MSNBC Hardball - Transcript
MSNBC Hardball - Transcript
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
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MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL.
Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York wrote a letter to President Bush yesterday urging him to consult with senators of both parties before submitting future judicial nominations. Senator Schumer is a member of the Judiciary Committee.
Senator, it sounds like you're very much in sync with your very senior Republican colleague from Virginia. Senator Warner was just on and he said the president should follow the Constitution and seek the advice of the Senate, not just its consent, on judgeships.
SEN. CHARLES SCHUMER (D), NEW YORK: Yes. You're exactly right.
This advice is not just fluff, the advice part of advise and consent. It really makes a big difference. Let me give you two instances. One, when President Clinton had to nominate two Supreme Court nominees, he regularly consulted a number of Republicans, including Orrin Hatch. He gave some names to Orrin Hatch and Orrin Hatch said, you're going to have trouble with those names. He gave others and Orrin Hatch vetted them and said, choose them. And Orrin Hatch actually ahead of time said that Breyer and Ginsburg would be acceptable choices to the Republican-controlled Senate.
A second example, on district court judges, the White House has consulted me. And we filled every one in New York with judges. I might not agree with them on everything, but they're mainstream judges. And if the president would consult on the upcoming Supreme Court nomination, it would do two things. He would get a good idea of the reception that that nominee might get.
And, second, it just lowers the temperature. It is not the president being like Zeus up on Mount Olympus throwing judicial thunderbolts and saying, this is the way it has to be. That doesn't work in any walk of life, even in the Senate.
MATTHEWS: Does the president risk, if he sends a name up and does follow the spirit of the Constitution, that you fellows on the other side of the aisle will shoot down just about anyone?
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MATTHEWS: Or does that-maybe that's a stupid question. I don't know.
SCHUMER: No, it's not a stupid question. But if we shoot down anyone, then he can say he tried to consult and he failed and at least we'll realize that he's been consulting us.
But I truly don't think that's the case. If you look at some of the people we've approved to the Courts of Appeals, they're people who are much closer in line with the president's philosophy than with our philosophy. If we had blocked 150 out of 218 judges, you might say we're going to shoot down virtually everybody. But we haven't. And that is not our goal.
Our goal is simply to knock out the people who might be way, way over, so far out of the mainstream that what they really want to do is make law and turn the clocks back to the 1930s or the 1890s. They will be-those are the people who are sort of outside any recognized field of jurisprudence.
MATTHEWS: Let me turn the clock back to the 1950s, Senator. In 1953, when President Eisenhower sent up the name of Earl Warren, the governor of California, there was a voice vote in your body, the Senate. It's hard to imagine that, a voice vote.
SCHUMER: Right.
MATTHEWS: On chief justice. And then, when Warren Burger was sent up by Nixon, that was a three-vote opposition, just three votes in opposition. The others were all for the confirmation.
And then, as recently as Rehnquist, the sitting chief justice, when his name was sent up, 33 votes against him. Why is there this exponential growth of opposition over time to names?
SCHUMER: Good question.
Here's what's happened. It used to be that presidents would send up people who were approved by the Bar Association, really without much regard for ideology. And what happened in the '60s-and this, I agree with the conservatives in a certain sense-the judges on the court were very liberal and began to reach and sort of make law, not interpret law. The conservative movement said, oh, that's no good. We have to stop it. And they really did begin to stop it.
And what's happened is that they-it has become now that judges are nominated for ideology, because, once they stopped it, they went further. And now they want to nominate judges who would do the same thing on the right side that the liberal judges did on the left side. When the liberal judges did it, it wasn't necessarily liberals who were nominated. Earl Warren, no one thought he would be a big liberal judge. He was a Republican governor of California.
But what has happened now is that the president, this president, George Bush, has nominated judges through an ideological prism more than any other president has. We can go back to the old way. That's what we would like to do. And you would have a court that might have one justice, Brennan, a very liberal judge, one justice, Scalia, a very conservative judge, but not five of each. President Bush is trying to get five Scalias on the court. And that is not going to wash.
MATTHEWS: How about a Scalia as chief justice? Would you advise him not to do that?
SCHUMER: Well, I think it is too early to tell that. And if Scalia is going to be chief justice, I think part of the question would be, who would be nominated for his seat? Certainly, we do not want to see judges who will try to change the law, in the sense that they want their own ideas imposed. We want judges who will interpret law, as the founding fathers said, not make law, even if they're judges who don't share our judicial philosophy.
MATTHEWS: How important is it to you as a pro-choice senator-I mean, that's part of your definition-you're pro-choice-you have other features, obviously-of the 6-3 balance right now on the court? If, for example, Rehnquist were to retire and open up a seat and you were to have the president select, nominate, for example, Scalia to replace him and then replace Scalia's associate justiceship with an Alberto Gonzales, would that keep the balance for a pro-choice court? Would that satisfy you or would you...
SCHUMER: I don't think-well, Chris, you don't look at it through any one single issue.
I only have one test. And that is, as I mentioned, it is a judge who will interpret law, not make it. People at the extremes, ideologues, far right or far left, for that matter, tend to believe so passionately that they are right that they tend to make law. And I don't want judges like that. That's what the interpretation would be.
But if you look at pro-life, pro-choice, I mean, we have voted, we Democrats, for a large number of judges who are clearly pro-life. But we thought, they understand the traditions of the country. They understand 30 years of jurisprudence since Roe v. Wade. And they wouldn't try to impose their own views.
MATTHEWS: OK, thank you very much, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York.
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