Asked about his criteria for picking Supreme Court justices, Sen. Joe Biden criticized the conservative activist wing of the Court, including the new justices John Roberts and Sam Alito. Discussing the recent abortion ruling, Biden said:
The truth of the matter is that this decision was intellectually dishonest. I think it’s a rare procedure that should only be available when the women’s life and health is at stake.
But, what this Court did [is send] a Trojan Horse in, through actually dishonest reasoning, [and] lay the groundwork for undoing Roe v. Wade.
That’s the danger of this decision, not the specific procedure, but the rationale offered…
Sen. Chris Dodd, who voted to confirm Roberts, wouldn’t apologize for his vote.
But said he was “disappointed” that:
[Roberts] did something that he said he wouldn’t do. He said during his confirmation hearings that he would uphold precedent … and what he did of course was walk away from [the precedent protecting] a woman’s health.
Both are speaking to the deeper threat to our independent judiciary: conservative activist judges who ignore precedent and use unprincipled reasoning to achieve their desired results.
