More on Janice Rogers Brown

Kieran Healy gives a good close reading to another Janice Rogers Brown speech, this one delivered to the Federalist Society at around the same time as the speech I cited last night.

A couple of disjointed further comments, or points to emphasize:

First, I'm struck again that both these speeches are explicit statements about the nominee's approach to her work as a judge, and the reasons she came to the view that a judge should not be afraid to overturn laws that he or she believes violate not the Constitution, but a separate "natural rights" view of economic rights. These speeches are recent and specific, significantly more relevant to her position as a judge than was Judge Robert Bork's 1971 Indiana Law Journal article that sank his nomination 16 years later.

Second, this is another case where the right is hiding behind the cloak of religion, and yet this judge appears, on the basis of these two speeches, to be about as secular as one would expect of someone who cites Ayn Rand and Chris Rock as her legal authorities. While she speaks of "natural law" and "natural rights," and attacks the Enlightenment, there is startlingly none of the traditional conservatism that one associates with that line of argument in, say, Alisdair MacIntyre, who see (roughly) the Enlightenment as the birth of rights-based liberalism and call for a return to the moral certainties of Aquinas and earlier. Natural law, to Brown, means absolute property rights and nothing else!

Third, if my old friend Steve Calabresi really believes that African-Americans are going to embrace this cold-blooded fringe philosophy simply because it is delivered by someone who is African-American and who quotes Chris Rock, I have to say, that's as nasty a bit of racial condescension as I've heard in a long time. I look forward to finding out.

The more I read about this nominee, the more I say, please, please, let's stop talking about the Nuclear Option and start talking about this judge!

Comments

[Epitome]

Your 'old friend' Mr. Calabresi here has a very peculiar train of logic, that is at best, intellectually dishonest and at worst, shameful.

I wouldn't send him a birthday card this year.

[Marc Schneider]

The amazing thing is how Bush can talk about "reaching out" to Democrats and yet nominate a judge that he knows damn well will be totally unacceptable. The GOP's ideal of compromise seems to be that we will do whatever we want and you will go along with it. There are lots of reasonable conservative judges he could have picked, yet he (or someone) picks the one most off the wall and then, of course, will play both the race card and the religion card to attack Democrats.

[The Heretik]

Decembrist, you have been all over this. It's a strange world we are living in.
Agree the trigger would have already been pulled if these guys had the votes.

What I think it's really all about can be found here Doubting Thomas , the latest from Armageddon on the Potomac

[Dennis J. Tuchler]

"Third, if my old friend Steve Calabresi really believes that African-Americans are going to embrace this cold-blooded fringe philosophy simply because it is delivered by someone who is African-American and who quotes Chris Rock, I have to say, that's as nasty a bit of racial condescension as I've heard in a long time."

It isn't condescending to assume that members of disfavored groups have, by way of a sense of solidarity, a tendency to forgive if not accept the acts of members of that group (at least, publicly). I am a member of such a group and I recall my parents and friends acting with the same sense of solidarity with "our own", while ruing in private that the act might be ascribed to "us".

[Steve]

I wouldn't say the African-American community has a long history of reflexively supporting conservative African-American judges. In fact, I remember the general reaction to Clarence Thomas as just the opposite.

[J. Jonah Jameson]

It's truly the last days of the Republic when this kind of debate is waged not over the judge's right to simply adhere to Constitutional law, but her right to adhere to a bizarro world pagan offshot of libertarianism called "Natural Law," which apparently has no sanction anywhere in the existing body of law established in the Constitution and subsequent precedent.

Emperor Nero wanted the new statue of his head to be 500 feet tall. The Roman Senate argued it should be about 200 feet tall to save money. Nero, of course, was notoriously fat and ugly. The giant head was built. This was during a time when the treasury was bankrupt and the citizens of Rome were starving following the collapse of Nero's fiat currency.

All of this was insane and had nothing to do with Rome.

The Romans had an excuse. Historians say the lead used in their cookingware had undoubtedly unhinged their minds. Toxic metal poisoning had made so many Romans completely crazy that nobody questioned the basic premise of building a gigantic stone head of the Emperor. They just argued over how big it should be.

Americans have this fierce debate over whether or not "natural law," a cult movement, should be permitted to influence a judge's decisions. A judge to appointed to protect the Constitution and uphold the law described therein, nothing more and nothing less.

We've got supreme court judges explaining how U.N. mandates now determine their rulings and "world community" influences their take on what law it is they should uphold.

The real way to cure the illness that afflicts this sick beast called America is best delivered as a ground burst and is preferred in a dosage of several thousand megatons. It won't be long now before Russia or China and their allies write the prescription.

[Abby Vigneron]

Exactly, we should be talking about Janice Brown as the Judge who thinks that the New Deal (and Social Security) is the moral equivalent of the Bolshevik Revolution, the advent of the most totalitarian regime in hiostory. We should point out that she believes that the absolute right to private property is more important than the Constitution.

And then we should mention that without the threat of the filibuster, none of this would receive adequate scrutiny for all of the reasons you cited above. Why isn't anyone with access to a microphone doing this?

Calling Al Franken please, just to get the ball rolling, you know.

[Lloyd]

Natural Law a fringe cult movement with no bearing on the drafting of the constitution?

Unbelievable. You don't actually believe that do you? Have you read any history? You may want to.

[PQ]

Lloyd: reading some history might reveal that what, say, Madison or Jefferson meant by "nature's law" is a quite different thing than what Judge Brown seems to be talking about. Don't confuse the words with the ideology.

[Lloyd]

So there is a cult that uses the term "Natural Law" and there is a political philosophy championed by Locke, adopted by Jefferson, Madison, Alexander, Jay, Adams, etc termed "Natural Law"? And you're contention is that Janice Rogers Brown is a member of a cult that uses the term "Natural Law" to describe something that to an uninformed observer looks identical to the "Natural Law" of Jefferson, Madison, Alexander, Jay, Adams and others but is completely different and wholley sinister.

The truely cultish belief is that the founding fathers had something other than Locke's natural law theory in mind. If it wasn't Natural Law that they were referencing what was it? Mystical dancing tree judges, social darwinism, what?

Its ridiculous to seperate the driving philosophical force behind 17th and 18th century liberalism (natural law and natural rights) from the US constitution and it's just as ridiculous to oppose a judge on the grounds that she happened to agree with that philosophy.