Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

Political influence in judicial selection?  I share the Professors shock at such an unseemly thing.  The very idea that the Democrats can do it too! Stunning.

I know, Berkeley’s law school can balance things out by hiring torture memo boy John Yoo.

masaccio,

I was not aware that the president of Berkeley had anything to do with pushing the torture memos.  Interesting that Berkeley would actually hire somebody who actually gave a damn about our country and its military who are in danger.  Or are you just generally being snarky.

masaccio, did you ever read those memos? They did not advocate something basic like considering a nominee’s judicial philosophy and how it will generally affect the development of the law. The memo writers advocated trying to influence a SPECIFIC case to get the result they favor. It’s appropriate for the President and the Senate to consider general judicial philosophy and temperament when making and confirming judicial appointments. It is not appropriate for politicians to try to change the decision in a single particular case by playing games with the appointment process.

Gee, PatHMV, I guess the effort of the Bush supporters to rush its people to the court to influence the outcome of a specific case is different from the effort of the democras to stop it.

And Dick, here is your protection of the military and so on:

Cassel: If the President deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?
Yoo: No treaty.
Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.
Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.

More here:  http://tinyurl.com/c2w32

I have trouble with this, myself.  It did not seem to bother the good professor as much as politics does.

I’m having a hard time getting too worked up about this.  How is this any different than the President timing his appointments or the majority party timing the scheduling of hearings to get the results they want at the right time?

I can answer Coenellian:

Because the President didn’t say “let’s put Alito on the Court specifically so that he’ll vote in the Padilla case to allow me to do what I want,” nor did Congress say “let’s schedule our hearings over Roberts a week later so that he can vote to uphold X in case Y currently pending before his Circuit.”

The Memogate fiasco was about that and more.  There was a memo (from the racially sensitive Democrats, remember) to vote against somebody *because* he was black.  And there were memos to delay hearings in such a way that it was clear to the judges that “you won’t get by us unless you vote this way on this pending case.”

That’s how it’s different.  I would argue it’s even different from what Congress did with Schiavo.  Congress’s actions in Schiavo went in the public record.  Memogate was meant to be secret from the beginning.

Max~

So what you’re saying is that it’s different because the Dems were dumb enough to put it in writing?