Color Coded Justice: John Roberts' Racial Hang-up
by Joshua Frank
www.dissidentvoice.org
August 3, 2005



 

First, Supreme Court nominee John Roberts Jr. lied about his membership with the far right-wing Federalist Society, and now file cabinets full of documents are being released which indicate Roberts' penchant for justice is color coded. He says he won't be an activist judge. But he's lying again. Right-wing activism is all Roberts knows.

On Thursday, July 28, Senator Edward Kennedy alleged that Roberts has a “rather cramped view of the Voting Rights Act.”

What an understatement.

In a series of documents which were recently disclosed by the Bush administration, Roberts noted it was his opinion that extending the 1965 Act, which was under consideration while Roberts worked for the Reagan Administration, would “not simply extend the existing and effective Voting Rights Act, but would dramatically change it ... It's not broken so there's no need to fix it.”

In another document during the same period, Roberts wrote that specific legislation designed to overturn a separate ruling by the Supreme Court “radically expand the civil rights laws to areas never before considered covered.” Consequently, Roberts urged the Court should vote against it.

This leads one to believe that perhaps Roberts is a bit on the racially charged side of the hate spectrum.

Maybe a lot.

As The New York Times recently reported, “In December 1981, the United States Commission on Civil Rights issued a report broadly defending affirmative action as a way to combat pervasive discrimination. Judge Roberts wrote a blistering critique, saying the ‘obvious reason’ affirmative action programs had failed was that they ‘required the recruiting of inadequately prepared candidates.’”

Let's clarify Roberts' remarks. It was his opinion that it was “obvious” that the minorities recruited under affirmative action policies were, by definition, “inadequately prepared candidates.” In other words, it wasn't possible for these black and Latino applicants to be anything but “inadequately prepared.”

Roberts' intolerant position was not based on any sort of legal facts or even a conservative reading of the Constitution. His position was based on a racial predisposition.

Go tell the Democrats that John Roberts Jr. is not fit to serve on the high court. Let them know he might be better suited for Grand Dragon. I hear there's an opening.

Joshua Frank is the author of the brand new book, Left Out!: How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush, which has just been published by Common Courage Press. You can order a copy at a discounted rate at www.brickburner.org. Joshua can be reached at Joshua@brickburner.org. Read an excellent review of Left Out! by Adam Engel.

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