Criticizing the Ninth Circuit’s Pledge decision in Calgary yesterday, President Bush made the following statement:
Mr. Bush, meet Article 6, Section 3 of the United States Constitution:
I’ll leave the two of you to get better acquainted.
(Is there any way that confining your pool of judicial nominees to those who believe in rights accruing from God is not blatantly unconstitutional?)
Gad, may I welcome you into my Pit thread on this very topic? I didn’t feel like being polite and Greatly Debating with our Fearless leader . . .
But of course, Eve. My slip is showing…I didn’t check the Pit afore starting this thread.
Not yet having read your thread, I don’t know if y’all are discussing the constitutional issues inherent in his statement. If not, here’s a great place to debate them. Lawyers? 
So I guess my jumping up and down like Yosemite Sam and screaming “bite me, Bush!” would be de trop here, what?
“This isn’t an argument, this is abuse.”
(I read the Pit thread. While well-done (heh), it doesn’t quite touch upon the question raised in this OP. Like Jodi, I find Bush’s expression of his judicial appointment philosophy to be quite alarming–anyone wanna argue that it’s nevertheless constitutional?)
Ways around it, I dunno, hmmm…
It is not an official law that no non-monotheist can be appointed, Bush is just saying that that’s who he intends to appoint. Like for example, if he said “I believe that X abortion ruling points up the fact that we need female judges who understand a women’s right to choose. And those are the kind of judges I intend to put on the bench.” (Ignoring for the nonce the fact that Bush would never actually say this.) Individual Presidents can surely choose who they want to be their judge, right?
It’s not a religious test, because, why, any monotheist could be appointed! How can it be a religious test if any Jew or Muslim or Christian could be appointed! The FF never considered that we would have religions like Wicca or that an atheist might want to be a judge; if they had, they would have made it clearer that only monotheists can serve in public office. We just need to follow the founder’s original intent here.
It’s not a test of your religion, it’s a test of your stance on a matter of Law! A person of any religion could be appointed, just as long as they believe right our derived from God–which is, after all, a central belief of our country. We have been endowed by our creator with these inalienable rights and all. Heck, even an atheist or Wiccan could be appointed as long as he believed in that vital matter of law.
That’s all I can think of. 2 and 3 I think we might actually see if someone tries to argue for Bush’s position; 1 is a bit weak.
Gadarene, I’d really like to agree with you, but I just don’t see how W’s announcement amounts to a litmus test. The President has always had the power to nominate whomever he likes (with the advice and consent of the Senate, of course), and I don’t think an announcement of the kind of person he likes is really a violation of the Constitution. He’s perfectly free to nominate only theocratic, young-earth creationist snake handlers if he wants to.
As long as there’s no barrier to an atheist becoming a judge (now Bob, your nomination’s been approved by the Senate, but now you have to prove you’re a Christian [or monotheist] in good standing according to that other law), I don’t see why a refusal to appoint one violates the Constitution. And who would you even sue?
—The FF never considered that we would have religions like Wicca or that an atheist might want to be a judge; if they had, they would have made it clearer that only monotheists can serve in public office.—
Nonsense: Jefferson addressed this issue extensively! This whole sad affair has jsut been yet another chance for politicians to rail about what “the founders” thought, without any sort of concept of what the founders thought in the first place.
— It’s not a test of your religion, it’s a test of your stance on a matter of Law! A person of any religion could be appointed, just as long as they believe right our derived from God–which is, after all, a central belief of our country. We have been endowed by our creator with these inalienable rights and all. Heck, even an atheist or Wiccan could be appointed as long as he believed in that vital matter of law.—
It may be a central belief of some, but it’s certainly NOT a matter of law. The D of I is an important document, but it’s not what everyone signed onto to form this government: the constitution was. And the constitution founds those rights in the people, not on any grant from god. Show me where in the “law” it says that rights come from god, or that this claim is relevant to ANY matter in the law!
The founders were AGAINST such thinking because they felt it led far too easily to particualr religious view modifiying those rights, as well as encouraged people to become lazy about defending them. Eternal vigelence is the price of freedom, precisely because the government IS not a holy writ authorized by to be trusted as to its stance and protection of rights, but is simply a group of faliable people.
Further, we AGAIN have a case in which Jefferson’s own view was pretty plain: rights are part of natural law (i.e. intrinsic to us): and this is so whether there is a god bestowing them to us or not.
Bush’s position is silly, but it’s not unconstitutional. The prohibition on religious tests was to prevent Congress from passing a law requiring a person to belong to a church or take a certain Sacrament in order to hold public office. This site has a defense of the religious test ban. The author objected to the religious tests in England which was
And it might also set up a separation of powers showdown if Bush nominated a person who believed in God and the courts tried to invalidate the nomination. The power to nominate certain judges is given squarely to the Executive and courts cannot involve themselves in exercises of executive discretion.
I usually enjoy piling on the Shrub as much as the next guy or gal, but how is his statement any more ludicrous than all the Senators and Representatives who have been ignoring Article I of the Constitution since the 9th District Court handed down its pledge ruling? :rolleyes:
(Everyone in Washington D.C. needs a lesson in Civics 101, IMO)
I for one welcome this latest round of election-year nonsense. At the beginning of this Congress, the conservatives introduced a very clever, multi-pronged plan to outlaw abortion. They saw their chance and they were going for it. The Dems had to give away practically everything to prevent it from happening, and they exhausted their political favors trying to block it–until Jeffords went indie, that is.
Heck, it might even be a good thing. This bullshit may be enough to require the President to draw a distinction between the term “common sense judges” and the heavily loaded term “strict constructionist judges,” which is what he was using prior to the election.
A strict constructionist might be willing to throw abortion out the window, but might also be interested in enforcing separation of church and state. A common sense judge, on the other hand, might realize that flying Muffy from Bryn Mawr to Canada every semester is far more costly than leaving “under God” in the pledge.
Is he free to announce - say, for example - that he will only nominate White judges?
I’m thinking that the proper response to such a loathsome comment by a President would be best dealt with at the ballot box, really. Suppose our hypothetical president said he would only nominate whites to the SC. I’m not sure this statement would create a case or controversy that could be litigated in a court, and I’m pretty sure that no one would have standing to sue him. It would show that the hypothetical president was a loser, but hopefully he’d be gone before long.
During the nomination process, if the president nominates one candidate, I’m not sure that the other people that made the short list would have the standing to sue either, even if they were more qualified than the person the Prez actually selected. How could you tell? And anyway, that would just be the judiciary second-guessing the President’s nomination – could they force him to withdraw his nomination in favor of someone else on the short list? How about the hypothetical “most qualified legal mind in the land”, even if that person was on the opposite side of the political spectrum? I don’t think so.
If the President wants to limit his nominations to evangelical Christians only, that’s his prerogative, no matter how asinine I think the policy is. And frankly, as an atheist, it really bugs me that this form of discrimination would probably play really well in the heartland.
On to 2004!
Oh – and another method of getting around the President’s prejudices would be for the Senate to reject the President’s candidates until he got the point. But I’m thinking the judicial branh really has to stay out of this one.
Yes. There is nothing in the Constitution that prohibits this and the Civil Rights Act applies to private establishments connected to interstate commerce. And the Civil Rights act even exempts state elected officials and their staff from the Act.
As truly repugnant and stupid as it would be, it is not illegal or unconstitutional. The check on this exercise is that Congress has to consent to the nominations and the public can vote a president out of office.