It's 'Hatched'

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By a 10-8 party line vote with sometimes bitter partisan debate, the Senate Judiciary Committee today recommended that Judge Samuel Alito be confirmed by the full Senate as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

The nomination will move to the full Senate tomorrow, with a vote expected by the end of the week.
Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) summs it up brilliantly:

I believe, Mr. Chairman, that the key to this nominee's opposition is, indeed, to be found in his testimony before this committee.

Judge Alito, after all, testified that the judiciary has an important but limited role. His opponents must believe that the judiciary should have an all-important and unlimited role.

It seems that some on the left cannot abide a judge who thinks that the Constitution, the supreme law of the land, governs not only the legislative and executive branch, but also the judicial branch as well.

Judge Alito said that judges do not have authority to change the Constitution. While constitutional principles must be applied to new factual situations, he said, quote, "the principles don't change," unquote.

That alone, in the eyes of the critics, must be the confirmation kiss of death. How, after all, will they achieve a political agenda that the people reject if the Constitution is not whatever the judges say it is?

In deciding cases, Judge Alito said he begins and often ends with the text of the statute, that statutes are presumptively constitutional and that there is a presumption that precedents will be followed.

There he goes again, outlining an important but limited role for judges.

And I can see why some of his critics are so worked up. A judge like this is bound to make us legislators act like, well, legislators.

Judge Alito's testimony before this committee was absolutely consistent with the system of limited government and separated powers established by America's founders.

His testimony was just as inconsistent with the system of judicial activism that some political interests favor so that they can achieve their agenda through the courts rather than through the elected representatives.

That is what this debate is about. The reason why so many senators and the political interests to which they cater will not support Judge Alito is that they cannot support the kind of limited judiciary that he represents.

A limited judiciary will not get them where they want to go. A limited judiciary leaves too many issues, too many questions, too many decisions to the people and to the people's elected representatives.

The debate over judicial appointments in general and over this nomination in particular is about whether the American people and those they elect still have the power to make the law and define the culture, or whether judges, unelected judges, should do it for us instead.

Like America's founders, Judge Alito clearly believes in self- government, that the people not judges, should make the law, and that judges have an important role, but must know and stay in their proper place.

That is why his critics oppose him, and that is why he must be confirmed.

Check out Michelle Malkin's Alito Watch "We'll Clean Your Clock", and Blogs for Bush live blogged it:

Yes

   1. Brownback
   2. Coburn
   3. Cornyn
   4. DeWine
   5. Graham
   6. Grassley
   7. Hatch
   8. Kyl
   9. Sessions
  10. Specter

No

   1. Biden
   2. Durbin
   3. Feingold
   4. Feinstein
   5. Kennedy
   6. Kohl
   7. Leahy
   8. Schumer

Polipundit says the Dems will come to regret their Alito Standard.

Professor Bainbridge,"The politicization of the confirmation process the Democrats began when they first turned bork into a verb thus continues.

Of course, the confirmation process has become so politicized precisely because our courts have become so politicized. We have allowed nine old men and women in robes to elevate themselves into a super-legislature in which they exercise privileges they deny to our elected representatives."

Related on ATB:

Cry Wolf Whilst Pointing To A Hamster
Alito The Radical
Alito 'The Untouchable
Alito's Justice Will Prevail
The Ship Of Fools
Joining Forces In Scalitovision 2005

More @ Sister Toldjah, Political Pitbull, The Strataspere, Ace of Spades HQ, Althouse, Stop The ACLU, and  Lawyers, Guns and Money for the dems view.

Comments

[Kenny Pierce]

NxN,

Okay, that's pretty scary...how did you remember how to find that? I didn't even remember what post that comment was from and would never have found it without the link.

[antimedia]

Just an FYI. California Yankee is keeping an Alito vote watch. He has it 52 for and 23 against right now, with one Democrat (Nelson, NE) crossing over and some RINOS and a lot of Democrats still undecided.

[North by Northwest]

Hey Kenny,

Senator Hatch's statement reminds me of the great discussion early November last year on Alexandra's post: Joining Forces in Scalitovision 2005. It's well worth re-reading in light of what Hatch had to say. In response to Jim R's comment "...If the framers were precognizant, they may have included specifics like abortion. They weren’t so they didn’t. It was left to a judge nearly 200 years later...", you paved the way for Hatch's brilliant summary:

Right there. Right there in a nutshell you have the difference. It was not left to a judge 200 years later. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, a thousand times no, nyet, me genoito, mais absolument non. It was left to the People. There is a procedure set out by the Constitution by which any deficiency in the Constitution is to be remedied, for God's sake, and it bloody well does not involve "a judge realizes that the Constitution doesn't address something he thinks it should have addressed so he announces that it says what he thinks it should have said to begin with." That is precisely the difference between judicial activism and judicial restraint. If the Constitution doesn't address it, that doesn't mean an appointed-for-life, out-of-control judge should leap in and fill the gap; it means the judge should shut the hell up and let the people, by means of their elected officials, address the issue.

[...]

Or here's another way to make the same point: a leftist Supreme Court has imposed upon the people of the United States an exceptionally extreme far-left position on abortion. The analogue in the other direction would be a Supreme Court that imposed, equally by judicial fiat, a standard that said that fetuses had an absolute Constitutional right to life that legislatures could not abrogate or threaten. If Alito were to hold the perfectly reasonable position that the Constitution in fact does not address the specific issue of abortion either way, and that therefore until such time as the people choose to address that issue Constitutionally through amendment, the issue was properly remanded to the legislatures of the individual states to work out such compromises as the People might find most palatable -- why, then Teddy Kennedy would call Alito an "extremist." But those justices who imposed the present extreme far-left position on all Americans by judicial fiat? To Teddy Kennedy, they're "mainstream."

Good stuff. Go and read it if you haven't - and if you have, read it again anyway ;-)