of the imperious and extralegal tendencies of the Obama administration, there is little that compares with the Wisdom of Solomon. Lafe Solomon, that is, the acting general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board.

Mr. Solomon's wisdom was on revealing display this week, in the form of a newly disclosed letter that the Obama appointee sent to Cablevision in May. The letter was tucked into Cablevison's petition asking the Supreme Court this week to grant an emergency stay of NLRB proceedings against it. The Supremes unfortunately denied that request, though the exercise may prove valuable for shining new light on the labor board's conceit.

A half-year has passed since the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Noel Canning that President Obama's appointments to the NLRB were unconstitutional, and thus that the board lacks a legal quorum. In May, the Third Circuit affirmed this ruling. Yet the NLRB—determined to keep churning out a union agenda—has openly defied both appeals courts by continuing to issue rulings and complaints.

Regional directors in April filed two such unfair-labor-practice complaints against Cablevision. The company requested that Mr. Solomon halt the proceedings, given the NLRB's invalid status. It is Mr. Solomon's refusal, dated May 28, that provides the fullest expression of the NLRB's insolence.

The acting general counsel begins his letter by explaining that the legitimacy of the board is really neither here nor there. Why? Because Mr. Solomon was himself "appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate"—and therefore, apparently, is now sole and unchecked arbiter of all national labor policy.

This is astonishing on many levels, the least of which is that it is untrue. Mr. Solomon is the acting general counsel precisely because the Senate has refused to confirm him since he was first nominated in June 2011. Nor will it, ever, given his Boeing BA +1.38% escapades.

Then there is the National Labor Relations Act, which created the NLRB. The law clearly says that the general counsel acts "on behalf of the Board"—a board that is today void, illegitimate, null, illegal. Mr. Solomon admits the "behalf" problem in his letter, though he says he's certain Congress nonetheless meant for him to be "independent" of the board. He says.

The acting general counsel naturally rushes to explain that—his omnipotence aside—the NLRB still has every right to ignore the courts. His argument runs thus: Because a decade ago the 11th Circuit issued an opinion that upholds recess appointments (though it didn't deal with Mr. Obama's breathtaking reading of that power), there exists a "split" in the circuit courts. The NLRB is therefore justified in ignoring any courts with which it disagrees until the Supreme Court has "resolved" the question.

What Mr. Solomon fails to note is the extremes the NLRB has gone to in order to suggest court confusion. The agency has deviated from past procedures, and it refused to ask either the D.C. Circuit or the Third Circuit to "stay" their opinions. Why? Because to do so—and to be rebuffed—would put the NLRB under enormous pressure to acknowledge that those courts have authority over its actions.

The board has likewise ignored the fact that the D.C. Circuit hears more NLRB decisions than any other, and is also the pre-eminent court for reviewing federal agency decisions. This ought to entitle that court, and its Noel Canning ruling, respectful deference from the labor board.

The most revealing part of Mr. Solomon's letter is the section cynically outlining why the NLRB continues to operate at a feverish pace. Mr. Solomon notes that this isn't the first time the board has operated without a quorum.

The NLRB issued 550 decisions with just two board members before the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling in New Process Steel that the NLRB must have a three-person board quorum to operate. Mr. Solomon brags that of these 550, only about 100 were "impacted" by the Supreme Court's ruling—which, he writes, proves that the NLRB is justified in continuing to operate even at times when its "authority" has been challenged.

Mr. Solomon is in fact celebrating that of the 550 outfits harassed by an illegal, two-member board, only about 100 later decided they had the money, time and wherewithal to spend years relitigating in front of the labor goon squad. The NLRB is counting on the same outcome in Cablevision and other recent actions.

The board will push through as many rulings and complaints against companies as it can before the Supreme Court rules on its legitimacy. And it will trust that the firms it has attacked and drained will be too weary to then try for reversals. This is why the Obama administration waited so long to petition the Supreme Court to reverse Noel Canning. The longer this process takes, the more damage the NLRB can inflict on behalf of its union taskmasters.

Right now, the NLRB is the only weapon the administration can wield on behalf of Big Labor. The need to placate that most powerful special interest was behind Mr. Obama's decision to install his illegal recess appointments in the first place, and it explains the NLRB's continuing defiance of courts and Congress. Mr. Solomon's wisdom is the Obama philosophy of raw power, in all its twisted glory.

Monday, January 30, 2012

Liberals and Conservatives on Padilla's Fourth Circuit appeal

1  Liberals

In Padilla ruling, Fourth Circuit Court ignores U.S. international obligations.
January 24, 2012, 12:30 pm
http://compliancecampaign.wordpress.com/2012/01/24/in-padilla-ruling-fourth-circuit-court-ignores-u-s-international-obligations/

In a decision with international implications, a U.S. court has demonstrated a decided indifference to the United States’ international obligations on matters of human rights. On Monday the Fourth Circuit Court in Richmond, Va., ruled that the military policies of detention without charge and the harsh interrogation methods established by the Bush administration and continued in part by the Obama administration cannot be challenged in damage lawsuits in federal courts.

Issues raised by the case regarding the detention of terrorist suspects – in particular the treatment of Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen held for nearly four years without charge as an “enemy combatant” – have been addressed specifically by international bodies to which the U.S. belongs, but these concerns did not factor in to the judges’ deliberations.

In dismissing the Padilla case, the court declared that under the Constitution, the making of counter-terrorism policy is entrusted solely to Congress and the President, and the courts may not “trespass” on this authority. The court therfore threw out the lawsuit brought by Padilla, who was seeking damages of one dollar from each of the defendants: Donald H. Rumsfeld, Former Secretary of Defense; Catherine T. Hanft, Former Commander Consolidated Brig; Melanie A. Marr, Former Commander Consolidated Brig; Lowell E. Jacoby, Vice Admiral, Former Director Defense Intelligence Agency; Paul Wolfowitz, Former Deputy Secretary Of Defense; William Haynes, Former General Counsel Department of Defense; Leon E. Panetta, Secretary of Defense.

Padilla had contended that he was entitled to sue the defendants because the government deprived him of other ways to seek remedies for his treatment, even under military code.

