[Davis Democrats] FW: Senator BOXER'S brilliant statement on Samuel Alito-quotation from OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

[John Chendo]

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From: John Chendo <jac07 at dcn.org>
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2006 04:35:07 -0800
To: "rumseyfarm at aol.com" <rumseyfarm at aol.com>, Robert Stack
<bob at jumpingfrog.org>
Conversation: Senator Boxer's brilliant statement on Samuel Alito-quotation
from OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES!!!!
Subject: FW: Senator Boxer's brilliant statement on Samuel Alito-quotation
from OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES!!!!


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From: PAC for a Change <info at pacforachange.com>
Reply-To: <notice-reply-5gibb82v53ndtt at ga4.org>
Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 19:45:42 GMT
To: john chendo <jac07 at dcn.org>
Subject: Senator Boxer's statement on Samuel Alito

  
   <http://www.barbaraboxer.com>
  
  Dear john, We thought you may be interested in reading the text of a
speech that Senator Boxer delivered yesterday, laying out her opposition to
the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court:

> Today, I am announcing my opposition to the nomination of Samuel Alito to the
> Supreme Court of the United States.  According to Article II of the
> Constitution, justices of the Supreme Court may not be appointed by the
> president without the advice and consent of the United States Senate. So it is
> our solemn duty to consider each nomination carefully, keeping in mind the
> interests of the American people. And this nomination is particularly crucial
> because the stakes have rarely been so high. First, consider the context in
> which this nomination comes before us. The seat that Judge Alito has been
> nominated for is now held by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who came to the
> Court in 1981.  For years, Justice O'Connor has provided the tie-breaking vote
> and a commonsense voice of reason in some of the most important cases to come
> before the Court, including a woman's right to choose, civil rights, and
> freedom of religion. Second, consider the tumultuous political climate in our
> nation. President Bush understood that in 2000 when he promised to govern from
> the center, and be "a uniter, not a divider." Sadly, this nomination shows
> that he has forgotten that promise because it is notnfrom the center and it is
> not uniting the nation.   The right thing to do would have been to give us a
> justice in the mold of Justice O'Connor, and that is what the president should
> have done. Let me be clear: I do not deny Judge Alito's judicial
> qualifications. He has been a government lawyer and judge for more than 20
> years and the American Bar Association rated him well qualified. He is an
> intelligent and capable person. His family should be proud of him and all
> Americans should be proud that the American dream was there for the Alito
> family.   But after reviewing the hearing record and the record of his
> statements, writings and rulings over the past 24 years, I am convinced that
> Judge Alito is the wrong person for this job.  I am deeply concerned about how
> Justice Alito will impact the ability of other families to live the American
> dream -- to be assured of privacy in their homes and their personal lives, to
> be secure in their neighborhoods, to have fair treatment in the workplace, and
> to have confidence that the power of the executive branch will be checked.
> As I reviewed Judge Alito's record, I asked whether he will vote to preserve
> fundamental American liberties and values -- Will Justice Alito vote to uphold
> Congress' constitutional power to pass laws to protect Americans' health,
> safety, and welfare?  Judge Alito's record says NO. In the 1996 Rybar case,
> Judge Alito voted to strike down the federal ban on the transfer or possession
> of machine guns because he believed it exceeded Congress' power under the
> Commerce Clause. His Third Circuit colleagues sharply criticized his dissent
> and said that it ran counter to "a basic tenet of the constitutional
> separation of powers." And Judge Alito's extremist view has been rejected by
> six other circuit courts and the Supreme Court. Judge Alito stood alone and
> failed to protect our families. In a case concerning worker protection, Judge
> Alito was again in the minority when he said that federal mine health and
> safety standards did not apply to a coal processing site. He tried to explain
> it as just a "technical issue of interpretation." I fear for the safety of our
> workers if Judge Alito's narrow, technical reading of the law should ever
> prevail. Will Justice Alito vote to protect the right to privacy, especially a
> woman's reproductive freedom? Judge Alito's record says NO. We have all heard
> about Judge Alito's 1985 job application, in which he wrote that the
> constitution does not protect the right of a woman to choose. He was given the
> chance to disavow that position during the hearings -- and he refused to do
> so. He had the chance to say, as Judge Roberts did, that Roe v. Wade is
> settled law, and he refused.  He had the chance to explain his dissent in the
> Casey decision, in which he argued that the Pennsylvania spousal notification
> requirement was not an undue burden on a woman seeking an abortion because it
> would affect only a small number of women, but he refused to back away from
> his position. The Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote, found the provision to be
> unconstitutional, and Justice O'Connor, co-writing for the Court, criticized
> the faulty analysis supported by Judge Alito, saying that "the analysis does
> not end with the one percent of women" affected... "it begins there." To my
> mind, Judge Alito's ominous statements and narrow-minded reasoning clearly
> signal a hostility to women's rights, and portend a move back toward the dark
> days when abortion was illegal in many states, and many women died as a
> result. In the 21st century, it is astounding that a Supreme Court nominee
> would not view Roe v. Wade as settled law when its fundamental principle -- a
> woman's right to choose -- has been reaffirmed many times since it was
> decided.  Will Justice Alito vote to protect Americans from unconstitutional
> searches? Judge Alito's record says NO. In Doe v. Groody in 2004, he said a
> police strip search of a 10-year-old girl was lawful, even though their search
> warrant didn't name her. Judge Alito said that even if the warrant did not
> actually authorize the search of the girl, "a reasonable police officer could
> certainly have read the warrant as doing so..." This casual attitude toward
> one of our most basic constitutional guarantees -- the Fourth Amendment right
> against unreasonable searches -- is almost shocking. As Judge Alito's own
> Third Circuit Court said regarding warrants, "a particular description is the
> touchstone of the Fourth Amendment." We certainly do not need Supreme Court
