Nashville News Blog

Corker's statement is disappointing, just as Alexander's is commendable.

Knowing that his vote won't matter in the end, Corker, I suspect, has been advised to use this opportunity to shore up his support among the Hard Right who have lately suspected him of moderate, cooperative tendencies.

"Why does Lamar Alexander support anti-caucasian racism, and hate freedom? I think he's in line a good ole TEA BAGGIN'! Go get him, boys!"

And he voted for the global warmin'!!!! I second the tea baggin'.

Seriously though, I agree with Barry. There is a huge double standard at play. Conservative "originalists" like Scalia are constantly being held up as the ideal by Republicans. What's normally ignored is that Scalia is interpreting just as much as John Paul Stevens or Ruth Ginsberg. He's just interpreting it to his ideals and philosophies. In short, he is just as much as a "judicial activist" as the so-called liberals. It's like fundamentalists who constantly think they are winning a theological debate by declaring that they are only interested in doing "what the Bible says" but ignore the parts that aren't that black and white.

But Corker just shows that you aren't ever going to get the politics out of it. Alexander, and to a greater extent, Lindsay Graham, showed a lot of class this week. They are more conservative than she is but they understand everything isn't about ideology. Kudos to them.

Mark is right. The Senate's role is to advise AND consent (or not). Two separate functions. Nothing says a senator is obliged to vote in favor even of a well-qualified nominee. If they don't vote to confirm, they may pay a political price, but that's the senator's issue to worry about. I don't have any problem if Corker voted against Sotomayor because he wants someone he thinks will be more conservative. But none of these people has the courage to say what their actual reasons are, when everybody knows them already. "Clumsy" is a good way to describe Corker's explanation.

" history of the modern Supreme Court, wherein conservatives on the bench have repeatedly ignored precedent when it suits their judicial ideology and have moved to undo legislative actions far more often than so-called liberal justices have. "

That isn't the determinant of whether a court ruling is judicially activist or not.
The determinant is whether the decision is made based on the actual text of the Constitution as the words contained therein were understood to mean to those who ratified them at the time they ratified them as opposed to the "living document" theory of just making stuff up and claiming it's in the Constitution. Either one of those theories could result invalidating or approving legislative action depending on the case and circumstance.

The New Deal Era court, after some initial resistance, finally caved in and rubber stamped some of FDR's so-called "New Deal" programs that vastly expanded government power. Those were activist court decisoins beacuse they weren't based on the actual text of the Constitution as it was understood to mean by the ratifiers. These decisions enabled legislative bodies to do something they wanted to do.

Fast forward to Roe vs Wade where an activits court dreamed up a "right" to abortion out of whole cloth - something nowhere mentioned in the Constitution. This decisions hindered legislative bodies by invalidating abortion laws.

Both decisions, one enabling legislative bodies and one invaliding legislative decisions are examples of liberal judicial activisim.

Ignoring "precedent" is also not defacto proof of judicial activism. It depends on whether the "precedent" in question was itself an activist court decision.

One if the most sweeping activist notions that allowed government power to expand is the claim that the commerce clause that delegates power to regulate interstate commerce (actual interstate commerce transactions) also allows regulation of anyting that "could have an effect on" interstate commerce. That isn't what the text of the Constitution says and it isn't what the ratifers understood the words to mean.

If some future court were to overturn that "precedent" and vastly reign in government power, that would not be an "activist" decision - to would be a de-activitst one, since the original decision that established the "precedent" was an activist one in the first place.