In its ruling, however, the court recognized the President’s purported absolute authority to hold terrorist suspects – even U.S. citizens – indefinitely and incommunicado as enemy combatants:

    On June 9, 2002, acting pursuant to his authority under the AUMF [2001 Authorization of Military Force], President George W. Bush issued an order to defendant Donald Rumsfeld, then Secretary of Defense, to detain Padilla as an enemy combatant, the President having determined that Padilla possessed vital intelligence and posed an ongoing threat to the national security of the United States.

    That day, Padilla was removed from civilian custody and transferred to the Naval Consolidated Brig at Charleston, South Carolina. While in military custody, Padilla claims that he was repeatedly abused, threatened with torture, deprived of basic necessities, and unjustifiably cut off from access to the outside world. Over time, these conditions were relaxed, and he was allowed monitored meetings with his attorneys.


The ruling seemed to downplay Padilla’s actual allegations though, which are not simply that he was “threatened with torture,” but in fact that he was tortured. According to his attorneys, Padilla was routinely mistreated and abused in ways designed to cause pain, anguish, depression and ultimately the loss of will to live.

“The extended torture visited upon Mr. Padilla has left him damaged, both mentally and physically,” said a court filing by Orlando do Campo, one of Padilla’s lawyers. The filing says that Padilla was subjected to sleep deprivation and extremes of heat and cold, and forced to stand for extended periods in painful “stress positions.”

His lawyers have also claimed that Padilla was forced to take LSD and PCP to act as truth serums during his interrogations.

As forensic psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty, who interviewed Jose Padilla for 22 hours to determine the state of his mental health, told Democracy Now in 2007:

    What happened at the brig was essentially the destruction of a human being’s mind. That’s what happened at the brig. His personality was deconstructed and reformed.

    And essentially, like many abuse victims, whether it’s torture survivors or battered women or even children who are abused by parents, as long as the parents or the abuser is in control in their minds, essentially they identify with the primary aims of the abuser. And all abusers, whoever they are, have one absolute requirement, and that is that you keep their secret. I mean, it’s common knowledge that people who abuse children or women will say, “Look at what you made me do,” putting the blame on the victim, trying to instill guilt. “People will judge you. People will think you’re crazy if you tell them about this. You will be an enemy. You will be seen as an enemy. You will be seen as a bad person if this comes out. There will be dire and terrible consequences, not only for you.” Jose was very, very concerned that if torture allegations were made on his behalf, that somehow it would it interfere with the government’s ability to detain people at Guantanamo, and this was something he couldn’t sign onto. He was very identified with the goals of the government.

Dr. Hegarty commented specifically on the psychological effect of the prolonged isolation and sensory deprivation that Padilla was subjected to:

    This was the first time I ever met anybody who had been isolated for such an extraordinarily long period of time. I mean, the sensory deprivation studies, for example, tell us that without sleep, especially, people will develop psychotic symptoms, hallucinations, panic attacks, depression, suicidality within days. And here we had a man who had been in this situation, utterly dependent on his interrogators, who didn’t treat him all that nicely, for years. And apart from –- the only people I ever met who had such a protracted experience were people who were in detention camps overseas, that would come close, but even then they weren’t subjected to the sensory deprivation. So, yes, he was somewhat of a unique case in that regard.

Glossing over the specifics of Padilla’s four years of mistreatment, the Fourth Circuit’s decision instead treated these issues as mere policy decisions that were made expeditiously by the Executive and Legislative Branches – decisions that the Judiciary constitutionally has no say in.

The ruling makes clear the court’s opinion that the Judicial Branch has no competence to inject itself into matters that pertain to Congress’s war-making authority or the President’s powers as Commander-in-Chief, even when constitutional rights of U.S. citizens are involved:

    Special factors do counsel judicial hesitation in implying causes of action for enemy combatants held in military detention. First, the Constitution delegates authority over military affairs to Congress and to the President as Commander in Chief. It contemplates no comparable role for the judiciary. Second, judicial review of military decisions would stray from the traditional subjects of judicial competence.

The court noted that:

    Padilla’s complaint seeks quite candidly to have the judiciary review and disapprove sensitive military decisions made after extensive deliberations within the executive branch as to what the law permitted, what national security required, and how best to reconcile competing values. It takes little enough imagination to understand that a judicially devised damages action would expose past executive deliberations affecting sensitive matters of national security to the prospect of searching judicial scrutiny. It would affect future discussions as well, shadowed as they might be by the thought that those involved would face prolonged civil litigation and potential personal liability.

Further,

    This is a case in which the political branches, exercising powers explicitly assigned them by our Constitution, formulated policies with profound implications for national security. One may agree or not agree with those policies. One may debate whether they were or were not the most effective counterterrorism strategy. But the forum for such debates is not the civil cause of action pressed in the case at bar.

So, essentially, the Fourth Circuit Court in Richmond, Va., has washed the Judiciary’s hands of any responsibility in determining the constitutionality of any treatment of U.S. citizens who are designated by the Executive Branch as “enemy combatants.” Anything goes if the government calls you a terrorist, according to the court.

As Padilla’s attorney, Ben Wizner, said in a statement Monday:

    Today is a sad day for the rule of law and for those who believe that the courts should protect American citizens from torture by their own government. By dismissing this lawsuit, the appeals court handed the government a blank check to commit any abuse in the name of national security, even the brutal torture of a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil. This impunity is not only anathema to a democracy governed by laws, but contrary to history’s lesson that in times of fear our values are a strength, not a hindrance.

It could also be pointed out that since the Constitution provides that treaties entered into by the United States are “the supreme law of the land,” the court has issued the U.S. government a blank check to disregard this clause and violate international treaties at will, in particular the  International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by the United States in 1992.

As Padilla was held in military custody for nearly four years without charge or trial, it appears the U.S. has violated of Article 9 of the ICCPR, which states:

    1. Everyone has the right to liberty and security of person. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention. No one shall be deprived of his liberty except on such grounds and in accordance with such procedure as are established by law.

    2. Anyone who is arrested shall be informed, at the time of arrest, of the reasons for his arrest and shall be promptly informed of any charges against him.

    3. Anyone arrested or detained on a criminal charge shall be brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorized by law to exercise judicial power and shall be entitled to trial within a reasonable time or to release. It shall not be the general rule that persons awaiting trial shall be detained in custody, but release may be subject to guarantees to appear for trial, at any other stage of the judicial proceedings, and, should occasion arise, for execution of the judgement.

