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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bridge Player who wrote (64288)	5/7/2008 11:36:23 PM
From: JohnM	Respond to of 542904

BP, I think the decision is far more complicated for those senators who care about their role. And my guess is a great many do. My guess is most give a great deal of leeway to a president's preferences; they do a serious examination of character; of judicial philosophy (all those conversations about cases); of political philosophy; etc. There are, of course, litmus tests for some--woman's choice, originalism. But I think those items occur in a mesh or nuance in which senators wish to do the best they can with their role.

To: Bridge Player who wrote (64288)	5/8/2008 1:37:00 AM
From: Cogito	Respond to of 542904

>>That is precisely the point. Interpreting the Constitution in a reasonable way is totally a function of our subject Senator's ideology. It is exactly tantamount to saying, if the nominee, based on the judicial record, would not be likely to interpret the Constitution in the way in which he would interpret it , then he should vote against confirmation. Now, it is fine, and even reasonable, for you to believe that. In fact, if I were in the Senate and a Democratic president nominated a liberal judge to the court, I would vote against confirmation. But the argument that has been made here is that that's not supposed to be the way it works; that that's not what advise and consent means.<< BP - I won't grant you that requiring that a jurist must interpret the Constitution in a reasonable way is the equivalent of saying that the jurist must interpret it exactly as the voting Senator would, or according to some specific ideology. I'm sure that many of the Senators who voted to confirm Roberts and Alito did not share their political views. As with just about everything else in the Constitution, the phrase "advise and consent" is subject to interpretation, too. I don't know if the Senate did the right thing in not confirming Robert Bork, but I can't question their constitutional mandate to decide not to, based on their own judgement of his fitness for the post. - Allen

To: Bridge Player who wrote (64288)	5/8/2008 6:06:22 AM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 542904

When it comes to politics, reasonable is pretty subjective. In politics, we have a mix of partisanship and statesmanship. These days, statesmanship doesn't seem to show up much, but it's at least a theoretical element in the process. A strict partisan may be able to frame interpreting the constitution differently as interpreting it unreasonably but a statesman can't do that. It's intellectually dishonest and classless. It doesn't seem "unreasonable" to me to expect senators to put their statesman hats on when they make a judgment about reasonableness. Then they can go back to being partisans for the remainder of the game.