Robert George on Roberts' Nomination

David Mills sent me this story from the Baptist Press, which quotes senior editor Robert P. George on the recent nomination on John Roberts to the Supreme Court.

For pro-lifers, it is a matter of [Roberts'] view of the Constitution. Even without a commitment by Roberts on Roe, they appear content to trust his judicial philosophy.

“The pro-life and pro-family movement has never demanded anything more, but is unwilling to accept anything less, than constitutionalist judges ...,” law and ethics specialist Robert George told reporters in a July 20 conference call. “By constitutionalist judge, what we mean, and have always meant, is a judge who recognizes the distinction between interpreting the law and making the law and, together with that, understands that in a system of limited government, judges too are under the rule of law. They don’t simply make up the law. They are constrained by the constitutional limits of their own power and they must avoid usurping the power of the elected representatives of the people and thus violating the constitutional principles of deliberative democracy that we have.

“It’s clear from the record that Judge Roberts is a constitutionalist judge,” said George, a member of the President’s Council on Bioethics. “That means that the president has kept faith with his pledge to appoint such a person to the Supreme Court ... so this is an appointment the pro-life and pro-family movement should applaud.”

Comments

[William Luse]

I guess we'll have to wait and see. He is known to have said during his 2003 confirmation hearing that "Roe v. Wade is the settled law of the land. ... it's a little more than settled. It was reaffirmed in the face of a challenge ... There's nothing in my personal views that would prevent me from fully and faithfully applying that precedent."
It may be that as a Supreme Court justice he would be willing to overturn that infamous ruling. But it also seems that as an appeals court judge he was, or would have been, willing to cooperate with a manifest evil. Hat tip to Zippy Catholic.

[David Gustafson]

According to the Associated Press, Mr. and Mrs. Roberts are Roman Catholics who attend Little Flower Catholic Church in Chevy Chase, Md. Mrs. Roberts has been substantially involved with the organization Feminists for Life--on their board for some years, Executive VP for a while, and still doing pro bono legal work. The Robertses adopted their two children. I'm hopeful (but not completely confident) that all this might mean something good about Mr. Roberts's anthropology, if not his constitutional theory.