    4. Anyone who is deprived of his liberty by arrest or detention shall be entitled to take proceedings before a court, in order that that court may decide without delay on the lawfulness of his detention and order his release if the detention is not lawful.

By denying Padilla a right to compensation in civil courts, the Fourth Circuit appears to have also overlooked this provision of the ICCPR: “Anyone who has been the victim of unlawful arrest or detention shall have an enforceable right to compensation.”

As a party to the Covenant, the U.S. is required to submit a report to the UN Human Rights Committee every five years on its compliance with the Covenant’s provisions.

The last report submitted by the United States – in 2005 – was seven years overdue. Regarding the matter of indefinite detention, the 2005 report pointed out that the U.S. Supreme Court has stated “that the United States is entitled to detain enemy combatants, even American citizens, until the end of hostilities, in order to prevent the enemy combatants from returning to the field of battle and again taking up arms.”

The U.S. asserted that “the detention of such individuals is such a fundamental and accepted incident of war that it is part of the ‘necessary and appropriate’ force that Congress authorized the President to use against nations, organizations, or persons associated with the September 11 terrorist attacks.”

The Human Rights Committee objected to this “restrictive interpretation made by the State party of its obligations under the Covenant,” and urged the U.S. to “review its approach and interpret the Covenant in good faith, in accordance with the ordinary meaning to be given to its terms in their context, including subsequent practice, and in the light of its object and purpose.”

The HRC had particularly harsh words for the U.S.’s indefinite detention policies: “The State party [the U.S.] should ensure that its counter-terrorism measures are in full conformity with the Covenant and in particular that the legislation adopted in this context is limited to crimes that would justify being assimilated to terrorism, and the grave consequences associated with it.”

The Committee reminded the United States of its obligations under the Covenant to both prosecute those responsible for using torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and to provide compensation to the victims of such policies:

    The State party should conduct prompt and independent investigations into all allegations concerning suspicious deaths,  torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment inflicted by its personnel (including commanders) as well as contract employees, in detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, Iraq and other overseas locations.  The State party should ensure that those responsible are prosecuted and punished in accordance with the gravity of the crime.  The State party should adopt all necessary measures to prevent the recurrence of such behaviors, in particular by providing adequate training and clear guidance to its personnel (including commanders) and contract employees, about their respective obligations and responsibilities, in line with articles 7 and 10 of the Covenant.  During the course of any legal proceedings, the State party should also refrain from relying on evidence obtained by treatment incompatible with article 7.  The Committee wishes to be informed about the measures taken by the State party to ensure the respect of the right to reparation for the victims.

By dismissing Padilla’s lawsuit, the Fourth Circuit Court has essentially done the opposite of what the UN Human Rights Committee has recommended to bring the U.S. in compliance with the ICCPR regarding its detention policies. The court has ensured, at least for now, that the right of reparations for the victims of U.S. detention and torture policies will remain unrecognized by the United States. It has ensured that the U.S. will remain in violation of its obligations under international law.


2  Conservatives

'Lawfare' Loses Big
The ACLU loses its nasty suit against former defense officials.
WSJ, Jan 28, 2012
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203718504577181191271527180.html

The guerrilla legal campaign against national security suffered a big defeat this week, and the good news deserves more attention. The victory for legal sanity came Monday when the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court decision to toss out a suit brought by aspiring terrorist Jose Padilla against a slew of Bush Administration officials.

Readers may remember that Padilla was arrested in 2002 for plotting to set off a dirty bomb on U.S. soil. He was detained as an enemy combatant, convicted in a Miami court and sentenced to 17 years in prison. But Padilla has been adopted as a legal mascot by the ACLU and the National Litigation Project at Yale Law School, which have sued far and wide alleging mistreatment and lack of due process.

Padilla may in fact have had more due process than any defendant in history. His case has been ruled on by no fewer than 10 civilian courts, and as a prisoner in the Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina from 2002 to 2006 he received the benefit of protections under the highly disciplined U.S. Code of Military Justice. Your average bank robber should be so lucky.

But the lawyers suing for Padilla aren't interested in justice. They're practicing "lawfare," which is an effort to undermine the war on terror by making U.S. officials afraid to pursue it for fear of personal liability.

The ACLU and the rest of the legal left have failed to persuade several Congresses and two Administrations to agree to their anti-antiterror policies. So instead they're suing former officials in civilian court to harass them and damage their reputations. It's shameful stuff, and if it succeeds it would have the effect of making Pentagon officials look over their shoulder at potential lawsuits every time they had to make a difficult military or interrogation decision.

In Lebron v. Rumsfeld et al., the ACLU sued under the Supreme Court's 1971 Bivens decision, which has been interpreted as creating a right of action against the federal government. Their targets included a retinue of Pentagon officials, starting with former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and going down to the Navy brig commander where Padilla was held. Mr. Rumsfeld doesn't have to worry about getting another job, but the ACLU wants to make lower-level officials politically radioactive so they have a difficult time getting promoted or working in any influential position.

The good news is that the Fourth Circuit's three-judge panel saw this for what it was and unanimously rejected the claims. In his 39-page opinion, the influential Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson wrote that the Constitution gives authority over military affairs to Congress and to the President as Commander in Chief, but it never created a similar role for the courts.

"It takes little enough imagination," Judge Wilkinson wrote, "to understand that a judicially devised damages action would expose past executive deliberations . . . [and] would affect future discussions as well, shadowed as they might be by the thought that those involved would face prolonged civil litigation and potential personal liability."

The decision is especially notable because one of the three judges is Clinton appointee Diana Motz, who has been a skeptic of the Bush Administration's detainee policies and has dissented from her colleagues in cases like 2003's Hamdi v. Rumsfeld.

The ACLU may appeal to all of the Fourth Circuit judges, but Judge Wilkinson's ruling is comprehensive enough that an appeal is unlikely to prevail. The judges deserve credit for understanding that the Constitution gave war powers to the political branches, not to courts. The country will be safer for it.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

A Free Speech Landmark - Campaign-finance reform meets the Constitution

A Free Speech Landmark. WSJ Editorial
Campaign-finance reform meets the Constitution.
The Wall Street Journal, page A18, Jan 22, 2010

Freedom has had its best week in many years. On Tuesday, Massachusetts put a Senate check on a reckless Congress, and yesterday the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision [see slip op.] supporting free political speech by overturning some of Congress's more intrusive limits on election spending.

