This morning the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 13-5 in favor of the Roberts nomination, with Senators Biden, Durbin, Feinstein, Kennedy, and Schumer voting against the nominee. As Marcia Greenberger, NWLC Co-President, was quoted in New York Times today as saying, the nominee "had the responsibility to demonstrate that he would protect women's rights and civil rights, and he failed to meet this burden. We are heartened by those on the Judiciary Committee who concluded the risks are too great and disagree with the conclusion of those who decided to take this gamble.”
The Senators who decided to vote against Roberts did so because they determined that approving his nomination would pose too great a risk to the nation. Here’s how Senator Schumer put it in this morning’s Committee meeting:
The risk that he might be a [Justice Clarence] Thomas and the lack of any reassurance that he won't—particularly in light of this president's professed desire to nominate people in that mold—is just not good enough.
Senator Feinstein, who as the only woman on the Senate Judiciary Committee did a great service to women across the country by looking very closely at Roberts’s record and answers to questions on issues important to women, also explained today that she did not have enough information to justify a “yes” vote:
Now, I realized this past week, after reading and rereading the transcripts and going over his answers to the questions that I felt that I knew as little about what Judge Roberts really thought after the hearing as I did before the hearings . . . So, I can not in good conscience, cast a “yea” vote. I will cast a “no” vote.
Even those who voted for Roberts recognized that doing so was a risk. Senator Leahy, who voted “yes” in the Judiciary Committee today, also said that he had a lot of unanswered questions about Roberts. However, he was willing to “hope and trust” that Roberts would be a good Chief Justice:
Would I have liked more information? Of course . . . I can only take [Roberts] at his word that he does not have an ideological agenda . . . I can only take him at his word that he will steer the court to serve as an appropriate check on potential abuses of presidential power . . . All of us will vote this month but only later will we know if Judge Roberts proves to be the kind of Chief Justice he says he would be, if he truly will be “his own man.” I hope and trust that he will be.
In our view, the Senate’s “advice and consent” responsibility requires Senators to get solid assurance that a nominee will uphold basic rights and freedoms. John Roberts’s record doesn’t give us that assurance. There are times in life when it’s fine to take a chance on an unknown, but selecting the Chief Justice who will preside for decades over the nation’s highest court is, to put it mildly, not one of those times -- especially when the “unknown” has such a troubling record.
