Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Roberts on the SCOTUS?

Also, in Slate, a good article on Roberts and why I have a hard time getting worked up into a lather about him.

The same conservatism that leads him to decry judicial overreaching in the privacy and civil rights contexts is part and parcel of a larger conservatism that distrusts reckless grandiosity. The same quality, in short, that kept Roberts from sneaking off into the woods to smoke may be the same quality that keeps him from torching Roe v. Wade. The Clarence Thomases of this world—men unafraid of tearing down centuries of constitutional scaffolding in order to impose their own theories of constitutional construction—are far scarier to me. Those are the guys who probably did barf off the clock towers in college; guys with the hubris and drive to change the world without going through the confirmation process first. Scalia doesn't care what anyone thinks of him, and Thomas is happiest when he's provoking outrage. Roberts cares a lot about looking temperate, and that isn't a bad thing in a judge.

When I want to alter the constitutional framework, I'll elect folk to do it. What I want are judges with a sense of, well, judgement.

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