In a season of marauding government, the Constitution rides to the rescue one more time.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote yesterday's 5-4 majority opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which considered whether the government could ban a 90-minute documentary called "Hillary: the Movie" that was set to run on cable channels during the 2008 Presidential campaign. Because it was funded by an incorporated group and was less than complimentary of then-Senator Hillary Clinton, the film became a target of campaign-finance limits.

The 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Finance Act, aka McCain-Feingold, banned corporations and unions from "electioneering communications" within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. Yesterday, the Justices rejected that limit on corporate spending as unconstitutional. Corporations are entitled to the same right that individuals have to spend money on political speech for or against a candidate.

Justice Kennedy emphasized that laws designed to control money in politics often bleed into censorship, and that this violates core First Amendment principles. "Because speech is an essential mechanism of democracy—it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people—political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it by design or inadvertence," he wrote. The ban on corporate expenditures had a "substantial, nationwide chilling effect" on political speech, he added.

In last year's oral argument for Citizen's United, the Court got a preview of how far a ban on corporate-funded speech could reach. Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm Stewart explained that, under McCain-Feingold, the government had the authority to "prohibit the publication" of corporate-funded books that called for the election or defeat of a candidate.

That was a shock and awe moment at the Court, as it also should have been to a Washington press corps that has too often been a cheerleader for campaign-spending limits. Mr. Stewart was telling a truth already familiar to campaign-finance lawyers and the speech police at the Federal Election Commission. Former FEC Commissioner Hans von Spakovsky recalled yesterday that in 2004 the agency investigated whether a book written by George Soros critical of George W. Bush violated campaign laws. Liberals as much as conservatives should worry about laws that allow such investigations.

The Court's opinion is especially effective in dismantling McCain-Feingold's arbitrary exemption for media corporations. Thus a corporation that owns a newspaper—News Corp. or the New York Times—retains its First Amendment right to speak freely. "At the same time, some other corporation, with an identical business interest but no media outlet in its ownership structure, would be forbidden to speak or inform the public about the same issue," wrote Justice Kennedy. "This differential treatment cannot be squared with the First Amendment."

For instruction and sheer entertainment, we also recommend Justice Antonin Scalia's concurring opinion that demolishes Justice John Paul Stevens's argument in dissent that corporations lack free speech rights because the Founding Fathers disliked them. "If so, how came there to be so many of them?" Mr. Scalia writes, in one of his gentler lines.

The landmark decision—which overturned two Supreme Court precedents—has already sent the censoring political class into orbit. President Obama was especially un-Presidential yesterday, putting on his new populist facade to call it "a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies" and other "special interests." Mr. Obama didn't mention his union friends as one of those interests, but their political spending will also be protected by the logic of this ruling. The reality is that free speech is no one's special interest.

New York Senator Chuck Schumer vowed to hold hearings, and the Naderite Public Citizen lobby is already calling for a constitutional amendment that bans free speech for "for-profit corporations." Liberalism's bullying tendencies are never more on display than when its denizens are at war with the speech rights of its opponents.

Perhaps one day the Court will go even further and overturn Buckley v. Valeo, the 1976 decision that was its original sin in tolerating limits on campaign spending. The Court did yesterday uphold disclosure rules, so a sensible step now would be for Congress to remove all campaign-finance limits subject only to immediate disclosure on the Internet. Citizens United is in any event a bracing declaration that Congress's long and misbegotten campaign-finance crusade has reached a Constitutional dead end.

Sunday, December 27, 2009

No Place to Write Detention Policy

No Place to Write Detention Policy. By Benjamin Wittes, and Jack Goldsmith
Brookings, December 22, 2009

Since U.S. forces started taking alleged terrorists to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the task of crafting American detention policy has migrated decisively from the executive branch to federal judges. These judges, not experts in terrorism or national security and not politically accountable to the electorate, inherited this responsibility because of the Supreme Court's intervention in detention policy. Over time they maintained it because legislative and executive officials of both political parties refused to craft a comprehensive legislative approach to this novel set of problems that cries out for decisive lawmaking.

Many commentators have complained about this state of affairs and the contradictory and incoherent body of law it is producing and have urged the political branches to enact legislation to create a uniform and democratically legitimate detention policy.

Now a more important voice has joined the call for legislative reform.

Judge Thomas F. Hogan of the U.S. District Court in Washington is one of the most respected federal district judges on the bench. And he has a particularly informed view of the disarray of modern detention policy. Not only is he one of the judges hearing detainee habeas appeals, but he was asked by most of his judicial colleagues to consolidate and manage common issues in their cases. He is, in short, one of the people to whom Congress has effectively delegated the task of writing these rules -- a person with as holistic and in-the-weeds an understanding of the issues as is possible.

Last week, in ruling on the merits of a detainee's case, he issued a scathing indictment of the current litigation and an urgent plea for congressional participation in cases that "go to the heart of our judicial system."

"It is unfortunate," he said in an oral opinion from the bench, "that the Legislative Branch of our government and the Executive Branch have not moved more strongly to provide uniform, clear rules and laws for handling these cases." While allowing that the various judges were "working very hard and in good faith," he lamented that "we have different rules and procedures being used by the judges," as well as "different rules of evidence" and "a difference in substantive law." For Judge Hogan, it all "highlights the need for a national legislative solution with the assistance of the Executive so that these matters are handled promptly and uniformly and fairly for all concerned."

Congress has avoided these issues for a number of reasons. Initially, it was a combination of the Bush administration's failure to seek congressional help and lawmakers' natural inclination to avoid taking responsibility for hard decisions for which they might later be held accountable. More recently, the Obama administration has been loath to spend any more political capital than necessary in cleaning up what it views as its predecessor's messes. Instead of dealing with detention policy proactively, it has largely adopted the Bush approach of grinding out detention policy in the courts. Ironically, the president's political base seems to prefer his adoption of the Bush approach -- an approach liberals previously decried -- to any effort to write detention rules and limitations into statutory law.

As Judge Hogan made clear, this is a bad way to craft policy. It generates uncertainty about the lawful parameters of detentions, ensures longer adjudication times and lessens accountability for difficult decisions.

The Guantanamo closure process and the appropriations process for the new terrorist detention facility in Illinois offer a perfect opportunity to correct this long-festering problem. The administration will have to work with Congress, if only to permit Obama to move detainees to the new site. Yet if legislation stops there, the political branches can congratulate themselves only on moving the location of terrorist detention and not on strengthening and clarifying detention policy.

