California Conservative

This week, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion in the “Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights” case. In his opinion, he gave FAIR a dose of some bitter vinegar, though it starts out relatively ‘vinegar-free’:

“Accommodating the military’s message,” Roberts wrote, “does not affect the law schools’ speech, because the schools are not speaking when they host interviews and recruiting receptions. Unlike a parade organizer’s choice of parade contingents, a law school’s decision to allow recruiters on campus is not inherently expressive.”

It isn’t until the closing that he gives them a healthy dose of his vinegar:

“Nothing about recruiting,” Roberts wrote, “suggests that law schools agree with any speech by recruiters. We have held that high school students can appreciate the difference between speech a school sponsors and speech the school permits because legally required to do so, pursuant to an equal access policy. Surely students have not lost that ability by the time they get to law school.”

Ouch. It should be noted that not only did the Supremes strike this argument down hard, they slapped it down unanimously. I’m guessing that this case will have a chilling effect on alot of the silly court cases that are filed annually. I can’t imagine that this is the type of verdict that these law professors want to be associated with.

On another note, people have noticed that there’s alot more unanimity with the Roberts Court than with the Rehnquist Court. That isn’t a shot at Chief Justice Rehnquist. It’s high praise for Chief Justice Roberts. Here’s what the LA Times had to say about that this morning:

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., in less than six months as leader of the Supreme Court, has turned the famously quarrelsome justices, at least for now, into a surprisingly agreeable group that is becoming known for unanimous rulings.
Monday’s decision rejecting a free-speech challenge to having military recruiters on college campuses marked the ninth consecutive ruling in which all of the justices agreed.
———-
The outbreak of harmony has lawyers and law professors wondering whether they are seeing a court transformed or a honeymoon for the chief justice. “I think it is a real phenomenon, and it’s because of the new chief,” said Georgetown University law professor Richard J. Lazarus. “As the court begins to define itself anew, there is a real effort by all of them to build a new court. And it has brought them together.”

It’s too early to reach any long-lasting conclusions about the Roberts Court but I do think that the qualities we saw in his confirmation hearings are winning people over to his line of thinking. His intellect, charisma and logic make him a persuasive force on the court.

It was easy to see that he’d have this effect on the Supreme Court by how he manhandled liberal lion Ted Kennedy, Dick Durbin and Russ Feingold. They looked positively impotent in their questioning of him. Who can forget Roberts answering Durbin’s feeble question “What assurances do we have that you’ll side with the little guy?” Roberts responded, saying “Senator, I’ll guarantee to you that when the law is on the little guy’s side, he’ll get my vote everytime.” No hint of pandering. No thought of saying what Durbin wanted to hear. He just stated his judicial philosophy without hesitation and with total clarity. You can’t do better than that.

Cross-post at LetFreedomRing

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 8th, 2006 at 3:36 pm and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Judiciary, Law, Liberals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.