Opinion

It’s not Obama’s seat

Mia Reini Contributor
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Some will say that President Obama’s nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens should not be opposed because Obama will merely be replacing a liberal with a liberal. But there are no seats reserved for liberals or conservatives on the nation’s highest court. The American people expect every justice to fulfill their oath and respect the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the rule of law; not impose their own policy preferences from the bench. To modify a recent winning line: It’s not the Stevens’ seat, it’s not Obama’s seat, it’s our third branch of government – not a second legislature in robes.

The Constitution, however, is an inconvenient truth for liberals who want to micromanage every aspect of American life. We therefore can expect them to support Supreme Court nominees who will ignore the Constitution in order to rubber-stamp Obama’s aggressive political agenda. Nominees like Elena Kagan who, as a professor at Obama’s alma mater Harvard Law School, consistently advocated greater presidential control of administrative agencies and urged modifying established administrative law doctrines to encourage more presidential control over the bureaucracy. Kagan’s record calls into question her ability to be an independent and effective check at a time when the federal government is engaged in an unprecedented expansion into the lives and pocketbooks of ordinary Americans.

Or nominees like Diane Wood, former colleague of Obama at the University of Chicago Law School, who thinks it is perfectly proper to use international law as a basis and a rationale for rulings to impose the policy agenda of liberal elites: “[T]he Court appropriately chose to enrich its understanding of the issue by reviewing international practice, acknowledging implicitly that the American people are indeed part of the broader human community and at least presumptively share its core values.” (Wood commenting on the Supreme Court’s decision in Roper v. Simmons.)

The federal government is now bigger and more powerful than it has ever been, and the people who run it are not abiding by the text of the Constitution, or the limits it sets forth on national power. Senior members of Congress and Obama have shown disdain for the Constitution by suggesting that it is somehow inappropriate to even raise constitutional questions in the context of what they perceive to be progressive policy initiatives such as the health care bill. The Supreme Court can and – and should – act as a check, to make sure that laws that get passed are not an abuse of power under our Constitution.

President Obama has never walked away from the judicial philosophy he laid down during his campaign: that a judge’s personal feelings can trump the fair application of the law. He remains committed to appointing justices that indulge their own liberal values by deeming what the law is. In the coming months, the Obama White House and its allies will bend over backwards to conceal that their nominee is a liberal judicial activist by calling her or him restrained and moderate, as they did with Sonia Sotomayor. But beware the White House’s tricks with political labeling. Remember that it’s our third branch, and the last check we have.

Mia Reini is a policy specialist in Notre Dame, Indiana and an attorney licensed to practice in New York, Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. All opinions expressed are her own.