By contrast, if Congress and the administration were inclined to perform their constitutional duties, they could draw on eight years of judicial decisions, legal briefs and scholarship to craft clear, stable rules. There are myriad issues for a responsible Congress to address, but at a minimum it should offer a clear definition of who can be detained, a coherent set of evidentiary and procedural rules to determine who fits the definition of an enemy, and guidance concerning the scope of the government's obligation to disclose evidence to detainees' lawyers.

The goal, simply put, should be to replace what Judge Hogan called "procedures drawn up by the court, and principally [by] myself . . . in a new venue that has been untested" with one that carries the legislature's stamp and the president's signature, and that answers some of the hard policy questions our political institutions have punted to the courts. The courts' job, in such a world, would be to adjudicate detainee cases, rather than to write conflicting rules that they then have to apply.

Friday, July 17, 2009

Judges Don't Belong on the Battlefield - Recent decisions have altered the way we're fighting in Afghanistan

Judges Don't Belong on the Battlefield. By DAVID B. RIVKIN JR. and LEE A. CASEY
Recent decisions have altered the way we're fighting in Afghanistan.
WSJ, Jul 17, 2009

Earlier this year, a Washington D.C.-based federal court extended the constitutional right to habeas corpus to three foreign nationals detained by U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The case, Maqaleh v. Gates, represents yet another step in the federal judiciary's transformation from Alexander Hamilton's "least dangerous branch" into a fully active policy maker.

Historically, the constitutional right to habeas corpus -- an ancient process permitting prisoners to challenge the legality of their confinement -- was available only to individuals present in the U.S., or to American citizens held by federal authorities overseas. In a leading World War II case, Johnson v. Eisentrager (1950), the high court decided, with "bright line rules," that habeas corpus is unavailable to foreign citizens held outside the U.S.

But last year, the high court reversed itself in Boumediene v. Bush. The court held, by a 5-4 vote, that foreign nationals detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, also have a right to habeas corpus. Articulating a new, multifactor test for determining who can receive habeas corpus overseas, the court left open the possibility that aliens detained at any U.S. controlled foreign facility could sue the government for their release.

In Maqaleh the court concluded that three detainees, held at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, but actually captured in other countries, have habeas corpus rights under the U.S. Constitution. It reasoned that permitting the president to move captured enemies from one location to another without judicial review would simply give the executive too much power.

What really is at stake is whether the president's actions overseas -- especially in military operations -- are to be subject to judicial supervision. In this light, the courts have never been so bold. Although the Maqaleh court denied it, the premise of its decision is that the Constitution permits judicial involvement in all U.S. actions abroad. While this particular ruling involves habeas rights in Afghanistan, there is in fact no principled limitation on the court's reasoning. The real test in any particular case is whether a federal judge believes the president is operating with insufficient constraints on his authority.

This new state of play has already affected U.S. military operations. American special forces, have now limited their activities in the Afghan-Pakistan border region -- where al Qaeda and the Taliban are now most active -- to avoid claims by enemy fighters that they were captured outside of Afghanistan, in Pakistan. If those enemy fighters were captured outside of Afghanistan, then according to the Maqaleh decision, they are eligible for habeas relief. This provides a strategic sanctuary for Pakistan-based enemy operatives, who are now effectively immune from U.S. ground attacks.

This is obviously not the first time the courts have overstepped their proper constitutional bounds, seeking a political role for themselves. Notorious examples include the Supreme Court's efforts to preserve slavery in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) and its determination to oppose federal economic regulation during President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. In each case, the judges have eventually been strong-armed back, through the force of the public opinion and political pressures, to a more appropriate role.

The sooner this process begins, the better. A good first step would be some questions for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor by the Senate. Senate members should determine her views on the proper role of judges in reviewing U.S. military operations overseas.

Justice Robert Jackson, writing in the Eisentrager case, explained why foreign enemies should not have access to American courts. "It would be difficult to devise more effective fettering of a field commander than to allow the very enemies he is ordered to reduce to submission to call him to account in his own civil courts and divert his efforts and attention from the military offensive abroad to the legal defensive at home." The question is: Does Ms. Sotomayor agree?

Messrs. Rivkin and Casey, Washington D.C.-based attorneys, served in the Department of Justice during the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Defining Activism Down: A liberal vote cast in conservative judicial rhetoric

Defining Activism Down. WSJ Editorial
A liberal vote cast in conservative judicial rhetoric.
WSJ, Jul 15, 2009

After two days of Senate hearings on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, an onlooker could be forgiven for wondering where all the judicial liberals went. To hear the adjectives heaped on the judge by members of the President's party, you'd think Mr. Obama had nominated Chief Justice John Roberts's conservative cousin.

Judge Sotomayor is smart and accomplished, New York Democrat Chuck Schumer said Monday, "but most important . . . [her record] bespeaks judicial modesty" and shows she is a better "umpire" than Justice Roberts himself. Dick Durbin called her "restrained, moderate and neutral," while Pat Leahy said her record shows a "careful and restrained judge with a deep respect for judicial precedent."

The activists in Mr. Leahy's rhetorical show are, presto, the conservatives of the Roberts Court, which has very, very cautiously chipped away at some precedent in cases on issues like the Second Amendment and campaign finance reform.

Under this brave new meaning of judicial activism advanced several years ago by now-White House aide Cass Sunstein, a judicial activist is any judge invalidating a federal law, however shoddily made. Ergo, conservative judges are obliged to uphold liberal precedents no matter how narrow the vote and how recent the case, while liberals can overturn long-time principles in the name of the evolving Constitution.

The effect is a liberal ratchet, where precedents like Miranda v. Arizona and Roe v. Wade are cast in stone, but any rethinking by the Roberts Court of the six-year-old 5-4 campaign-finance ruling in McConnell v. FEC is a scandal. "So many of the rulings of the current conservative majority on the Supreme Court can be described as activist," Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold insisted. "The best definition of a judicial activist is when a judge decides a case in a way you don't like."

Actually, we have a better one. An activist judge is one who is willing to decide cases based on something other than what's in the Constitution. But that's a troublesome standard for Sonia Sotomayor, who in speeches and writings has shown she is open to a wide variety of sources, from human empathy to personal experience to foreign and international law to help her in judging cases, or to "set our creative juices flowing," as she said of the latter.

