Suicide of a Superpower by Patrick J. Buchanan

Author:Patrick J. Buchanan
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

COURT SEATS AS SET-ASIDES

For decades, the Supreme Court has been the target of demands for greater diversity and a broader representation of women and minorities. President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor was hailed as a great step forward.

Nixon and Ford were the last presidents to maintain WASP hegemony on the Court. Nixon sent up six nominees, Ford one. All seven were White Anglo-Saxon Protestants: Warren Burger, Clement Haynsworth, Harrold Carswell, Harry Blackmun, Lewis Powell, William Rehnquist, and John Paul Stevens.

Even before Nixon, however, Democrats were into the “new” ethnic politics. Most of the older ethnics—Germans, Irish, Italians, Poles, Slovaks, Greeks—were out. Since 1940, no Democratic president has named an Irish Catholic to the Court. No Democratic president has ever named an Italian or Polish Catholic. The party of the Daleys, Rizzos, and Rostenkowskis is dead. Not since JFK named Byron R. White half a century ago has any Democratic president named a white Christian man or woman to the Court, though white Christians remain the vast majority of all Americans.

Seven names have been sent up since 1962 by Democratic presidents: Arthur Goldberg, Abe Fortas, Thurgood Marshall, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan—one African American, one Puerto Rican, and five Jews. This is the Democratic Party’s idea of diversity on the Court. It might also be labeled: no white Christians need apply.

Under President Reagan, Republicans got into the diversity game, though their approach seemed more inclusive. Reagan’s first choice was Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman nominated. His second choice was Antonin Scalia, the first Italian American. His third was Robert Bork, a white Protestant. When Bork was rejected by the Senate, Reagan chose Douglas Ginsburg, a Jewish colleague of Bork’s on the U.S. Appellate Court for the District of Columbia. When Ginsburg’s name was pulled because of a marijuana incident in college, Reagan went with an Irish-Catholic from his home state of California, Anthony Kennedy.

George H. W. Bush nominated David Souter, a white Protestant, and the African American Clarence Thomas. In replacing Rehnquist and O’Connor with John Roberts and Sam Alito, George W. Bush replaced two white Protestants with two white Catholics, one of whom is only the second Italian American nominated. Thus the Court today consists of six Catholics and three Jews, but not a single Protestant for the first time in U.S. history, although Protestants make up one-half of our entire population. The historic character of this change was noted by the Associate Dean of Notre Dame Law School, Richard Garnett:

When the Supreme Court first met in 1790, there were only about 30,000 Catholics and 2,500 Jews in the United States. The Court’s first Catholic did not join the bench for almost 50 years, with Roger Taney’s selection in 1836. It would be 80 more years until the confirmation of the first Jewish justice, Louis Brandeis.64

The day confirmation hearings began for Elena Kagan, Harvard law professor Noah Feldman, in a New York Times op-ed, “The Triumphant Decline of the WASP,” rhapsodized over our first WASP-free Supreme Court.

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