> justices who do not understand this fundamental constitutional protection.
> Will Justice Alito vote to let citizens stop companies from polluting their
> communities? Judge Alito's record says NO.   In the Magnesium Elektron case,
> Judge Alito voted to make it harder for citizens to sue for toxic emissions
> that violate the Clean Water Act. Fortunately, in another case several years
> later, the Supreme Court rejected the Third Circuit and Alito's narrow reading
> of the law. Judge Alito doesn't seem to care about a landmark environmental
> law. Will Justice Alito vote to let working women and men have their day in
> court against employers who discriminate against them? Judge Alito's record
> says NO. In 1997, in the Bray case, Judge Alito was the only judge on the
> Third Circuit to say that a hotel employee claiming racial discrimination
> could not take her case to a jury. In the Sheridan case, a female employee
> sued for discrimination, alleging that after she complained about incidents of
> sexual harassment, she was demoted and marginalized to the point that she was
> forced to quit. By a vote of 10 to 1, the Third Circuit found for the
> plaintiff.  Guess who was the one? Only Judge Alito thought the employee
> should have to show that discrimination was the "determinative cause" of the
> employer's action. Using his standard would make it almost impossible for a
> woman claiming discrimination in the workplace to get to trial. Finally, will
> Justice Alito be independent from the executive branch that appointed him, and
> be a vote against power grabs by the president? Judge Alito's record says NO.
> As a lawyer in the Reagan Justice Department, he authored a memo suggesting a
> new way for the president to encroach on Congress' lawmaking powers. He said
> that when the president signs a law, he should make a statement about the law,
> giving it his own interpretation, whether it was consistent with what Congress
> had written or not. He wrote that this would "get in the last word on
> questions of interpretation" of the law. In the hearings, Judge Alito refused
> to back away from this memo.  When asked whether he believed the president
> could invade another country, in the absence of an imminent threat, without
> first getting the approval of the American people, of Congress, Judge Alito
> refused to rule it out.  When asked if the president had the power to
> authorize someone to engage in torture, Alito refused to answer. The
> Administration is now asserting vast powers, including spying on American
> citizens without seeking warrants -- in clear violation of the Foreign
> Intelligence Surveillance Act -- violating international treaties, and
> ignoring laws that ban torture.  We need justices who will put a check on such
> overreaching by the executive, not rubberstamp it. Judge Alito's record and
> his answers at the hearings raise very serious doubts about his commitment to
> being a strong check on an 'imperial president.'  In addition to these
> substantive matters, I remain concerned about Judge Alito's answers regarding
> his membership in the Concerned Alumni of Princeton and his failure to recuse
> himself from the Vanguard case, which he had promised to do. During the
> hearings, we all felt great compassion for Mrs. Alito when she became
> emotional in reaction to the tough questions her husband faced in the
> Judiciary Committee. Everyone in politics knows how hard it is for families
> when a loved one is asked tough questions. It is part of a difficult process,
> and whoever said politics is not for the faint of heart was right. Emotions
> have run high during this process. That's understandable. But I wish the press
> have focused more on the tears of those who will be affected if Judge Alito
> becomes Justice Alito and his out-of-the mainstream views prevail.   I worry
> about the tears of a worker who, having failed to get a promotion because of
> discrimination, is denied the opportunity to pursue her claim in court. I
> worry about the tears of a mentally ill woman who is forced by law to tell her
> husband that she wants to terminate her pregnancy and is afraid that he will
> leave her or stop supporting her. I worry about the tears of a young girl who
> is strip searched in her own home by police who have no valid warrant.  I
> worry about the tears of a mentally retarded man, who has been brutally
> assaulted in his workplace, when his claim of workplace harassment is
> dismissed by the court simply because his lawyer failed to file a well written
> brief on his behalf.  These are real cases in which Judge Alito has spoken.
> Fortunately, he did not prevail in these cases. But if he goes to the Supreme
> Court, he will have a much more powerful voice -- a radical voice that will
> replace a voice of moderation and balance. Perhaps the most important
> statement Judge Alito made during the entire hearing process was when he told
> the Judiciary Committee that he expects to be the same kind of justice on the
> Supreme Court as he has been a judge on the Circuit Court.  That is precisely
> the problem. As a judge, Samuel Alito seemed to approach his cases with an
> analytical coldness that reflected no concern for the human consequences of
> his reasoning. Listen to what he said about a case involving an
> African-American man convicted of murder by an all white jury in a courtroom
> where the prosecutors had eliminated all African-American jurors in many
> previous murder trials as well.  Judge Alito dismissed this evidence of racial
> bias and said that the jury makeup was no more relevant than the fact that
> left-handers have won five of the last six presidential elections. When asked
> about this analogy during the hearings, he said it "went to the issue of
> statistics... (which) is a branch of mathematics, and there are ways to
> analyze statistics so that you draw sound conclusions from them..."
> That response would have been appropriate for a college math professor, but it
> is deeply troubling from a potential Supreme Court justice. As the great
> jurist and Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote in 1881,
> "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience... The law
> embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it
> cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a
> book of mathematics."  What Holmes meant is that the law is a living thing,
> that those who interpret it must do so with wisdom and humanity, and with an
> understanding of the consequences of their judgments for the lives of the
> people they affect. It is with deep regret that I conclude that Judge Alito's
> judicial philosophy lacks this wisdom, humanity and moderation. He is simply
> too far out of the mainstream in his thinking. His opinions demonstrate
> neither the independence of mind nor the depth of heart that I believe we need
> in our Supreme Court justices, particularly at this crucial time in our
> nation's history.
>          
> That is why I will oppose this nomination.
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