Norman Lear’s well-funded organ for political activism called People for the American Way (PAW) sees itself as a secularized St. George slaying the dragon of any public expression of religion. PAW seeks a world in which the First Amendment is the exclusive domain of the liberals, while conservatives and church-going Americans are cast into constitutional exterior darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
The “dragon” which PAW is now chasing with a passion is Ronald Reagan’s appointments to the Federal courts. PAW has just discovered that they may reflect Reagan’s political philosophy and, horror of horrors, may include judges who believe in fundamental moral law.
PAW worries that, by the end of his second term, Reagan will have appointed half of the Federal judges. What worries PAW even more is the fact that five U.S. Supreme Court judges today are over age 76 and that President Reagan may choose the Justices to replace them.
One wonders if PAW’s summer Newsletter called “Forum” was what inspired a September front-page article in the Wall Street Journal headlined “Stacked Bench? Reagan Appointments to the Federal Bench Worry U.S. Liberals.” Funny thing, I don’t remember any front-page stories worrying about bench-stacking during the regimes of Jimmy Carter and other liberal Presidents.
Yet, the influence of those ideological liberal judicial appointees has been pervasive, pernicious, and persevering. Jimmy Carter had an ideological litmus test plus a race/sex quota. His judicial nominees had to be pre-convention-Carter, liberal, pro-abortion, pro-feminist Democrats.
In 1980 the American voters repudiated Jimmy Carter and put Ronald Reagan in the White House. But Jimmy Carter had appointed 265 Federal court judges, 35% of the total, who could write their liberal activism into law for the next 30 years.
Now that Ronald Reagan is making appointments, PAW is calling for “a national letter-writing drive” and is running double-page ads in newspapers to “help fight radical restructuring of the American system of justice.” PAW claims that “judicial nominees are being screened along rigid doctrinal lines.”
There is nothing new about Supreme Court appointments being made for political reasons rather than on judicial experience and prestige. The liberal media and activists didn’t find anything wrong with liberals stacking the courts, not only to advance their political goals but also to engage in judicial “legislation” to achieve them.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed William O. Douglas to the U.S. Supreme Court because he wanted to replace what he called the “nine old men” with youthful liberal Justices who would carry out the New Deal ideology. Douglas did exactly that on the Court for 36 years. He lasted through the fourth term of President Roosevelt and the terms of Presidents Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford.
Douglas’ prejudice against religion was so intense that he even questioned the constitutionality of chaplains in the armed services and the words “In God We Trust” on our money. His decisions and behavior were so objectionable that Congressman Gerald Ford (unsuccessfully) tried to have Douglas impeached because of his money dealings with Las Vegas gamblers.
President Dwight Eisenhower didn’t do any ideological screening of his judicial appointees and, as a result, the liberals got their judges appointed even after the voters elected a conservative Republican President.
Eisenhower’s Supreme Court appointees were Earl Warren and William Brennan. Eisenhower later told friends that he regretted the Warren appointment more than anything he ever did. If Ike had lived longer, he probably would have regretted Brennan even more because he has been the moving force behind dozens of landmark liberal 5-to-4 majority decisions.
The principal attribute which the Reagan Administration is seeking in judicial candidates is judicial restraint. The Reagan Administration is seeking judges who will confine themselves to interpreting the Constitution and laws the way they were written, not the way they wish they had been written.
