ConfirmThem

By Paul Zummo Posted in Uncategorized — Comments () / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Greg Abbott, the current Attorney General of Texas and former Texas Supreme Court justice, comes to Priscilla Owen's defense in today's National Review Online. He was an eyewitness to the famous abortion consent case from which liberals have misquoted Alberto Gonzales in order to characterize Owen as a judicial activist.

Few things in life are 100 percent certain, but this one is: Alberto Gonzales was not calling Priscilla Owen, or any other colleague, a judicial activist. On this point there was never one iota of intra-court confusion. My colleagues and I knew that Justice Gonzales was not targeting anyone personally but making a point of personal principle - because I interpret this imprecise statute a certain way, it would be a personal act of judicial activism to let my subjective ideology trump my detached interpretation. His concurring opinion characterized what he believed he would be doing if he interpreted the statute to mean something other than what he thought it meant, even though his interpretation may have been "personally troubling to [him] as a parent."

No doubt, the Texas Parental Notification Act is susceptible to more than one good-faith interpretation. And disagreements about what statutes mean are often contentious, even among the most collegial jurists. But no judge on my court believed for a moment that Justice Gonzales was rebuking anyone, least of all Priscilla Owen. Indeed, far from branding Justice Owen an activist, his concurrence - which not once mentions Owen or her separate dissent - noted explicitly that "every member of this Court agrees that the duty of a judge is to follow the law as written by the Legislature." This categorical declaration captures the very antithesis of judicial activism. Justice Gonzales never suggested anywhere to anyone that Owen was legislating rather than adjudicating, and he has repeatedly clarified that he never believed or intimated otherwise. He put an exclamation point on it earlier this year in sworn testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee: "My comment about judicial activism was not focused at Judge Owen," and "the words that have been used as a sword against Judge Owen" have been distorted.

The worn-out "activism" charge from the anti-Owen forces (who always opposed parental notification anyway) has been refuted time and again by others close to the process. Indeed, the principal author of the notification law has stated unequivocally that "[Owen’s] opinions interpreting the Texas Parental Notification Act serve as prime examples of her judicial restraint" and that Owen’s legal analysis was focused on a solitary objective: "to determine what the Legislature intended the Act to do." Moreover, the pro-choice law professor who helped the Texas Supreme Court’s Advisory Committee draft procedures under the parental notification law supports Owen and rejects emphatically any charge of judicial activism in Owen’s analysis: "Owen is not a judicial activist," and “[h]er decisions do not demonstrate judicial activism. She did what good appellate judges do every day.�

Bottom line: The Left's allegation that Gonzales accused Owen of unprincipled activism spins his words 180 degrees and is patently false. I was there, and the facts are hostile witnesses. But the charge - repeated 24/7 by liberal interest groups and a compliant, soundbite-craving media - has acquired urban-myth status.

Of course this will not stop the left from continuing to distort the truth, but Abbott's article further reveals just how far afield from reality is the view that Owen is a judicial activist of any variety.