Comments on: Welcome to the Roberts Confirmation Hearings

By: Brent Cooper

Brent Cooper — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 12:36:23 +0000

I agree with Adam. It’s bad enough that for years, liberals — err, “progressives” — explicitly endorsed judicial “activism,” and then ran from the term when it started being used against them effectively as a pejorative term, just like they ran from the term “liberal” starting more than a decade ago.

Except it’s worse than even Adam suggests. I’m not at all sure “living Constitution” was a meme conservatives tagged liberals with. I think it may well have been another term liberals proudly embraced, but then ran from once it was used against them pejoratively, to ridcule them. Haven’t people like Brennan, Kennedy, Tribe, etc., talked about the need to view the Constitution as a “living,” organic whole?

By contrast, “Constitution in Exile” is a term liberals have tried to tag conservatives with even though it’s never been used in the conservative community on any even arguably widespread basis, as I believe someone on Volokh, and Amber Taylor, and others commented on a few months back.

By: The Federalist Society at Yale Law School

The Federalist Society at Yale Law School — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 01:38:57 +0000

Blogging the Hearings, Part 1

As many of our readers know, I am wrapping up a summer clerkship on the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. I plan to attend as much of the hearings as possible and to post a summary of each day’s events…

By: LyricalReckoner

LyricalReckoner — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 20:17:57 +0000

Were I a Senator on the Judiciary Committee, I know what I’d ask Roberts.

In his remarks to the committee, he said we are a government — not of men — but of laws.

So . . . I’d have to ask him how that squares with the precept that ours is a government OF, BY, and FOR the people.

By: Adam White

Adam White — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 17:36:59 +0000

Joe Biden must have made Cass Sunstein and Jeffrey Rosen so proud. After years of a joint effort to utterly fabricate some sort of “Constitution in Exile” movement out of a single remark by one federal judge in a Cato Institute magazine, they’ve come one step closer to making “the Constitution in Exile movement” into a part of the national lexicon.

I suspect that Democrat Senators will use this term repeatedly, and by the end of the hearings it will be a common term in WaPo and NYT coverage. Their answer to the “living constitution” meme so commonly used by conservatives.

By: cjd

cjd — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 17:31:36 +0000

In fairness to Senator Biden, I think he said that conservatives were questioning the federal government’s power to act in states on the Gulf of Mexico, not the war power in the Persian Gulf.

TG responds – you may well be right. I haven’t seen responsible commentary challenging federal power in that respect either.

By: PointOfLaw Forum

PointOfLaw Forum — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 16:33:35 +0000

Roberts hearings underway

Tom Goldstein is live-blogging at SCOTUSblog….

By: T. Longren

T. Longren — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 15:40:47 +0000

John Roberts Confirmation Hearings Begin

The confirmation hearings for John Roberts begin today. Sounds like abortion will probably be the biggest focus, more specifically Roe v. Wade.
WASHINGTON – With the first confirmation hearing of a nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court in more than a de…