[Mb-civic] Why Roberts's Views Matter - Edward M. Kennedy - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Why Roberts's Views Matter

By Edward M. Kennedy
Friday, August 19, 2005; Page A21

Before entrusting Judge John G. Roberts with a lifetime position on the 
Supreme Court, the Senate must be able to determine whether he will 
uphold the fundamental principles of our Constitution and laws to 
continue our nation's march of progress or whether he will adopt a 
cramped and contorted view of our Constitution that will turn back the 
clock.

To help us perform our constitutional duty, the Democrats on the Senate 
Judiciary Committee have requested information on 16 of the cases that 
Roberts handled as deputy solicitor general from 1989 to 1993. The 
information in those cases relates directly to his personal views on -- 
and his views on the courts' role in enforcing -- civil rights, 
disability rights, women's rights and other fundamental rights 
guaranteed by laws and the Constitution.

As deputy solicitor general -- the No. 2 job in the office that 
represents the United States in Supreme Court and other federal cases -- 
Roberts represented all the people of the United States, and the people 
are entitled to access his records from that time. The White House knows 
his positions, yet it continues to withhold documents that would help us 
understand his views of key fundamental rights and freedoms.

In an attempt to justify its refusal, the administration relies on a 
letter written by previous solicitors general in a different context 
concerning the public release of memoranda written by career lawyers in 
that office. On its face, the letter does not apply to memoranda written 
by Roberts. Indeed, as Walter Dellinger, a former acting solicitor 
general and one of the signatories of that letter, recently stated, 
"Roberts was writing memos not as a civil service lawyer but as a senior 
political appointee in a policymaking position, and the judgeship at 
stake isn't any federal judgeship but the Supreme Court itself."

<>The records of these 16 cases have become all the more important 
because of publicly released information about Roberts's policy views 
during an earlier time. As a young but high-ranking political appointee 
in the Reagan administration, Roberts was involved in, among other 
things, setting policy on issues of civil rights -- including those as 
fundamental as the right to vote and to be free from discrimination 
based on race, gender, national origin and disability. If Roberts 
continues to hold the views he appears to have expressed in the early 
1980s, then his views on civil rights are out of the mainstream, and the 
people have the right to know that.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/18/AR2005081801641.html?nav=hcmodule 

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