Under questioning yesterday on her controversial remark that a "wise Latina" would make better decisions than a white male, Judge Sotomayor backed away from the statement, calling it a "bad" play on the words of Sandra Day O'Connor that a wise old man and a wise old woman would reach the same conclusion. Still, she insisted, she was trying to inspire Hispanic law students "to believe that their life experiences would enrich the legal system, because different life experiences and backgrounds always do."

Democrats emphasize that Judge Sotomayor's record on the bench shows she is a moderate whose decisions were frequently in step with her colleagues on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. According to a study by the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice, Judge Sotomayor voted with the majority in 98.2% of her 217 constitutional cases, dissenting only four times.

Falling within the mainstream of liberal judges, however, is not the same as falling into the mainstream of the rest of the country. The judge's decision to deny a racial bias claim by white firefighters was overturned by the Supreme Court in Ricci v. DeStefano last month. Afterward, a Rasmussen poll found that 46% of voters considered her a political liberal compared to only 32% who thought she was a moderate. Justices shouldn't be confirmed based on polls, but the numbers do explain the concerted Democratic attempts to define her as a conservative.

In fact, what was once the Felix Frankfurter-Whizzer White school of liberal judicial restraint no longer exists in the polite echelons of the judicial left. The new school is now remarkably uniform in wanting to dictate racial outcomes, limit political speech, invoke foreign rulings as a legal guide, and do whatever else the activist cause of the moment demands.

Judge Sotomayor gives every sign of being of that school, and there's little reason to believe she wouldn't be a reliable liberal vote on every important issue. Elections have consequences, and Justice Sotomayor is almost certain to be confirmed. But for a President who was elected on the promise of moving beyond old racial divisions, Mr. Obama's first Supreme Court nominee looks jarringly passé.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

If other countries have 'good ideas' it's up to Congress, not the courts, to copy them

Sotomayor and International Law. By COLLIN LEVY
If other countries have 'good ideas' it's up to Congress, not the courts, to copy them.
WSJ, Jul 14, 2009

Sonia Sotomayor will parry a wide range of questions about her judicial philosophy during her Supreme Court confirmation hearings in the Senate this week. The most revealing line of inquiry may be about her views on the use of foreign and international law when judging cases.

Like several of the judges on the left branch of the court, Judge Sotomayor has said she favors a broader consideration of foreign and international law in U.S. judicial opinions. While she rarely had occasion to dip into foreign sources during her time on the Second Circuit, she recently went out of her way to embrace the concept and its applications by the high court.

In a speech to the American Civil Liberties Union of Puerto Rico in April, Judge Sotomayor explained that "ideas have no boundaries," and that "international law and foreign law will be very important in the discussion of how to think about the unsettled issues in our own legal system." To discourage the use of foreign or international law, she added, would "be asking American judges to close their minds to good ideas."

That's political quicksand for a judge Democrats are eager to portray as a moderate inclined to narrow reading of text and precedent.

Of particular interest to the confirmation hearings will be Judge Sotomayor's favorable reference in the ACLU speech to the Supreme Court's reasoning in two recent cases citing foreign and international law: Roper v. Simmons and Lawrence v. Texas. In Roper, the Court drew on international criticism of the death penalty to buttress the argument that it should be prohibited for juveniles under the Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

In Lawrence v. Texas, the court overturned a Texas statute against sodomy on the grounds that it violated due process. In his opinion for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy cited the European Court of Human Rights to show that the court's earlier decision in Bowers v. Hardwick was incorrect. In both those cases, Judge Sotomayor said, the court was using the foreign or international law to "help us understand what the concepts meant to other countries and . . . whether our understanding of our own constitutional rights fell into the mainstream of human thinking."

Cases like Roper and Lawrence fit squarely into that area of overseas law most sought after for borrowing by the more liberal justices of the court -- that is, the realms of moral or social policy. The problem with such inspiration is that it is inherently subjective and arbitrary. The laws of the world are infinitely diverse, and praising one necessarily condemns another. Cherry-picking desirable law introduces the very kind of legal chaos our Constitution was designed to prevent. If one judge may look to the courts of Western Europe for expansion of liberal thoughts on human rights, why may another not look to decidedly less liberal ideas?

Iran allows women who appear without a hijab on the streets to be lashed 74 times. China limits families to bearing one child. Even the democracies of Western Europe have laws that differ broadly from ours. Few countries, for instance, share our rules protecting the rights of the accused, or have the U.S.'s constitutionally mandated separation of church and state.

In his dissent from the court's reliance on foreign law in Roper v. Simmons, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that "The Court should either profess its willingness to reconsider all these matters in light of the views of foreigners, or else it should cease putting forth foreigners' views as part of the reasoned basis of its decisions. To invoke alien law when it agrees with one's own thinking and ignore it otherwise is not reasoned decision making, but sophistry."

There are plenty of ways to use foreign law appropriately -- most obviously in comparing standards for implementation in the case of treaties. Some judges have also looked to Constitutional antecedents like English jurist William Blackstone to help better understand the context and thinking of the Founders and their foundations in English common law.

Outside of that, using foreign law as a guidepost or inspiration raises issues of both sovereignty and democracy by permitting jurists outside the U.S. system to guide the trajectory of our democracy. The proper place for the consideration of whatever "good ideas" may be found in foreign law is not the courts but the Congress.

Judge Sotomayor insists in the ACLU speech that the brouhaha about foreign and international law is due to a misunderstanding about how she and others like Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg would propose to use it. The point, she says, isn't that judges actually use foreign decisions as precedent (er, well, of course they don't), but that they open their minds to the intellectual force of their foreign counterparts.

But either foreign ideas carry weight by butressing judicial arguments, or they don't. Judicial opinions are written with great precision and care because they matter, and each strand of argument becomes a part of the grit and texture of American law.

No one is suggesting that judges stop reading or learning in ways that help expand their understanding of the law and the cases they are hearing. But that is an altogether different matter than official citation in a decision.

Our system of government has stood the test of time not in spite of but because it is uniquely drawn from the priorities of our own citizens, and them alone. The responsibility of the Supreme Court is neither to win an international beauty pageant, nor to encourage the export of our ideas.
It is to extend principles of the Founders and the words of the Constitution into a world that still needs their wisdom.

