Schumer wants time to ponder Roberts
Unable to get the White House to budge on its refusal to release papers from Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts's four years in the U.S. solicitor general's office during the first Bush administration, Senate Democrats are now balking at President Bush's insistence that the confirmation process be wrapped up before the October 3 start of the high court's new term.
"The documents may not be a deal breaker," New York Sen. Charles E. Schumer said Wednesday during an appearance at the National Press Club. But wrapping up the process by September 29 as the White House has advocated? "That can't happen," he said.
Schumer, who voted against Roberts when he was named to the D.C. appeals court in 2003, said that the importance of the hearings has been magnified by the nominee's lack of a lengthy or telling judicial record and his steadfast refusal to answer questions about decided Supreme Court cases.
"If we don't get the documents, that's strike one. If we don't get direct answers [from Roberts], that's strike two. Let's not face strike three," Schumer said, referring to a GOP proposal that would essentially limit Senate Judiciary Committee questioning of Roberts to two days.
"That would not allow us to do our job," said Schumer, a committee member and ranking member of its subcommittee on administrative oversight and the courts. "There's still a way to figure out Judge Roberts's philosophy . . . but it's going to take a long time."
The senator said that during a 40-minute meeting Tuesday evening with the nominee, Roberts assured him that he is not an ideologue. By the end of their discussion, Schumer said he was convinced that Roberts would not, for example, vote to shrink the prevailing interpretation of the Commerce Clause, the constitutional provision allowing federal regulation of interstate commerce. That provision has been used by legislators as the legal basis for addressing myriad problems they believe states have not dealt with appropriately—including racial discrimination and violence against women.
Schumer's comments came a day after the release of 14,000 pages of documents from Roberts's time as an assistant to the U.S. attorney general in the early 1980s. The papers portrayed a staunchly conservative young lawyer, who at times pushed his Reagan administration superiors to take harder-line stances. An additional 50,000 pages of documents from Roberts's time as a lawyer in the Reagan White House will be made public within weeks.
Schumer said little about the contents of the released documents. And when asked if the nominee's religious views–he's a staunch Catholic–or his wife's activity with an antiabortion feminist group should be part of the review process, he said neither would be relevant.
"I want to be convinced to vote for Judge Roberts," Schumer said. "Just about every one of my Democratic colleagues wants to vote for him. But a few extra weeks [to consider] a lifetime appointment? I'll take that argument to the American people."