Archive: August 28, 2005 - September 03, 2005
Roberts Documents
Amy Argetsinger and Jo Becker in today's Washington Post:Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. once expressed some agreement with conservatives who opposed entering an international anti-genocide treaty, saying that foreign governments might try to use it to prosecute the United States for its military actions overseas. But Roberts, then a young White House lawyer, ultimately urged President Ronald Reagan to sign it, arguing that to do otherwise would be a public-relations embarrassment on the world stage....
By Fred Barbash | September 3, 2005; 8:07 AM ET | Comments (1)
JR's 'Mystery Years' in OSG
From Tony Mauro's article at law.com on Roberts's years in the Solicitor General's office:Some of the mystery and misunderstanding about the job Roberts held stems from its informal title, the "political deputy" solicitor general. That signifies only that the person filling the position is a political appointee who comes and goes with administrations, unlike the other three or four deputies in the office who are career civil servants. And it also means, in a general sense, that the person is "with the program" of the administration that hires him, as Powell puts it. Beyond that, though, the political nature of the job appears limited. Yet those who have held the job say they have had to fight the impression that they were White House moles who enforced political or ideological orthodoxy in an office that has a long-standing tradition of independence. "We thought the person with this job would be...
By Fred Barbash | September 3, 2005; 7:48 AM ET | Email a Comment
Witness Lists for Hearings
From the AP:A lawmaker who played a prominent role in the civil rights movement, a woman who sued the government to get handicapped access to courthouses and President Richard Nixon's former White House lawyer will testify at Supreme Court nominee John Roberts' confirmation hearing, Democrats said Friday. Their selection as witnesses may indicate what Democrats will focus on next week when they question President Bush's choice to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Roberts, a former government lawyer in the administrations of former presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, is scheduled to begin his confirmation proceedings on Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Though the hearings were only days away, about 18,000 more documents from Roberts' past were released Friday from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. The release was delayed because the documents had been mislabeled, but many of them had been released before or were not written by Roberts...
By Fred Barbash | September 3, 2005; 7:41 AM ET | Email a Comment
No Posts Today
Because I've been working on the hurricane story, I've not had time to post here. I will resume as soon as possible; and when the hearings begin, The Post will provide play-by-play coverage in this space as well as news stories and live video. Have a good Labor Day. Fred...
By Fred Barbash | September 2, 2005; 2:51 PM ET | Comments (1)
The Morning Papers
Good morning. As confirmation hearings approach, the pace of coverage is picking up. Kathy Kiely and Judy Keen report in USA Today:Supreme Court nominee John Roberts will be introduced to the Senate Judiciary Committee next week by a centrist Democrat and a veteran Republican, an important symbolic boost for his confirmation prospects. Sen. Evan Bayh, a Democrat who represents Roberts' home state of Indiana, and Sen. John Warner, a Virginia Republican, have agreed to appear with him when confirmation hearings begin Tuesday. Jo Becker and Brian Faler in The Washington Post:John G. Roberts Jr. has been very courteous while making the rounds on Capitol Hill in anticipation of his Supreme Court confirmation hearings next week. But he was far less respectful of lawmakers two decades ago, when he was a young lawyer in the Reagan White House. In one case, Roberts bemoaned a proposal to ease the Supreme Court's workload...
By Fred Barbash | September 1, 2005; 3:02 AM ET | Email a Comment
More JR Documents
JR in 1983 "Our only hope is that Congress will continue to do what it does best -- nothing....."Jesse J. Holland of the AP reports: Supreme Court nominee John Roberts took shots at Congress while a Reagan administration lawyer, saying in documents released Wednesday that a congressman killed in connection with cult leader Jim Jones' massacre could be viewed as a "publicity hound" and that what Congress does best is "nothing." Those two documents were among 420 Roberts papers released by the National Archives that originally had been withheld from Congress for privacy and security reasons. The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library re-reviewed the papers and released them a week before Roberts' confirmation hearing after blacking out much material for privacy and national security reasons. Two of the released documents show Roberts, then an assistant to White House counsel Fred Fielding, taking the then-Democratic Congress to task. Congress voted to give...
By Fred Barbash | August 31, 2005; 7:00 PM ET | Comments (3)
Public Pass Guidelines for Hearings
For those who wish to view the hearings in person, the Senate Judiciary Committee has issued guidelines for admission on a first-come, first-served basis; but you can only stay for a limited period of time in order to allow more members of the public access. Here are the guidelines. For everyone else, it's on C-Span 2, repeated during the evening. Over the weekend, C-Span will broadcast highlights of past confirmation hearings. The hearings begin at 1:30 p.m. on Sept. 6 with each committee member allowed 10 minutes for an opening statement, followed by an opening statement by Judge Roberts. ...