Ms. Levy is a senior editorial writer for the Journal, based in Washington.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Sotomayor decisions "defy depictions of her record as falling neatly into either a liberal or conservative category"

Yesterday's Odd Washington Post Story. By Roger Clegg
Bench Memos/NRO, Jun 09, 2009

The Washington Post yesterday had a long story arguing that Judge Sotomayor's decisions on "race, discrimination and the law" somehow "defy depictions of her record as falling neatly into either a liberal or conservative category." The article picks the eight cases that involved divided rulings. But, accepting arguendo the Post's methodology, I don't see how the article shows that Sotomayor is not a predictable liberal.

In six of the eight cases, it seems to me that the Post acknowledges that Judge Sotomayor came to a liberal result. Of the remaining two, one involved a policeman who was fired for mailing out racist and anti-Semitic fliers. Judge Sotomayor, in dissent, wanted to rule against the police department — just as the ACLU's New York affiliate had urged the court to do. Sure, her position favored a bigoted policeman, but she also wanted to use an aggressive interpretation of the First Amendment to tie the hands of the police department.

That leaves Hankins v. Lyght, involving a minister who sought to invoke the Age Discrimination in Employment Act when his church forced him to retire at age 70. The district court dismissed the case, but the Second Circuit remanded for the judge to consider whether applying the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) would change the outcome; Judge Sotomayor dissented. Here's a link to the appellate opinions. Judge Sotomayor seemed especially unhappy that the panel went out of its way, in her view, to uphold the constitutionality of the RFRA; but that's an odd sort of "violat[ion] . . . of judicial restraint" (her words), and since RFRA was enthusiastically supported by the religious right, I'm not sure that her position is necessarily the un-liberal one. In any event, the appeal did not involve race and was more about procedure than substance, and it's hard to argue that this one ambiguous case out of eight proves the Post's thesis.

Caperton v Massey Coal - Where Empathy Takes You--Again

Where Empathy Takes You--Again. By Matthew J. Franck
Bench Memos/NRO, Jun 09, 2009

There is a nicely illustrative little decision by the Supreme Court today, in the case of Caperton v. Massey Coal. The coal company in question had been held liable in West Virginia courts for damages to the tune of $50 million. Then, while an appeal of the case pended in the state supreme court, the CEO of the company spent a lot of money—a few million dollars—helping to unseat a sitting justice of the court and replace him with another in the 2004 state elections.

The case came up on the docket after the election. The new justice, Brent Benjamin, declined to recuse himself from the case when it was moved that he do so (update: and the lower court was reversed by a one-vote margin—should've said that at first). No West Virginia statute or judicial code required his recusal. The question before the U.S. Supreme Court was whether the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, understood to guarantee "a fair trial in a fair tribunal," required Justice Benjamin to recuse himself.

By a 5-4 vote, the Court ruled today that due process required Benjamin's recusal. Justice Anthony Kennedy, our current empathizer-in-chief, wrote for the majority. A first reading of Kennedy's opinion will tug at your sympathies as well. It sure does look awful bad when a fellow spends $3 million to get a judge elected and the judge declines to recuse himself and then rules in the fellow's favor. Why, it looks like Don Blankenship, the Massey Coal CEO, bought himself a supreme court justice!

But as Chief Justice John Roberts notes, in a dissent joined by Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, this ruling opens up one serious can of worms. The Court's precedents had previously identified just two kinds of cases where the due process clause requires judicial recusal: when a judge has a palpable financial interest in the outcome, and when he could not be trusted not to act with antipathy toward a defendant in a criminal contempt case arising from the defendant's behavior in the judge's courtroom. The Caperton case goes way beyond those precedents and bodes very ill indeed, however much Justice Kennedy wants to keep repeating that it's an "extreme" case.

In the most devastating part of his opinion, Roberts begins to state, in numbered paragraphs, the sorts of questions "courts will now have to determine" without any real guidance from Kennedy's opinion. He then rolls out forty numbered paragraphs. Forty! And since most are multi-part questions, there are really about 100 questions—real, nagging, legal problems—prompted by this ruling. At the end of his list, Roberts understatedly says, "These are only a few uncertainties that quickly come to mind." I have this mental image of Roberts sitting in his chambers saying to his clerks, "Got another one? Oh, that one's good. And then what?" One of my favorites was number 10: "What if the [judicial] candidate draws 'disproportionate' support from a particular racial, religious, ethnic, or other group, and the case involves an issue of particular importance to that group?" The context, of course, is that of an elected judiciary, not our appointed federal judges, but somehow I couldn't help thinking of Judge Sonia Sotomayor. . . .

You really should read it all yourself. Caperton is a case study in the war between empathetic judging and intellectually coherent jurisprudence. As Justice Scalia notes in a brief additional dissent for himself alone, "The Court today continues its quixotic quest to right all wrongs and repair all imperfections through the Constitution." Precisely.

Friday, May 29, 2009

A Smile to Set the GOP on Edge

A Smile to Set the GOP on Edge. By Eugene Robinson
WaPo, Friday, May 29, 2009

President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, is a proud and accomplished Latina. This fact apparently drives some prominent Republicans to a state resembling incoherent, sputtering rage.

"White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw," former House speaker Newt Gingrich ranted Wednesday on Twitter. My first reaction was that politicians above a certain age should never be left alone in the danger-strewn landscape of social networking. My second thought was: Whoa, Newt, what's that about?

Rush Limbaugh also -- predictably -- bellowed endlessly about how Sotomayor was a "reverse racist," and how Obama was one, too. But unlike Gingrich, Limbaugh doesn't ask to be taken seriously. He just asks to be paid.

Gingrich's outburst was in reaction to a widely publicized, out-of-context quote from a 2001 speech in which Sotomayor mused about how her identity might or might not affect her decisions as a federal judge. Far from being some kind of "racist" screed, the speech was actually a meditation on Sotomayor's personal experience of a universal truth: Who we are inevitably influences what we do.

Each of us carries through life a unique set of experiences. Sotomayor's happen to be the experiences of a brilliant, high-powered Latina -- a Nuyorican who was raised in the projects of the Bronx, graduated summa cum laude from Princeton, edited the Yale Law Journal, worked as a Manhattan prosecutor and a corporate lawyer, and served for 17 years as a federal trial and appellate judge.

