Tuesday, January 03, 2006

The Stealth Nomination Of Samuel Alito

I've avoided the Alito issue for the most part, but current events change that. Ignore abortion and all these other partisan issues for now... here's the real reason to oppose Samuel Alito's Supreme Court nomination-

Washington Post: Alito Once Made Case For Presidential Power
As a young Justice Department lawyer, Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. tried to help tip the balance of power between Congress and the White House a little more in favor of the executive branch...

...In a Feb. 5, 1986, draft memo, Alito, then deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel, ...laid out a case for having the president routinely issue statements about the meaning of statutes when he signs them into law.

Such "interpretive signing statements" would be a significant departure from run-of-the-mill bill signing pronouncements, which are "often little more than a press release," Alito wrote. The idea was to flag constitutional concerns and get courts to pay as much attention to the president's take on a law as to "legislative intent."...


As with the aborted Miers nomination, President Bush's decision to nominate Alito is not just a desire to have a judge with strong conservative principles on the Court in the years to come, it's a desire to have an ally there immediately who could aid him in the remainder of his term. I don't believe it was a coincidence that Bush at first nominated his personal lawyer for the Court. He's smart enough to have known she wasn't qualified; he was simultaneously rewarding her for loyalty and also stacking the judicial deck. I felt at the time that the President perhaps has been anticipating a Supreme Court showdown like Nixon had right before his resignation and that having his former counsel on the Court would be helpful in such a scenario. When that didn't work out, the President picked someone who would appease his right-wing base after that Miers anger, but also was a stealth nomination who shared his beliefs in an all-powerful Executive branch. There is numerous evidence that Alito is someone who agrees with the President on a number of controversial, and scandalous, issues.

The Balkanization blog has a detailed entry on how these 'signing statements' can make moot the work of Congress and allow him to add his own interpretation of the law. In the entry, Mr. Lederman explores how the signing statement the President added to the McCain anti-torture amendment effectively overrides the ban if the President feels its necessary-
So Much for the President's Assent to the McCain Amendment

If the President can reinterpret the laws, then he truly is above them. Make no mistake, a vote for Alito is also a vote for the imperial presidency. His confirmation hearings just became that much more important.

PS- Andrew Sullivan has similar conclusions.

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