Prayers for Roberts

Progressive, The, Sept, 2005

When he went on national TV to announce is nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court, President Bush was smirkier than ever. He acted like he'd just dealt himself four aces from the bottom of the deck while no one was looking.

Fox News immediately hailed the choice, with one correspondent quoting a conservative who called Roberts a "hundred percenter"--a staunch right-winger down the line.

Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, Phyllis Schlafly, Lou Sheldon, Tony Perkins, and Beverly LaHaye all gave Roberts their blessing.

"The nomination of Judge John G. Roberts is an answer to the prayers of millions of Americans," announced the Reverend Rob Schenck of the National Clergy Council.

Robertson also saw the hand of God at work.

"With the likelihood of multiple vacancies on the court, you and I are witnessing the direct result of prayer and intercession," he said, after Sandra Day O'Connor announced her resignation. "Two years ago, I felt an urgent need for people to unite and pray for change in the Supreme Court.... We asked our partners and viewers to pray for God to intervene and restore righteousness and justice in our land. Tens of thousands of people responded to this massive prayer offensive and cried out to the Lord to change the court. And God heard those prayers."

There is the possibility that the Lord may be hard of hearing and that Roberts will not turn out to be as rightwing as Robertson and his brethren and sistren believe.

But they certainly have grounds for hope.

Practically from the day he left Harvard Law School, Roberts donated almost all of his brain to the Republican Party and to corporate interests.

When he was just twenty-six, he began work as a special assistant to Reagan's Attorney General William French Smith. A year later, he moved over to the White House as associate counsel to the President, where he served until 1986.

There, at least on the busing issue, Roberts was to the right of even Theodore Olson (who led George W. Bush's 2000 legal team). In 1984, Olson was assistant attorney general, and Olson did not believe the Reagan Administration should endorse rightwing legislation that would have prohibited judges from ordering busing to desegregate schools, according to an article in The Washington Post. But Roberts argued in favor of the legislation, saying that Congress could prohibit school busing on the claim that it "promotes segregation rather than remedying it, by precipitating white flight."

This was typical of Roberts at the time. "He was a significant backstage player in the legal policy debates of the early Reagan Administration," The Washington Post reported in another piece. "Roberts argued for restrictions on the rights of prisoners to litigate their grievances; depicted as 'judicial activism' a lower court's order requiring a sign-language interpreter for a hearing-impaired public school student who had already been given a hearing aid and tutors; and argued for wider latitude for prosecutors and police to question suspects out of the presence of their attorneys." He also advocated "a narrow interpretation of Title IX, the landmark law that bars sex discrimination in intercollegiate athletic programs," the Post reported. And he urged the Administration not to "intervene on behalf of female inmates in a sex discrimination case."

From 1989 to 1993, he was Bush I's deputy solicitor general, where he helped formulate the Administration's legal positions and then advocated them before the Supreme Court. Here he was understudy to none other than Kenneth Starr. And it was in this capacity that Roberts argued that Roe v. Wade should be overturned, among other reactionary positions.

Senate Democrats have sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales requesting information on sixteen cases Roberts was involved in as deputy solicitor general under President Bush the elder. Roberts signed briefs in about eighty-one cases, seventy-eight of which were argued before the Supreme Court, the Democrats pointed out, and his office was involved in hundreds more cases during his tenure there.

Many of the landmark cases mentioned in the letter concern profound matters of policy on abortion, privacy, civil rights, school desegregation, and due process.

Rust v. Sullivan (1991)--In this case, Roberts persuaded the Court to uphold the prohibition on using federal funds in family planning clinics where abortions were performed.

Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992)--Roberts's boss, Solicitor General Ken Starr, urged the Court to uphold various Pennsylvania restrictions on the right to an abortion. He was largely successful.

Board of Education of Oklahoma City v. Dowell (1991)--Starr, with Roberts in tow, and acting in an amicus capacity, successfully argued for limiting the busing requirements of school districts.

Franklin v. Gwinnett County Public Schools (1992)--The solicitor general's office, with Roberts's participation, unsuccessfully argued that a female student who suffered sexual harassment could not receive damage awards under Title IX, which prohibits sexual discrimination in public schools.