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Senate Judiciary Committee Votes on Alito

zuzu

The committee split along party lines, with the 10 Republicans voting for and the 8 Democrats voting against.

Only one Democratic Senator, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, has said that he will vote for Alito when the vote comes to the full Senate. Harry Reid has promised a fight, though it’s apparently unclear whether a filibuster is still on the table.

Nominally pro-choice Republican Senator Arlen Specter said that “Judge Alito had convinced him that he does indeed regard the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision as “settled law” not easily overturned.”

Let’s see how Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and Lincoln Chaffee vote. I’m sure their constituents would not be happy to see their Senators putting someone on the Court who would overturn Roe.

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27 thoughts on Senate Judiciary Committee Votes on Alito

  1. Harry Reid has promised a fight, though it’s apparently unclear whether a filibuster is still on the table.

    Based on various statements from the “Gang of 14”, it seems likely that the filibuster is off the table. Which is likely for the best. I’m not a huge fan of it, but that doesn’t mean I’d like to see it nuked, either.

  5. “Nominally pro-choice Republican Senator Arlen Specter said that “Judge Alito had convinced him that he does indeed regard the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision as “settled law” not easily overturned.” ”

    I’ve always heard Specter is a sharp guy which makes me wonder about this kind of thing. Everybody knows that the social conservatives are pushing Alito because they expect him to savage Roe up down and sideways. There is no way Specter could not know it.

    So what to believe?

    1) Specter is a god damn idiot
    2) Specter suspects Alito to ‘Souter’ the SocCons
    3) Specter doesn’t care about Roe and just wants the cover
    4) Specter has been political hammered into accepting a candidate he knows will overturn Roe.
    5) Specter wants Roe overturned

    1,3, and 5 seem terribly unlikely to me based on Specter’s history. For instance he could have had a much more comfortable carreer had been openly anti-Roe so why would he pretend to defend it if #5 were the case?

    That leaves 2 and 4. Those are a toss up in my book. In fact I kind of suspect that Alito WILL Souter the SocCons. Lets face it he is beholden to the President above all others and what’s good for a republican presidency is keeping the abortion issue on the front burner, now and always.

  6. Wait, hasn’t Alito studiously avoided saying anything that would suggest that he considers R v W “settled law”? Unless there’ve been developments.

    Tlaloc, before I agree on #2, please explain what it means to “Souter” somone/something. #4 seems plausible, though. Arlen Specter is vocally pro-choice, but I think he’d rather be vocally pro-choice within the Senate than from a minor professorship in an obscure university, or whatever Senators do when they retire.

  7. Specter is not running for re-election again, so there’s really nothing anyone can hold over his head. The idea that he’s being bullied into supporting Alito is unlikely.

    Pulling a “Souter” means pretending to be a judicial conservative for the purposes of getting yourself confirmed to the Supreme Court, and then voting like a judicial liberal. I sincerely doubt that is what Alito is doing, as he’s had 15 years to establish a consistent jurisprudence (as opposed to Souter, who was a federal appeals court judge only for several months before his elevation). On the other hand, Alito is most certainly not the Clarence Thomas-style conservative that liberals seem to fear (and some conservatives hope) that he is.

  8. Specter is not running for re-election again, so there’s really nothing anyone can hold over his head. The idea that he’s being bullied into supporting Alito is unlikely.

    I dunno; he certainly got his leash yanked hard when he was about to take the chairmanship, and it was made crystal clear to him that he was not going to get it, Senate tradition be damned, if he were to not toe the party line.

    Also, I think you’re being unfair to Souter when you imply that he pretended to be a judicial conservative. He wasn’t given any sort of acid test when he was nominated; I’m sure the thought was that because he was from New Hampshire and nominated by a Republican that he’d turn out to be a conservative.

  9. I’m not suggesting Souter deliberately lied to get on the bench. He did, however, make various statements during his tenure as Attorney General of New Hampshire indicating that he would be more protective of religious liberty and that he believed abortion was “the killing of unborn children.” He went so far as to file a brief arguing that the state shouldn’t publicly fund abortion, and also said he thought affirmative action was “discrimination.” Now granted, ruling on cases as a judge may mean shelving policy views that you would have advocated in an elective political office, but Souter’s legal views pre- and post-confirmation seem fairly incongruous.

  10. In fairness to Souter, I should probably note that although he was only on the First Circuit for a few months before his SCOTUS nomination, he was a state court judge for some 12 years.

  11. Personal views are not necessarily indicative of how a judge will vote on questions of precedent. I don’t think there’s any incongruity in his views at all — saying that there shouldnt’ be public funding of abortion is not at all the same as saying that (then) 20 years of precedent should be overturned. Moreover, as AG, he’d have been advocating a particular position rather than deciding whether that position was meritorious and supported by precedent.

  12. In fairness to Souter, I should probably note that although he was only on the First Circuit for a few months before his SCOTUS nomination, he was a state court judge for some 12 years.

    He was on the New Hampshire Supreme Court for 7 years. I used to work with someone who’d been his clerk there and followed him to the Supreme Court.

  13. Getting back to Alito, AP is reporting that a majority of Senators have said they’re voting for him. My prediction is he will be confirmed with 56 or 57 votes, far lower than what he deserves given his qualifications.

  14. He wasn’t selected because of his qualifications alone. Why should he be approved based on nothing other than his qualifications?

  15. Why should he be approved based on nothing other than his qualifications?

    Because his wife will cry if he isn’t, that’s why!

    You big meanie.

