Courting public opinion

COURTING PUBLIC OPINION

HOW GOOD are Reagan's Judicial appointments? In spite of the Democratic clamor that Reagan is flooding the bench with undistinguished ideologues, his appointments are, by any objective standard, at least as good as his predecessors' (see box).

Nonetheless, a number of left-leaning judicial-watchdog groups have taken it upon themselves to protect the Republic from Reagan's judgment. One such group is the Supreme Court Watch, which operates under the auspices of the Nation Institute. The board of the Supreme Court Watch has taken no official position on the nominations of Rehnquist and Scalia, thanks, in part, to people like Stephen Gillers, a professor at NYU Law School and a member of the Supreme Court Watch's board. "I disagree with the standard, liberal, People for the American Way line about the poor quality of Reagan's nominees,' says Gillers. "The Justice Department's selections, given the President's agenda, have been, for the most part, commendable.' Gillers, while expressing reservations on the Rehnquist nomination, calls Scalia's nomination "brilliant.'

But other members of the Supreme Court Watch (including those testifying before Congress) took a darker view of Reagan's recent appointments. In his Supreme Court Watch report on Judge Scalia, attorney Michael Goldfarb admits that Scalia is intelligent, amiable, and warmly admired, even by those who disagree with his positions, but then tortuously attempts to question Scalia's credentials anyway. "Scalia is a William F. Buckley conservative rather than a New Right conservative,' writes Goldfarb. "His world view is based on a well-informed misinterpretation of history rather than know-nothingism.' The Supreme Court Watch analysis, by Audrey Feinberg, of Judge Scalia's legal rulings accuses Scalia of "a remarkably consistent record of conservatism. . . .' His court record, warns Miss Feinberg, "requires that the Senate and the American people carefully examine the political perspective that has animated, if not predetermined, Judge Scalia's judicial views.'

The Supreme Court Watch also proudly claims credit for raising the alarm over Rehnquist's alleged harassment of black voters in Arizona in 1962. Even Professor Gillers urges the Senate to reject Rehnquist, "not because he challenged black voters, but because he lied about doing so.' But the star witness against Rehnquist, James Brosnahan, admits that he never personally saw Rehnquist harass voters--he only heard others say Rehnquist had done so. At first Brosnahan, a self-described liberal Democrat, stated Rehnquist had been involved in an incident of voter harassment that took place in Bethune precinct in 1962. When neither contemporaneous news accounts nor police reports nor the FBI report mentioned Rehnquist, Brosnahan backtracted, saying it must have been somewhere else at some other time. The entire case against Rehnquist turns out to hinge on 24-year-old hearsay testimony offered by an old political opponent of Rehnquist who can't even make up his mind on his own story.

The cloak of intellectual objectivity worn by groups like the Supreme Court Watch is getting pretty threadbare. Justice may be blind, but she's not dumb.

COPYRIGHT 1986 National Review, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning