Alito and Marriage in America

Over the next months attention will be devoted to divining Judge Alito’s probable position on Roe v. Wade. Will he affirm it or overrule it or chip away at it? No matter what happens to his nomination, states will continue to line up to send the Supreme Court new laws restricting or criminalizing abortion in whole or in part in hopes that the Roberts Court will overturn Roe or at least weaken it more.

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Getting to a Nominee’s View of the Constitution

Harriet Miers has submitted her response to the questionnaire of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Her response reveals her to be a competent, ambitious, corporate functionary. She rose through the ranks to lead her law firm and the Texas Bar while representing big corporations (that’s what big law firms do) and participating in every conceivable community/legal/charitable/do-good organization in sight. No wonder she didn’t have much of a personal life. She was out networking, connecting, schmoozing and getting ahead. Like Woody Allen, she showed the value of “showing up”. Even so, she ends up with a fraction of the net worth of John Roberts. Maybe she should have come to Washington sooner. John Roberts’s questionnaire revealed precious little in community involvement, in fact virtually none. He was a legal eagle with little time for the rest of life.

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Mister Roberts

The theatrical Mister Roberts was a wartime naval officer who cared about the men on his ship more than he cared about his career. He also cared about getting into the thick of the fight. These two goals provided the dramatic conflict in the play written by Joshua Logan that premiered on Broadway in 1948. Robert’s captain was the one obstacle that stood in the way, since there was no way Roberts could get transferred to a destroyer without the captain’s signature on the transfer form. The captain wasn’t about to oblige because Roberts was a superb officer, and because of this the captain was willing to overlook Robert’s nasty habit of standing up for the interests of the crew and confronting the captain at every opportunity. The crew eventually held a contest to forge the captain’s signature, which got Roberts his transfer to a destroyer and which got him killed. The play enjoyed a limited revival this year in Washington at the Kennedy Center. I wonder if Judge Roberts went to see it? Continue reading