Oct. 15, 2002

Networking

Excerpts from Recent Radio and Television Interviews with Members of the GW Community

Leon Fuerth, J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of International Affairs
[As heard in an interview on Fox’s “Hannity and Colmes” Sept. 26 responding to criticisms of Vice President Gore’s comments on Iraq.]

[Former Vice President Gore] was criticized by people who automatically rushed to do that as soon as anyone attacks the president’s policy. But on substance, I think there are many people who feel that he did the right thing by opening up this debate. It’s much too late in the game to be playing a coy game with the Congress.

The basic message in that speech was, if you’re going to go after Saddam Hussein, make sure you’ve got the posse organized. Al Gore has thought Saddam was a menace since 1988, when he was the first guy to go to the Senate floor, long ahead of people who are now seniors in this administration, but were in Congress at that time, to point out what a menace he was. But he believes that if you’re going to go to war with somebody, you prepare the battle field. You don’t let the other guy do it. And he is concerned that we have not adequately prepared the grounds.
I think what Al Gore is trying to do is to open up a debate that’s been stalled for too long.

…What I want to emphasize is the question that Al Gore raised, and that is, Mr. President, could you please tell the Congress whether or not we’re going to do a better job in post-invasion Iraq if we do this, than we have done in post-invasion Afghanistan. And could you please explain to the Congress whether or not invading Iraq is going to get in the way of the kind of international cooperation we need to fight terrorism?

Jeffrey Rosen, associate professor of law
[As heard on National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation,” Sept. 9, responding to questions about lower court nominations such as that of Judge Pricilla Owen.]

The shift is that we’re now treating lower court judges as Supreme Court justices in miniature. What was so remarkable about the Owen hearing — and it was a continuation of what’s been going on before — is that Senator Schumer, for example, said to Judge Pricilla Owen, ‘Imagine that it’s 1963. You’re a Supreme Court justice asked to decide the Griswold case involving the right to privacy. How would you advise the chief justice?’ And she said, ‘Well, I’m a lower court judge. I don’t have to decide these things. I just look at what the Supreme Court said.’ He said, ‘No, a bunch of us are very concerned that other nominees’ — he was referring to Clarence Thomas — ‘have come before this committee, said that they believe in the right to privacy, and then voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. What would you do if you were on the court?’ And she says, ‘I’m a lower court judge.’

So it’s this effort to turn — basically to look into the nominees’ souls.
[The nomination of Judge Owen] was clearly about abortion, and this is why it was so explosive: Because abortion — Roe has indeed become the seismic test at the heart of all the confirmation hearings. …However, to impose Roe as the litmus test, for example, on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit — it’s considered the second-most important court in the country — it hasn’t heard an important abortion case in a decade. And most lower court judges would rarely confront an abortion case. So to use Roe of all things as the litmus test, the one case that Republicans in particular say — this was a decision that even many Democrats at the time said was loosely reasoned, to make us pledge allegiance to this, not only to say that we would uphold it but that we love it, to make that our litmus test is just — gives the lie to everything we believe as a matter of constitutional law.

 

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