Was the Dred Scott reference code for Roe v. Wade?

princesspupule --

That sounds reasonable to me, and I would be comforted if Bush didn't have this persistent record of first stating fairly sensible principles, then doing the opposite in practice.

Thomas, I do seem to have read a fair amount of Bush needing to appease the religious right, that they think he has been too moderate on several issues (as strange as that may seem.)

But he didn't answer whether or not he wanted to see Roe v. Wade overturned, simply that he would have no "litmus test" for any Supreme Court appointee. Shouldn't the right of choice remain a "constitutional right" that should be defended by anyone aspiring to the high court?

Here's what was said about this during debate #3:

Quote:

SCHIEFFER: Mr. President, I want to go back to something Senator Kerry said earlier tonight and ask a follow-up of my own. He said -- and this will be a new question to you -- he said that you had never said whether you would like to overturn Roe v. Wade. So I'd ask you directly, would you like to?

BUSH: What he's asking me is, will I have a litmus test for my judges? And the answer is, no, I will not have a litmus test. I will pick judges who will interpret the Constitution, but I'll have no litmus test.

I would pick somebody who would not allow their personal opinion to get in the way of the law. I would pick somebody who would strictly interpret the Constitution of the United States.

Let me give you a couple of examples, I guess, of the kind of person I wouldn't pick. 

I wouldn't pick a judge who said that the Pledge of Allegiance couldn't be said in a school because it had the words "under God" in it. I think that's an example of a judge allowing personal opinion to enter into the decision-making process as opposed to a strict interpretation of the Constitution.

Another example would be the Dred Scott case, which is where judges, years ago, said that the Constitution allowed slavery because of personal property rights. 

That's a personal opinion. That's not what the Constitution says. The Constitution of the United States says we're all -- you know, it doesn't say that. It doesn't speak to the equality of America. 

And so, I would pick people that would be strict constructionists. We've got plenty of lawmakers in Washington, D.C. Legislators make law; judges interpret the Constitution. 

And I suspect one of us will have a pick at the end of next year -- the next four years. And that's the kind of judge I'm going to put on there. No litmus test except for how they interpret the Constitution.

Abortion might be a crime in most states. Gay people could be thrown in prison for having sex in their homes. States might be free to become mini-theocracies, endorsing Christianity and using tax money to help spread the gospel. The Constitution might no longer protect inmates from being brutalized by prison guards. Family and medical leave and environmental protections could disappear.

It hardly sounds like a winning platform, and of course President Bush isn't openly espousing these positions. But he did say in his last campaign that his favorite Supreme Court justices were Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, and the nominations he has made to the lower courts bear that out. Justices Scalia and Thomas are often called "conservative," but that does not begin to capture their philosophies. Both vehemently reject many of the core tenets of modern constitutional law.

For years, Justices Scalia and Thomas have been lobbing their judicial Molotov cocktails from the sidelines, while the court proceeded on its moderate-conservative path. But given the ages and inclinations of the current justices, it is quite possible that if Mr. Bush is re-elected, he will get three appointments, enough to forge a new majority that would turn the extreme Scalia-Thomas worldview into the law of the land.

There is every reason to believe Roe v. Wade would quickly be overturned. Mr. Bush ducked a question about his views on Roe in the third debate. But he sent his base a coded message in the second debate, with an odd reference to the
Dred Scott case. Dred Scott, an 1857 decision upholding slavery, is rarely mentioned today, except in right-wing legal circles, where it is often likened to Roe. (Anti-abortion theorists say that the court refused to see blacks as human in Dred Scott and that the same thing happened to fetuses in Roe.) For more than a decade, Justices Scalia and Thomas have urged their colleagues to reverse Roe and "get out of this area, where we have no
right to be."

But to liberal jurists, Mr. Bush's reference to Dred Scott in the second debate, on Oct. 8, was particularly puzzling. Saying he would appoint strict constructionist justices who adhered to the intent of the Constitution's framers, Mr. Bush cited the Dred Scott case as an example of judicial reliance on personal opinion.

But Dred Scott is an example of the opposite - a decision based on original intent, said Jack M. Balkin, a constitutional law professor at Yale University.

Slavery was constitutional at the time, and the decision was based on original intent. Asserting that the framers did not envision blacks as citizens, they ignored the fact that some states recognized freed slaves as citizens at the time of the Constitutional Convention, he said.

Dear Friends,

Greetings and Happy New Year to you all.

On March 6, 1857, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in the Dred Scott case that "Negroes" were less than human in the eyes of the law.1 It was one of the most shameful moments in the history of this great nation, whose Founding Fathers had declared in the Declaration of Independence that we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The failure to assure these promised "blessings of liberty" for all our citizens kept millions of blacks in bondage for another 87 years and contributed ultimately to a horrible Civil War during which more than 600,000 men died on the battlefield.2

Unfortunately, there were lessons we failed to learn from the tragedy of that era. On January 22, 1973, another shameful decision was handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court that stains our hands with blood to this day. It was called Roe vs. Wade, and has resulted in the deaths of nearly 40 million preborn babies.3 This month, we mark the 27th anniversary of that terrible decision and pause to reflect on what it has done to us as a nation.

Opposing Dred Scott
By now most people have probably read something about George W. Bush's comments on the Dred Scott decision during his second debate with John Kerry. Why did a Supreme Court decision on slavery enter a presidential debate today? Because it's coded language for anti-abortion activists. It also doesn't mean what they or Bush think it means...

Then Jephthah gathered together all the men of Gilead, and fought with Ephraim: and the men of Gilead smote Ephraim, because they said, Ye Gileadites are fugitives of Ephraim among the Ephraimites, and among the Manassites. And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay; Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.

The 'code-learning thing'. Sheesh. That's a lot to ask of the fellow.