Not Such a Good Choice for the Supreme Court?

After listening to the glowing endorsements by a couple of liberal pundits on NPR while coming home from the gym, I had assumed that Bush's nomination of John G. Roberts to the Supreme Court was actually a (surprisingly) good move, from a progressive point of view. I say "surprisingly" because as this is Bush's final term as president he certainly had nothing to lose by appointing a hardline conservative to the post. (Well, perhaps he mightn't have anything to lose, but his political party probably would have suffered a backlash in the next round of elections.) But considering how uncompromising Bush has been in his nominations (his nomination of that thug John Bolton as ambassador to the U.N. comes to mind), I felt like he'd had something of a change of heart.

Not so fast, el Piggo. After surfing around a little, it would appear that Mr. Roberts actually does come with some baggage in the form of a conservative agenda. Just read up a little on his record on separation of church and state, civil rights, abortion, habeas corpus, and so on. He's definitely tilted to the right.

I'm seeing a number of liberals on the Web decrying this nomination as the end of all things. The Alliance for Justice, an alliance of environmental, civil rights, mental health, women's, children's and consumer advocacy organizations that opposed Roberts' confirmation to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, is none too happy about Roberts's nomination. Then, there are others like me who aren't too thrilled but acknowledge that it could have been worse (how about arch-fascist Alberto Gonzales for starters?).

Of course, many liberal conspiracy theorists are convinced that Dubya will pull his ace from his hole (so to speak) by nominating an über-conservative to replace Rehnquist in the next year or two.

So is Roberts the wrong choice? Maybe, maybe not. The consensus seems to be that we just don't know enough about the guy. He's very young (50) for one thing. But is he an extremist? My gut feeling is no, but I've been wrong plenty of times before. This guy could be a Manchurian Candidate, ready to unveil a radical-right agenda at any moment. If in the near future women have to resort to coat hangers, high school graduations include religious ceremonies, affirmative action and Title IX get overturned, and endangered species lose even more of their protections, we'll know the answer.