Howard Dean Quotes
I think with a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, you can't play, you know, hide the salami, or whatever it's called.
Dean, Howard. Interview. Hardball with Chris Matthews, MSNBC, 28 July 2005.
The notion of lifetime appointment for federal judges had been debated before and during the constitutional convention. The founders wrote it into the constitution to give the judges more security so that they could not be pressured by politicians or wealthy individuals. Also, without this concept many countries have judges who are just rubber stamps for the legislature or the leader of the country.
Scalia had been a close friend of the Vice President. He had recently been taken on the Vice President’s plane and they went duck hunting.
See Abraham Lincoln for a similar view.
Then Clarence Thomas replaced Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court, there appeared to be a majority of the court that would overturn Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to an abortion. However it was an election year and the Chief Justice, a Republican, was concerned that if Roe was overturned the electorate might take it out on the Republicans, whose Solicitor Generals had fought to overturn Roe, at the polls. He therefore postponed the hearing of a Pennsylvania case, and then tried to postpone it again till after the election. Blackmun’s memo caused a majority of the court to vote to hear the case with no additional delay. Ironically, by a single vote, Roe was upheld.
At the time of the interview she had retired from the bench.
From time to time, the assessment of a prospective Supreme Court justice has depended on an attempt to move the court in a particular direction or to prevent that. This is as opposed to the issue of the competence of the nominee. In most cases, such nominees may not have been the best qualified but they have been extremely competent. In a few cases, such as that of Justice Clarence Thomas, the justice was mediocre and inexperienced at best, but his virtues were his race and his total ideological consistency. Most attorneys can predict his vote in advance. He has never asked a question in oral arguments. See {623452} .
Howard Brush Dean III is an American physician, author, lobbyist, and retired politician who served as Governor of Vermont from 1991 to 2003 and Chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) from 2005 to 2009. Dean was a candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2004 presidential election. His implementation of the fifty-state strategy as head of the DNC is credited with the Democratic victories in the 2006 and 2008 elections. Afterward, he became a political commentator and consultant to McKenna Long & Aldridge, a law and lobbying firm.