  16. Why should he be approved based on nothing other than his qualifications?

    Gee, I don’t know, how about basic fairness or merit? How about because we should have our most highly qualified jurists on the Supreme Court, regardless of ideology, as Republicans recognized when they overwhelmingly voted for Ginsburg and Breyer? How about because voting down a nomination based on ideology alone can come back to bite Democrats in the butt the next time they get to pick a Justice?

  18. The piece you link to doesn’t really undermine my point- rather, it reinforces it. At the end of the day, you are left with the fact Republicans deferred to the SCOTUS nominees of a President from the opposite party in far greater numbers than Democrats are poised to do with Alito. Republicans didn’t insist on “balancing” the court when Ginsburg, the former general counsel to the ACLU, replaced White, who had dissented in Roe and Casey. And there’s no indication that Alito is any more “outside the mainstream” than either of Clinton’s nominees were.

    The Democrats are setting a terrible precedent for ideological voting on SCOTUS nominees, and unfortunate though it may be, have forfeited the right to cry foul when their future picks receive similar treatment.

  19. Jon, the difference is that Clinton worked with Republicans to get nominees acceptable to both parties so that the process would not be contentious. Bush has made it quite clear that he doesn’t give a shit what the Democrats think, and with the Miers nomination, he made it pretty clear that he didn’t care what his own party thought.

  20. Nonsense. Despite not being under any sort of Constitutional obligation to do so, Bush consulted with something like 70 Senators prior to the Alito and Roberts nominations. And when he did nominate someone whom Harry Reid had expressly recommended (Miers), Reid responded by backpedaling, claiming he didn’t really know anything about her. Democrats generally were, if anything, moderately hostile to Miers, a sign that Bush’s consultation was in vain.

    Face it zuzu: you lost this one. Your party had the chance to make its case to the nation that Alito is an extremist, and it failed: a majority of the US and of the Senate supports him. I invited you to rebut me and make your own argument to that effect, and you declined. Now it’s all over but the whining.

  22. Gee, I don’t know, how about basic fairness or merit? How about because we should have our most highly qualified jurists on the Supreme Court, regardless of ideology, as Republicans recognized when they overwhelmingly voted for Ginsburg and Breyer? How about because voting down a nomination based on ideology alone can come back to bite Democrats in the butt the next time they get to pick a Justice?

    Or as President Bush recognized when he nominated Harriet Miers? Merit and fairness were not the only considerations in his nomination, and they shouldn’t be the only considerations in his approval. If Bush gets to take Alito’s anti-abortion stance into account, so does the Senate.

    And so what if the Republicans do play politics if and when a Democratic nominee comes up? Do we have something in writing that they won’t do that anyway?

  23. Or as President Bush recognized when he nominated Harriet Miers?

    Bush blew it with Miers, and corrected his mistake.

    And so what if the Republicans do play politics if and when a Democratic nominee comes up?

    Well, for one thing, an otherwise qualified Democratic nomination could be voted down. For another thing, it wouldn’t be healthy for an already badly politicized judicial appointment process. The Court as an institution is not going to escape harm if the public starts viewing nominations as a completely partisan affair, a point Jon Kyl made in voting on Alito in committee. It used to be that the party that won the election was entitled to deference in SCOTUS nominees, and qualifications were the overriding factor. Dems keep trying to change that calculus, and I don’t see it leading anywhere good.

  24. Bush blew it with Miers, and corrected his mistake.

    He blew it not because she was conservative, but because she was unqualified. It was wrong of him to focus so much on the former that he ignored (or, heck, encouraged) the latter. It would only have been natural–as it is in this choice, and in his choice of Roberts–to choose someone whose political views are aligned with his own.

  25. Jon, let’s remember that when Clinton was nominating judges, Hatch held up many, many judges in committee, most of whom were well-qualified AND moderate. He also did away with the blue-slip procedure that let a Senator from the candidate’s home state to challenge the candidate.

    IOW, Clinton had to deal with a hostile and obstructionist Judiciary Committee chairman from the other party who was not about to grant him any deference as a matter of courtesy. By contrast, Bush’s party controls both houses of Congress and the only way for the Dems to stop a nominee is to filibuster.

  26. IOW, Clinton had to deal with a hostile and obstructionist Judiciary Committee chairman from the other party who was not about to grant him any deference as a matter of courtesy.

    Well, now wait a minute. You’re tripping over Scott M’s argument, here. Was Hatch an insufferable obstructionist, or was he the cooperator who recommended Ginsburg and Breyer to Clinton and then helped shepherd them through the Senate?

    By contrast, Bush’s party controls both houses of Congress and the only way for the Dems to stop a nominee is to filibuster.

    Ginsburg was nominated when Dems controlled the House and the Senate, and when Republicans had the same options open to them that Democrats have today. She was confirmed 41 days after her nomination, by a vote of 96-3 (her vote out of committee was unanimous). Alito’s nomination has already been pending 85 days. He was voted out of committee on a straight party-line vote, and looks to receive no more than a handful of Democratic votes.

    Even when Republicans did control the Judiciary Committee, when Breyer was nominated, he was confirmed in 72 days by a vote of 87-9.

  27. Was Hatch an insufferable obstructionist, or was he the cooperator who recommended Ginsburg and Breyer to Clinton and then helped shepherd them through the Senate?

    He was both. Obstructionist particularly on lower-court nominations and elevations, but more cooperative when SCOTUS nominations were on the table, because the public pays attention to them.

    He could easily have called for a filibuster of Bader-Ginsburg; Clinton knew he needed to court Hatch, so he consulted with him. And Hatch, once courted, acted in good faith on Bader-Ginsburg, who in turn was quite forthcoming in her confirmation hearings.

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