1986: Lawman's Legacy

Congress tried standing up to him occasionally, as in early 1986.

From Paul Slansky, The Clothes Have No Emperor—

3/13 Federal district judge nominee Jefferson B. Sessions is questioned by the Senate Judiciary Committee about some derogatory comments he made about the NACCP and his statement that the Klan was "OK" until he found out that some were "pot smokers."

"I may have said something about the NACCP being un-American or Communist," he admits, "but I meant no harm by it." He is the first of President Reagan's judicial appointments to be denied confirmation.

5/6 Having prevented [Sessions'] confirmation... the Democrats try for two, taking on Reagan appeals court nominee Daniel A. Manion... whose career is closely tied to that of his John Bircher father, and whose legal writings are rife with what The New York Times describes as "non-standard spelling, grammar and syntax"... [Manion] is defended by Indiana senator Dan Quayle, who went to law school with him and therefore knows that he "epitomizes what we all like to see in jurisprudence."

Only a few weeks later—

6/17 Chief Justice Earl Warren gives up his lifetime seat on the Supreme Court to organize the hype for next year's Bicentennial of the Constitution. President Reagan promotes the court's most right-wing Justice, William Rehnquist, to the top spot, and names conservative Antonin Scalia to the vacancy, beginning the remaking of the court that his foes have long feared would be his lasting legacy.

7/30 At his confirmation hearing, William Rehnquist:

• Explains that a 1952 memo he wrote supporting the "separate but equal" doctrine represented not his views, but those of the justice he was clerking for

• Denies having challenged the credentials of minority voters in the early '60s

• Claims to have no recall that his Vermont vacation home came with an unlawful covenant prohibiting its sale to anyone of the "Hebrew race," though a 1974 letter from his lawyer informing him of this is soon discovered.

Senators are left to decide whether the Chief Justice should be a man who somehow forgot that the deed to his house was illegal.

9/17 William Rehnquist is confirmed as Chief Justice, 65-33—the highest negative vote ever received by a confirmed justice.

Then, having exhausted themselves, members debate for about five minutes before confirming the equally conservative Antonin Scalia, 98-0.

From a 1993 article here, on the Reagan crew's screening of potential judicial appointments for ideological correctness. Done because

... in view of its inability to push aspects of its so-called "social issues agenda" through Congress--for example, constitutional amendments overturning Roe and permitting official prayer in public schools--the Reagan administration put the highest priority on reshaping the federal judiciary into a force for, in turn, reshaping constitutional law. These concerted efforts contradicted conservatives' longstanding protest, in criticizing pro-human rights rulings of the Warren and Burger Courts, that the federal courts should not be "activist" policy-making institutions. This stringent ideological screening continued through the Bush [I] administration.

Recently published research--the first analyses of the rulings of Reagan-Bush federal court appointees--shows that the concerted efforts to pack the federal courts with conservative judges during the past twelve years had a marked impact in shifting these courts to the right... both Presidents Reagan and Bush made good on their promises to remold the federal bench into one that is less expansive in interpreting individual rights and less likely to rule in favor of civil rights claimants.

At all levels of the federal courts, Reagan's efforts live on. By late 1999, Stephen Pomper would write in Washington Monthly that

... in a series of dry, technically devastating opinions, Republican judges have engineered what former Solicitor General Walter Dellinger has referred to as "one of the three or four major shifts in constitutionalism we've seen in the last two centuries."

Of course, the ultra-partisan Rehnquist will be around long enough to preside over Bush v Gore—preparing the way for his own successor, and putting Bush Jr. in place to ensure, among so many other things, that an entrenched, politicized judiciary could wreak unlimited abuse.

Back in 1986, Daniel Manion was indeed confirmed for the court seat he occupied for over twenty years.

And a little rejection never stopped a Republican retread.

In this case, a retread who currently works his retribution in the Senate: against a Democratic president's judicial nominations, as well as against any interests other than those of wealth and racist privilege.