Second Day of Hearings on the Nomination of Judge Roberts - Dick(head) Durbin
DURBIN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.Judge Roberts, Mrs. Roberts, family and friends, the end is near, at least for this leg of the race.
Welcome to Night Court.
(LAUGHTER)
I was struck by a question and answer by Senator Grassley to you earlier today. The question was this: Is there any room in constitutional interpretation for the judge's own values or beliefs? And your response: No, I don't think there is. Sometimes it's hard to give meaning to a constitutional term in a particular case, but you don't look to your own values and beliefs. You look outside yourself, to other sources.
Judge Roberts, I recently finished a book about Justice Blackmun and his service on the Supreme Court, and it was a fascinating book about his life on the court and his life in the federal judiciary.
And I found it interesting that near the end of his term on the court, a couple cases occurred which really spoke to the heart of the man. One was DeShaney v. Winnebago County, a poor little boy who had been beaten and abused, left retarded, by dereliction of duty by many of the county officials or state officials in Wisconsin in an effort by his mother to hold them accountable.
And they failed in the Supreme Court, but Justice Blackmun wrote a dissent, which he prefaced, Poor Joshua. And he said at one point, in response to someone who wrote him afterwards about the court, Sometimes we overlook the individual's concern, the fact that these are live human beings that are so deeply and terribly affected by our decisions.
The other thing that occurred in Blackmun's legal career, his judicial career, was a real change in his view on the death penalty. And I think most of us are aware of the famous statement which he made: From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.
DURBIN: The last case that he voted with the majority">Second Day of Hearings on the Nomination of Judge Roberts - New York Times: "DURBIN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Judge Roberts, Mrs. Roberts, family and friends, the end is near, at least for this leg of the race.
Welcome to Night Court.
(LAUGHTER)
I was struck by a question and answer by Senator Grassley to you earlier today. The question was this: Is there any room in constitutional interpretation for the judge's own values or beliefs? And your response: No, I don't think there is. Sometimes it's hard to give meaning to a constitutional term in a particular case, but you don't look to your own values and beliefs. You look outside yourself, to other sources.
Judge Roberts, I recently finished a book about Justice Blackmun and his service on the Supreme Court, and it was a fascinating book about his life on the court and his life in the federal judiciary.
And I found it interesting that near the end of his term on the court, a couple cases occurred which really spoke to the heart of the man. One was DeShaney v. Winnebago County, a poor little boy who had been beaten and abused, left retarded, by dereliction of duty by many of the county officials or state officials in Wisconsin in an effort by his mother to hold them accountable.
And they failed in the Supreme Court, but Justice Blackmun wrote a dissent, which he prefaced, Poor Joshua. And he said at one point, in response to someone who wrote him afterwards about the court, Sometimes we overlook the individual's concern, the fact that these are live human beings that are so deeply and terribly affected by our decisions.
The other thing that occurred in Blackmun's legal career, his judicial career, was a real change in his view on the death penalty. And I think most of us are aware of the famous statement which he made: From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.
DURBIN: The last case that he voted with the majority"
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