Despite liberal insistance in calling Sandra Day O'Connor a "mainstream" or "moderate" conservative, just 17 percent of Americans polled believe the outgoing Supeme Court justice a conservative--slightly more than the percent that view her as a liberal.

Time magazine depicts the retiring O'Connor as the court's moderate. The weekly sees Justices Thomas, Scalia, and Rehnquist as "staunch conservatives," Justice Kennedy as a "moderate conservative," and Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter and Stevens as "moderate liberals." According to Time, there are no "staunch liberals" on the court--just a bunch of moderates of various leanings and three "staunch conservatives." Yet all of Time's "moderates" have imposed a uniformity of laws upon the states regarding abortion and sodomy. Time's so-called staunch conservatives merely seek to let states decide such questions. Certainly that's more moderate than forcing a liberal one-size-fits-all solution on the states, or another alternative--forcing all states to ban abortion and criminalize sodomy.

Vis-a-vis Time magazine, the Supreme Court may be conservative. Vis-a-vis the American people, it's well to the left on abortion, homosexuality, property rights, the death penalty, school prayer, affirmative action, and diverse other issues. Even if George W. Bush's nominee to replace Sandra Day O'Connor is a moderate like O'Connor, or a liberal like Souter, journalists at Time and elsewhere will reflexively label the high-court candidate "conservative," probably even prefacing this term with the derisive modifiers "extreme" and "right-wing." Because the American people don't recoil at the term "conservative," no matter what words preface it, as they do at "liberal," the media smear effort will be limited in its impact upon the mainstream public. Its impact upon conservatives, who will rush to the defense of the "conservative" nominee (no matter how liberal or moderate), will be far more damaging.

"Liberal," "conservative," "moderate," and other labels denoting political outlook are subjective. They often tell us more about the labeler than the labelee.

Great insight there about how conservatives (or maybe just republicans) will rush to the defense of someone who is a lib simply b/c they are attacked as extremist conservatives by the press.

Maybe we should wait and let Bush actually make the decision before we start condeming it?

To Clarify: The immediate assumption seems to be that Bush will pick a Liberal and will have to be condemned for it. I may be wrong of course but that's the impression I got.

I've given this president a lot of leeway based on the tax-cuts he delivered and the judges he's promised (and partially delivered, e.g., Pryor, Brown and Owen). If, however, he nominates and the Senate confirms the likes of Gonzales for any vacant seat, I will become a Bush detractor, and a third-party supporter.

Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL: "The other side sees the Supreme Court as an instrument to impose their social agenda. It is their holy grail," she said. "We see it as a guardian protecting our freedom and our privacy." (WPost today)

These people are crazy. The "ideology" of conservatives here is "apply the constitution, don't embellish it." The liberals in con law today are guided by an ideology--i.e., what they want a just society to look like.

How can they be stupid enough to believe the situation is reversed?

And then the Post in their lead editorial says that Scalia has "a grandiose conception of the judicial function." Topsy-Turvy.

refer to my last post about souter, er...i mean gonzalez. i won't have to eat my words. bush is going to ruin his chance to reform the court.

Speaking for us liberals, Justice Brennan said (in 1986 to The Federalist Society) that a "view [that] demands that Justices discern exactly what the framers thought about the question under consideration and simply follow that intention....is a view that feigns self-effacing deference to the specific judgments of those who forged our original social compact. But in truth it is little more than arrogance cloaked as humility."

Guido: yeah, I know that liberals think that way. It's a good quote. It names a danger that conservatives have to beware of. But one point:

If the attempt to figure out what the founder's words meant when they were written is "arrogance cloaked as humility", what are we to say about giving up the attempt? It's arrogance cloaked as arrogance? If a justice says: "I don't care what the words mean to any one else, I say they mean xyz," he's being a tyrant. That's Humpty Dumpty's move, and we know where it landed him.

Peace.

I sure would like someone who does more than feign deference to the original understanding of the Constitution, but that would be better than someone like Brennan who just made it up and didn't care how it looked. Just what was Brennan's alternative to looking at original understanding? It appeared to be looking to his own sense of morality. If it wasn't God and it wasn't an expression of the majority will, it must have been the expression of some minority will (maybe even a minority of one--Brennan). If we pretend to honor majority rule our children one day might get the idea that actually using it would be good. Brennan path means giving up on popular government altogether.

It is also worth noting that in Congress you have "moderate republicans" and "conservative democrats" but no "moderate democrats" or "liberal republicans." It's also very rare that you here words like "arch-liberal" or "ultraliberal" in the media, though it's frequently used for conservatives.

"Conservampire" ?

Guido, you just quoted an "authority" to speak against the "authority" of the Founders. If the founders were just normal men, then so is Brennan. And just because he was apt enough in law or convenient enough to a party position to be nominated is no estimate of his ability to speak for the purpose of judges.

I'd rather go with a great like Madison, myself, than somebody who admits, 1) he's less likely consider anybody his better no matter what their historical role or centrality to the matter, and lacking that will substitute his own judgement , and 2) doesn't want to "cloak" his own "arrorgance".

It's funny, one of the biggest supporters of SC judges in this forum, Reader, is always asking me to perform a self-effacing humility to the judges who hold the position. And to efface my own judgement to judges who do not want to "feign" humility to theorist who are quite a bit more central than they have been. Blackmun is almost incidental in comparison to Madison and Hamilton.

But, deeper, Blackmun's idea invalidates judges, IMO. If Blackmun is just "voting" for the society he'd like to see, he's asking for his vote to weigh more than another citizen's. Unfortunately, this is perhaps the most revolting aspect of progressivism.

Thanks for providing such a clear warning about past mistakes in appointing judges.