Liberal Repercussion

Specter as ally


By LARA JAKES JORDAN
Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA -- The Republican expected to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee next year bluntly warned newly re-elected President Bush today against putting forth Supreme Court nominees who would seek to overturn abortion rights or are otherwise too conservative to win confirmation.

"When you talk about judges who would change the right of a woman to choose, overturn Roe v. Wade, I think that is unlikely," Specter said, referring to the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.

"The president is well aware of what happened, when a bunch of his nominees were sent up, with the filibuster," Specter added, referring to Senate Democrats' success over the past four years in blocking the confirmation of many of Bush's conservative judicial picks. "... And I would expect the president to be mindful of the considerations which I am mentioning."

(As Chairman of the Judiciary Committee) Specter, 74, would have broad authority to reshape the nation's highest court (in the new Congress). He would have wide latitude to schedule hearings, call for votes and make the process as easy or as hard as he wants.

Legal scholar Dennis Hutchinson said Specter's message to the White House appears to be "a way of asserting his authority" as he prepares to chair the Judiciary Committee when Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, is term-limited from keeping the post next year.

"A self-proclaimed moderate, he helped kill President Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court and of Jeff Sessions to a federal judgeship. Specter called both nominees too extreme on civil rights issues. Sessions later became a Republican senator from Alabama and now sits on the Judiciary Committee with Specter.

posted by Rei Toei @ 10:59 a.m.