Given that kind of sterling résumé -- and given that she has, according to presidential adviser David Axelrod, more experience on the federal bench than any Supreme Court nominee in at least 100 years -- it's understandable that Republican critics would have to grasp at straws.

The charge that she's a "judicial activist" finds no basis in her voluminous record. Critics have seized on a ruling she joined in a case called Ricci v. DeStefano, involving a reverse-discrimination claim by a group of white firefighters in New Haven, Conn. But Sotomayor's action in that case is more properly seen as an example of judicial restraint.

What happened was that the city gave an advancement exam to firefighters, and no African Americans were deemed eligible for promotion. Fearing that it would lose ground in its effort to diversify the leadership of the fire department, and fearing a civil rights lawsuit, the city canceled the exam. The firefighters who passed did not get the promotions they had expected. A U.S. District Court judge ruled that the city government had acted within the law, and a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit -- including Sotomayor -- agreed.

What Sotomayor's attackers either don't understand or won't acknowledge is that the issue before the court wasn't whether the city of New Haven had acted fairly in canceling the exam but whether it had acted legally. There was ample precedent indicating that the action was, in fact, legal. I thought the whole theory of judicial restraint was that we didn't want unelected judges telling our elected officials what to do. I thought the conservative idea was that judges were just supposed to "call balls and strikes" -- which is just what Sotomayor and her colleagues did.

Ah, but there's always a subtext. Like Sotomayor's 2001 speech, the New Haven case was really about identity -- and about power. In both instances, as Sotomayor's critics saw it, minorities were either claiming or obtaining some kind of advantage over white males. Never mind whether this perception has any basis in fact. The very concept seemed to be enough to light a thermonuclear fuse.

Despite the best efforts of Gingrich, Limbaugh and others, Sotomayor's confirmation process probably won't be about race. Her qualifications are impeccable, her record is moderate and her personality, according to colleagues, is winning. At her confirmation hearings, she'll have the opportunity to supply the missing context for any quote they throw at her. Absent some 11th-hour surprise, I can't imagine that her opponents in the Senate will be able to lay a glove on her.

I also can't imagine that she'll pretend to be anyone other than who she is. Sonia Sotomayor has made clear that she is proud of her identity, and she offers that pride not as an affront but as an example -- not white, not male, not Anglo, not inclined to apologize. She is the new face of America, and she has a dazzling smile.

The Sotomayor Rules

The Sotomayor Rules. By Kimberley Strassel
Some were made to be broken.
WSJ, May 29, 2009

President Barack Obama has laid down his ground rules for the debate over Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. The big question now is whether Republicans agree to play by rules that neither Mr. Obama nor his party have themselves followed.

Ground Rule No. 1, as decreed by the president, is that this is to be a discussion primarily about Judge Sotomayor's biography, not her qualifications. The media gurus complied, with inspiring stories of how she was born to Puerto Rican immigrants, how she was raised by a single mom in a Bronx housing project, how she went on to Princeton and then Yale. In the years that followed she presumably issued a judicial opinion here or there, but whatever.

The president, after all, had taken great pains to explain that this is more than an American success story. Rather, it is Judge Sotomayor's biography that uniquely qualifies her to sit on the nation's highest bench -- that gives her the "empathy" to rule wisely. Judge Sotomayor agrees: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn't lived that life," she said in 2001.

If so, perhaps we can expect her to join in opinions with the wise and richly experienced Clarence Thomas. That would be the same Justice Thomas who lost his father, and was raised by his mother in a rural Georgia town, in a shack without running water, until he was sent to his grandfather. The same Justice Thomas who had to work every day after school, though he was not allowed to study at the Savannah Public Library because he was black. The same Justice Thomas who became the first in his family to go to college and receive a law degree from Yale.

By the president's measure, the nation couldn't find a more empathetic referee than Justice Thomas. And yet here's what Mr. Obama had to say last year when Pastor Rick Warren asked him about the Supreme Court: "I would not have nominated Clarence Thomas. I don't think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation."

In other words, nine months ago Mr. Obama thought that the primary qualification for the High Court was the soundness of a nominee's legal thinking, or at least that's what Democrats have always stressed when working against a conservative judge. Throughout the Bush years, it was standard Democratic senatorial practice to comb through every last opinion, memo, job application and college term paper, all with an aim of creating a nominee "too extreme" or "unqualified" to sit on the federal bench.

Mr. Obama knows this, as he took part in it, joining a Senate minority who voted against both Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Sam Alito. Mr. Obama also understands a discussion of Judge Sotomayor's legal thinking means a discussion about "judicial activism" -- a political loser. In a day when voters routinely rise up to rebuke their activist courts on issues ranging from gay marriage to property rights, few red-state Democrats want to go there. Moreover, a number of Judge Sotomayor's specific legal opinions -- whether on racial preferences, or gun restrictions -- put her to the left of most Americans.

Which brings us to Ground Rule No. 2, which is that Republicans are not allowed to criticize Judge Sotomayor, for the reason that she is the first Hispanic nominee to the High Court. The Beltway media also dutifully latched on to this White House talking point, reporting threats from leading Democrats, including New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, who intoned that Republicans "oppose her at their peril."

This would be the same Mr. Schumer who had this to say about Miguel Estrada, President Bush's Hispanic nominee (who, by the way, came to this country as an immigrant from Honduras) to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2002: Mr. Estrada "is like a Stealth missile -- with a nose cone -- coming out of the right wing's deepest silo." That would be the same Mr. Schumer who ambushed Mr. Estrada in a Senate hearing, smearing him with allegations made by unnamed former associates. That would be the same Mr. Schumer who sat on the Judiciary Committee, where leaked memos later showed that Democrats feared Mr. Estrada would use a position on the D.C. Circuit as a launching pad to become the nation's . . . first Hispanic Supreme Court judge. Two tortured years later, Mr. Estrada withdrew, after the Democrats waged seven filibusters against a confirmation vote.

Republicans will be tempted by this history to go ugly. They might instead lay down their own rules, the first being that they will not partake in the tactics of personal destruction that were waged by the left on nominees such as Mr. Thomas or Mr. Alito or Mr. Estrada. But the party could also make a rule to not be scared away from using Judge Sotomayor's nomination, or future Obama picks, as platforms for big, civil, thorough debates about the role of the courts and the risk of activist judges to American freedoms and beliefs.