Why SCOTUS Pick Should Be Pryor

It has been announced that President Donald Trump is going to publicly announce his nominee for the opening in the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) on Monday evening.

The announcement is to take place during a live television broadcast at 8:00pm EST. This is a high profile time slot, and is entirely befitting the important nature of this vital nomination.

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest federal court in our nation. Established in 1789 by our original U.S. Constitution, the SCOTUS has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all courts in the land. 

Thus, SCOTUS is the final arbiter on nearly all court cases of vital national interest. Decisions are rendered by a majority vote of the Chief Justice and eight associate justices, all of whom serve a lifetime term.

That last part is vitally important. Once a justice is appointed to the SCOTUS, they serve until they either die, retire, resign, or are impeached and convicted by the U.S. Congress. Since no SCOTUS justice has ever been successfully impeached and convicted, appointees are almost certainly going to serve as long as they wish.

The only U.S. President to serve a full term in office and not have the opportunity to appoint a justice to the SCOTUS was Jimmy Carter. Now, less than two weeks into his first term in office, President Trump gets that opportunity.

Trump's pick is vitally important for a number of reasons, but primarily because the court vacancy that he is filling has been open for nearly a year. Last February 13, longtime noted SCOTUS justice Antonin Scalia passed away suddenly in his sleep at age 79.

The Trouble With Harriet

President George W. Bush has nominated Harriet Miers, the official White House Counsel, to replace the retiring Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS).

The nomination was made on Monday October 3rd, 2005, the same day that John Roberts officially took his seat as Bush’s first SCOTUS appointee, and also took the reigns as the new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, replacing the recently deceased William Rehnquist.

The fact that the President had the opportunity to appoint two new judges to the court at all during his term, let alone the rare opportunity to appoint two within a couple of months, should have been a cause for euphoric celebration on the Right, his and the Republican party’s base.

When Mr. Bush was elected, he promised his constituency that, if given an opportunity to make appointments to the court, his appointee(s) would be strict constructionists in the mold of current conservative SCOTUS stalwarts Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

In last year’s Presidential election, Bush defeated Democratic nominee John Kerry by receiving over 62 million votes, the highest vote total ever received by any American candidate for the office.

A large number of these voters, certainly the vast majority needed to secure Mr. Bush’s victory, knew when they cast their ballots that there was a strong likelihood of at least one, and likely multiple SCOTUS openings that would be filled by the man sitting in the Oval Office during the next term.

Mr. Bush’s pledge to appoint solid conservatives who could likely be counted on to help reverse the court’s decades-long liberal leanings was one of the principal reasons that he received many of those votes.

So now, flash forward to less than a year after the election. Justice O’Connor announces her retirement, and within a couple of months, aging Chief Justice Rehnquist passes away after a period of ill health.

Within a year, Mr. Bush has the opportunity to reward those 62 million voters with a pair of solid, proven conservative constructionists.

Who is John Roberts, and Why Should You Care?

Earlier this week, in a nationally televised announcement befitting the importance of the occasion, President Bush introduced his nominee to the United States Supreme Court. He named Washington, D.C. circuit court judge John Roberts to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

But just who is John Roberts, and why should you care? Why is this whole Supreme Court thing such a big deal?

Why are you going to be saturated with coverage of Roberts’ confirmation hearings, and why is the same thing going to happen as the President makes even more appointments in the future.

First, let’s get the biography out of the way. John Roberts is a 50-year old married father of two children, a native of Buffalo, New York who graduated magna cum laude from both Harvard College and Harvard Law School. While at Harvard he served as Managing Editor of the Harvard Law Review.

Out of law school in 1980, Roberts clerked for current Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist. He moved on to become an associate counsel to the Reagan administration, and then took on the position of deputy solicitor general under the first George Bush, arguing cases for the government position in front of the Supreme Court.

Courting a Texas Originalist

The announcement was not unexpected, it had been rumored at least for weeks. And yet when Sandra Day O’Connor announced her resignation from the U.S. Supreme Court last week it still seemed to take many of us by surprise.

It has been 11 long years since the last opening occurred on the nation’s highest court, and it was beginning to seem like this latest coterie of individuals would preside over our most intimate and important issues forever.

Of course, nothing lasts forever but God Himself, and so this opening for a new appointment to the court was inevitable.

Mrs. O’Connor was the first female to ever be appointed to the court, named by the man who was just recently voted the greatest American in history by a poll conducted by the Discovery Channel and AOL, beloved former President Ronald Reagan.

However, it was not just making history that Reagan was after. He had been out front in helping defeat the Equal Rights Amendment, which proved to be the death knell for the activist womens’ movement that had swept across liberal America during the 1970’s.

In defeating the ERA, Reagan had promised to appoint the first woman to the high court if elected in 1980. When he nominated O’Connor, who was obviously pro-abortion in her decisions, the most conservative Senators fell in line and approved her, not wanting to challenge their staunchly conservative leader as he appointed the first woman ever to the court.