ConfirmThem

By Curt Levey Posted in GOP Presidential Candidates — Comments (3) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Friday afternoon, Rudy Giuliani addressed the Federalist Society in Washington, DC and spoke about the proper role of a judge, the Senate’s role in judicial confirmation, the separation of powers, and federalism. His full remarks are here and my favorite excerpts are below:

I’m going to give you 200 reasons why the next election is really important. It’s the 200 federal judges that the next President of the United States will likely appoint over four years in the White House.

[I]f a president is elected who has the kind of thinking of a Hillary Clinton or a Barack Obama or a John Edwards, and I don’t think there’s much distinction there. I think you’re going to see . . . judges who will be activists in the sense of trying to legislate their social policy through judicial interpretation.

For many, many years, law schools, too many of them, had been confusing constitutional law with sociology. And there is a big difference between constitutional law and sociology.

More excerpts below the fold.

We also believe that the Constitution should be interpreted as it’s written not as someone would like it to be. There’s a recent decision in the D.C. Circuit on the right to bear arms written by Judge Silberman. I think it’s an excellent example of the kind of interpretation that I would expect of judges and justices.

Our Framers had no doubt about the proper approach to interpretation of the Constitution. You could say they were the original originalists. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton . . . didn’t agree on many things, but they did agree on the following, and I quote Jefferson, ‘Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction.’

We need judges who embrace originalism, endeavor to determine what others meant when they wrote the words of our Constitution. Justices like Justice Scalia, Justice Thomas, Justice Alito, and Chief Justice Roberts. That would be my model.

America is not great however because of our central government. And that may be one of the basic distinctions between the two political parties right now because I do believe quite honestly that the other political party does believe that the greatness of America lies in the central government . . . Our system doesn’t force every state to fit into a straightjacket. So much of the anger and division in politics today stems from the attempt of one faction, whatever the political thinking, to impose their thinking on everyone else through the courts. I believe it’s time to close that chapter in our history.

[After Robert Bork there was] the attempted character assassination of Justice Thomas, and we had almost gone to the point where the advice and consent clause was being reinterpreted as a way to bring back the Spanish Inquisition.

[Miguel Estrada] was an outstanding candidate, an excellent lawyer, one of the best lawyers in this country, and he wasn’t even allowed to get a vote on the floor of the Senate . . . I believe that is a perversion of what our advice and consent clause really means, and then we saw that happen again with Janice Rogers Brown and with others. And really, the next President is gonna have to call on the Senate to change its rules and ask the Senate to really take seriously what advice and consent means. What advice and consent means is that someone if sent there by the President should get an up or down vote within a reasonable period of time . . . The Senate should have the courage to vote yes or no but not to hide on those nominations.