Today’s New York Times features an excellent analysis by the always insightful and thorough Linda Greenhouse of Chief Justice John Roberts’ judicial activism. http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/opinionator/2013/06/29/the-real-john-roberts-emerges/?post_id=100000494110066_689159031110561#_=_
While its headline – “The Real John Roberts Emerges” – suggests that the Chief Justice has only recently revealed himself, the fact is that we’ve known the “real” John Roberts all along.
“The chief justice’s antipathy toward the Voting Rights Act itself was well known, and was a significant reason that major civil rights groups opposed his confirmation to the court in 2005. Following his nomination, memos came to light that he had written more than 20 years earlier as a young lawyer in the Reagan.administration
…
“Questioned at his confirmation hearing by Senator Edward M. Kennedy about his views on the Voting Rights Act, Mr. Roberts, then a judge, asserted that he had been acting at the time as a staff lawyer advising a cle he had an open mind.”
As executive director of the National Urban League Policy Institute, I fought Robert’s nomination tooth and nail, knowing that he would take his anti-voting rights and anti-civil rights agenda to the high court.
So, I was flabbergasted when several senators who should have known better swallowed Roberts’ “I was just a partisan functionary then but I promise to be fair now,” ignored his record, and then voted to confirm him, slapping in the face the very people who depend on them to do the right thing.
And now that Chief Justice Roberts has shredded the Voting Rights Act with the very sword they handed him, these senators owe it to the nation to stop acting as if they didn’t see this coming and then do whatever it takes to repair the damage.
And, while they’re doing that, they need to apologize to us for helping to give such power to a man who last week demonstrated what many of us already knew.