Kerry on Supreme Court Ruling on School Diversity

“Today the Court ruled against all of our children and against our ideals. This mistake hits especially close to home in Massachusetts where twenty towns could be affected. Schools across our state are working to level the playing field and offer all of our children a good education, regardless of race. Metco has been a Massachusetts success story and national model, and it’s beyond unacceptable for Metco to be threatened by a horrific decision by the Supreme Court.


This decision is a terrible blow to civil rights in our country, and a disturbing reminder why we filibustered Samuel Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court in the first place. This decision has turned Brown vs. Board of Education’s promise of fairness and opportunity for all upside down. This is, simply, overheated ideological and judicial activism run amok, and our state and everyone who believes in equal opportunity have work ahead to ensure that progress is not reversed.”

January 28th, 2006 5:44 am

Clinton to support filibuster

Says she'll join Sen. Kerry in blocking Alito's nomination, putting her at odds with top Democrats

By Glenn Thrush / Newsday

WASHINGTON - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Friday announced she'll join potential 2008 presidential rival John Kerry in voting to filibuster against Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, just as top Democratic leaders predicted the effort is likely doomed.

With three Democratic senators pledging support for Alito, the New Jersey conservative seems virtually assured of being confirmed by the full Senate Monday or Tuesday, party leaders predicted Friday. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters in Washington that "everyone knows" Senate Democrats couldn't muster the 40 votes needed to support a last-ditch filibuster.

"History will show that Judge Alito's nomination is the tipping point against constitutionally-based freedoms and protections we cherish as individuals and as a nation," Clinton wrote in a statement during a fundraising stop in Seattle.

Several senators had urged their colleagues to filibuster this week, but Clinton wasn't among them, Capitol Hill aides said.

Her move seems to put her at odds with New York's senior senator, Charles Schumer, who spent last week privately arguing that a filibuster would damage Democrats' chances of taking back the Senate this year, according to party sources.

Analysts said Clinton had little choice but to back the filibuster, given Kerry's Thursday announcement that he was reviving the stop-Alito movement. For all the talk of Clinton's shift to the center on abortion, she can ill-afford to let a possible adversary outflank her on the left among liberals who favor abortion rights, according to Jennifer Duffy, who monitors the Senate for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

"It's an empty gesture," Duffy said of Clinton's announcement. "What Democratic primary voter is going to vote for her if she didn't do everything to oppose Alito? ... She had to join John Kerry."

In addition to Kerry and Reid, Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said they too would vote no on closing debate, even as they conceded their efforts would likely come up short.

Liberal and abortion rights groups have been bombarding senators' offices, infuriated that Democrats haven't done more to block Alito's confirmation.

Several other Democrats, including Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) and Kent Conrad (D- N.D.), agree with Schumer that a filibuster could alienate middle-of-the-road Democrats in this year's midterm elections.

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Still, this decision is obviously very problematic whether or not the economic theory underlying it is correct. Breyer explains it well, but there is a very strong presumption of stare decisis in statutory cases, and this case is an excellent illustration of why. The Court created a bright-line, easily applied rule in 1911. If Congress thought that the Court had distorted its intent it's had roughly 100 years to modify the statute and correct the Court. Moreover, the affected interests here are not (to put it mildly) the kind of disempowered minorities who might lack fair access to the political process. It doesn't make the rule clearer -- which might justify a departure from stare decisis -- but in fact makes it less clear and harder to apply.

Tell me again why we regard the Bush Court as any more legitimate than Cheney’s fourth branch of government?

UPDATE Another way of looking at this is that the Bush Court just took $1000 out of my pocket and gave it to the corps:

During a 38-year period from 1937 to 1975 that Congress permitted the states to adopt laws allowing retail price fixing , economists estimated that such agreements covered about 10 percent of consumer good purchases. In today’s dollars, Justice Breyer estimated that the agreements translated to a higher annual average bill for a family of four of about $750 to $1,000.

Tell me again about those tax cuts, Dear Leader! Your stories make me feel so warm and comfy!

No More Roberts or Alitos?

By Big Tent Democrat, Section Supreme Court
Posted on Fri Jun 29, 2007 at 08:16:01 AM EST

E.J. Dionne, in a "closing the barn door after the horse has gotten out" column, argues that the Senate should:



With all due respect to Dionne, that is a fine sentiment and I agree with it, but it does not undo the damage done. When "idiot liberals" like me were urging filibusters of Roberts, and especially, Sam Alito (who unlike Roberts, was not a stealth candidate, anyone who wanted to could see what he would do), we were told to be "realistic" and that Democrats needed to "keep their powder dry." Indeed, the entire fight over the "nuclear option" was made a bad joke by the capitulation of Senate Democrats on Alito.


Too many "reasonable" Democrats, law professors and court watchers (people like Cass Sunstein and Jeffrey Rosen come to mind with all their blather about "minimalism") chose to ignore the obvious. They all wanted to keep their "serious" credentials intact.

It was a moment of complete disconnect at the time and personally, I was despondent at the time that no one seemed to get it.

But the fall of 2005 and January of 2006, when the Democrats "kept their powder dry," will be with us for decades. There is no undoing that. That said, Dionne's admonitions are welcome, if late.

In January 2006, Senator John Kerry launched a doomed last-minute effort to filibuster Sam Alito’s Supreme Court nomination. He was blasted for needless grandstanding (which wasn’t a baseless charge – Kerry at the time was clearly running for President in ’08 and desperate to make friendly with the party’s grassroots), the filibuster was killed on a 72-25 vote, and Alito was confirmed shortly thereafter.

In the minority at the time, Democrats only had the votes to kill the nomination through a filibuster, and a main reason why there was so little enthusiasm for one was the assumption that if Alito went down, President Bush would just send up another conservative. He’s the duly elected President, it’s his call, elections have consequences, blah blah blah. (There was also fear of a public backlash, given polling results at the time.)

But, given the decisive shift to the right that Alito spurred by replacing Sandra Day O’Connor, it’s fair to ask whether Kerry’s point was legitimate...

"It just creates incoherence in the law"

Speaking at ACS' Supreme Court Review, former U.S. Solicitor General Walter Dellinger criticizes Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito for contradicting precedents without overtly admitting to "overturning" a prior decision:

(Video)