Whenever religious expression is censored in schools, the workplace or the public arena, we turn to the federal courts for justice. The same is true in the legal fight to outlaw partial-birth abortion or to protect pro-life speech.
While the Supreme Court ultimately has the final word on the "law of the land," lower courts weave the tapestry of law upon which the high court bases its decisions. After all, the Supreme Court accepts only a tiny fraction of the thousands of cases it is asked to consider each year. All legal battles begin in the lower courts; very few make it to the top.
Liberal groups understand the power of federal district and appeals courts; that's why they work so hard to defeat President Bush's nominees. It explains the smear campaign against Charles Pickering, a nominee to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Goaded by abortion lobbyists and liberal activists, the 10 Democrats of the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected him last March.
Republicans gained majority control of the Senate in the last election, and now President Bush has re-nominated Judge Pickering and others initially rejected by a party-line vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Some Senate Democrats have already expressed that they will be as determined as ever to defeat these nominations.
Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who experienced firsthand the politics of personal destruction during her husband's confirmation battle, spelled out the nature of the fight in a letter to Judge Pickering in The Wall Street Journal:
"You are but a pawn in a much larger battle over whether an independent judiciary will prevail or whether a liberal judicial litmus test will transform our courts into another political branch with a liberal activist bent."
Senate Hypocrisy
The idea of an independent judiciary goes back to biblical days. In the Old Testament, the book of Deuteronomy made it clear there is to be only one focus for a judge: "Justice, and only justice, you shall pursue (Deuteronomy 16: 20, NASB)."
When America was formed, our Founding Fathers understood the importance of the judicial branch of government. The Constitution is clear - the president has the right and responsibility to nominate qualified judges. And the Constitution calls for the "advice and consent" of the Senate - not just the Judiciary Committee - in considering judicial nominees.
Even some typically liberal media pundits thought the Senate committee acted inappropriately. Columnist David Broder of The Washington Post was correct when he wrote that the Constitution "does not empower any 10 members of one party to veto the choice of a president of the other party. If those senators are really convinced of the need to reject the president's choice, they ought to have confidence they can persuade a majority of the other 90 senators they are right."
Not long ago, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., would have agreed with that view. In 1997, when Republicans controlled the Senate and Bill Clinton was in the White House, Biden said it wasn't appropriate to prevent nominees from going to the floor for a vote and that it was inappropriate for senators to "tell the president who he must nominate." But on the Pickering vote he refused to follow his own advice.
Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., an outspoken member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, warned the president that Democrats would continue to oppose Bush's conservative nominees. "There's clearly no mandate from the American people to stack the courts with conservative ideologues," Schumer said. "So if the White House persists in sending us nominees who threaten to throw the courts out of whack with the country, we have no choice but to vote 'no.' "
Why have Biden and Schumer and other Judiciary Democrats taken such a radical stand? Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, now once again committee chairman, said liberal special interest groups are seeking an “ideological litmus test” to screen out judges who do not agree with them on issues such as abortion.
