(Darryl) Levinson thesis

[Malla Pollack]

I agree with Sandy's comment and right after the hearings sent the Democrats
on the committee emails saying so.  I would hope that other opponents of
Alito would become vocal enough to make a filibuster workable.

            However, on another point, would someone with knowledge of the
Senate rules care to comment on the Republican leadership blocking Democrats
from making anti-Alito speeches on the floor? 

 

Malla Pollack

Professor, American Justice School of Law

Visiting Univ. of Idaho, College of Law

mpollack at uidaho.edu

208-885-2017

 

-----Original Message-----
From: conlawprof-bounces at lists.ucla.edu
[mailto:conlawprof-bounces at lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Sanford Levinson
Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2006 6:04 PM
To: Sanford Levinson
Cc: conlawprof-bounces at lists.ucla.edu; CONLAWPROF at lists.ucla.edu;
LawCourts-L at usc.edu
Subject: RE: (Darryl) Levinson thesis

 

>From a story that will appear in tomorrow's NYTimes about Sen. Leahy's
opposition to Alito:

 

Judge Alito is expected to win the vote of the Judiciary Committee, with its
10 Republicans and 8 Democrats. But Democratic leaders seemed to be laying
out a strategy, beginning with Mr. Leahy's speech today, to put forth the
arguments for their opposition in order to make a campaign issue of his
decisions on the court if he is confirmed, as expected.

 

This seems to me a criminally irresponsible strategy.  If they believe that
Alito will in fact vote so badly that he can become a genuine campaign
issue, then they have a responsibility to filibuster him and dare the
Republicans to go nuclear.  If they're not willing to filibuster, then they
simply cannot be taken seriously as an opposition party.  Posturing and
hoping that voters who generally know almost nothing about the Supreme Court
and its cases, save for extremely high-profile cases involving abortion and
affirmative action (and even then no one actually reads the cases, as
against newspaper articles reporting on the results) is even worse than
criminal, it is stupid.  Their attempt to demonize Alito in November will
sound absolutely hollow and opportunistic if they've not done everything
possible to defeat the nomination.  I can't imagine the Republican Party
acquiescing in, say, a Laurence Tribe appointment so that they can make a
campaign issue of it in November. 

 

sandy

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/private/conlawprof/attachments/20060120/3375175d/attachment.htm