By Fred Barbash | August 31, 2005; 5:04 PM ET | Comments (1)
The Morning Papers
Good morning. Here are some JR-related pieces in the papers today. Maura Reynolds writing in the Los Angeles Times:A week before televised confirmation hearings on Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr., the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library said Tuesday that it had discovered a potentially large number of documents related to Roberts that had been inadvertently missed during previous searches of the nominee's files. The library, which earlier had acknowledged having misplaced a Roberts file on affirmative action that is still missing, said it would bring in extra researchers to expedite a review of the documents before the Senate hearings, which are to begin Tuesday. David D. Kirkpatrick with the same story in the NYT: The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library said Tuesday that it had discovered thousands of previously undisclosed documents related to the work of Judge John G. Roberts Jr., adding a potential last-minute complication to the hearings...
By Fred Barbash | August 31, 2005; 3:26 AM ET | Email a Comment
Reuters: Dueling Interest Groups
Thomas Ferraro of Reuters reports: Dueling special interest groups stepped up their respective efforts Tuesday in the battle over U.S. Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, whose U.S. Senate confirmation hearing begins next week. Progress for America, a conservative organization, unveiled a $400,000, nationwide television ad campaign, set to begin on Wednesday, in support of President Bush's nomination of Roberts, while the liberal Alliance for Justice announced its opposition. In a 105-page report, the alliance blasted Roberts, based largely on a review of thousands of pages of documents from his days as a lawyer in the Reagan administration two decades ago. "Judge Roberts' consistent record suggests that he would limit Congress' longstanding ability to address nationwide problems, restrict the court's historic authority to vindicate individual rights and legal protections, expand the powers of the president and law enforcement and lower the wall separating church and state," the group said. Chris...
By Fred Barbash | August 30, 2005; 4:36 PM ET | Comments (7)
Roberts Documents
From today's documents, Bloomberg news reports:As a young government lawyer, Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. proposed reining in the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission because its civil rights positions were "totally inconsistent" with President Ronald W. Reagan's policies, a newly released memo says....
By Fred Barbash | August 29, 2005; 3:00 PM ET | Comments (3)
Press Release: Americans United
Americans United for Separation of Church and State has published a report critical of JR's positions on church-state issues of interest. Read it here. In response, the American Center for Law and Justice has issued a rebuttal statement....
By Fred Barbash | August 29, 2005; 2:55 PM ET | Comments (3)
Roberts Documents
The National Archives today released a small number of JR-related documents. They are available online here. For more resources from The Washington Post, click here....
By Fred Barbash | August 29, 2005; 2:47 PM ET | Email a Comment
Roberts Documents
From today's batch of released documents, Jesse J. Holland of the AP reports: Supreme Court nominee John Roberts pushed the Reagan-era Justice Department to get its conservative policies enacted into law to make it more difficult for future presidents to abrogate them, documents showed Monday. Roberts, who was an assistant to Attorney General William French Smith in 1982, co-wrote a memo to the attorney general noting that many of the department's conservative policies, including decisions not to seek busing or hiring quotas, "could be instantly reversed when a new administration took office." "In certain areas _ busing and quotas, for example _ it makes eminent sense to pursue legislation to guarantee that our policies cannot be easily undone," said Roberts in a March 15, 1982 memo he co-wrote with fellow special assistant Carolyn Kuhl....
By Fred Barbash | August 29, 2005; 2:40 PM ET | Email a Comment
More Documents Monday
See this news advisory from the National Archives regarding the release of a small number of documents from Roberts's early years at the DOJ on Monday....
By Fred Barbash | August 28, 2005; 9:11 AM ET | Comments (1)
The Sunday Papers
Here are some JR-related headlines in the Sunday papers. David Von Drehle in The Washington Post: Roberts Is Defined by His Calm; Key to Nominee's Poise Is Preparation. Jeffrey Rosen in the New York Times Magazine: Roberts v. the Future. It seems unlikely that John Roberts's confirmation hearings will result in the nominee speaking unguardedly and at length on abortion and other controversies of the moment, or in the Democrats thwarting his confirmation. (Roberts is a conservative; he is also intelligent, able and possesses, by all accounts, a judicious temperament.) What, then, would be the most productive use of his confirmation hearings? It would be illuminating for the senators to ask the man who will be, if confirmed, the first new justice of the 21st century some probing questions about the Supreme Court of the future -- including how, in the broadest sense, it should prepare to handle cases arising...
By Fred Barbash | August 28, 2005; 8:35 AM ET | Email a Comment
