Litigation

Obama?s Surprise High Court Interview: Judge Sidney Thomas

By Peter Hardin

President Obama held the first publicly known formal interview in his Supreme Court search process with federal appeals court Judge Sidney Thomas of Montana (photo at left).

This step suggested Obama is giving Judge Thomas greater consideration than some observers had thought as a potential nominee to succeed Justice John Paul Stevens.

Both Obama and Vice President Joe Biden interviewed Judge Thomas on Thursday in separate sessions, reported the Associated Press. That news came as the president’s remarks Wednesday about judicial activism (see Gavel Grab) got a lot of attention.

Judge Thomas sits on the San Francisco-based Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He was appointed by President Bill Clinton and has a reputation as “independent and a straight-shooter,” AP wrote, despite that court’s having a liberal reputation.

The current Supreme Court has many justices with ties to the Northeast and the Ivy League. Judge Thomas, on the other hand, is from the West and was educated there. A report of his interviews at the White House plays “to the White House’s advantage in signaling that Obama is giving hard review to a candidate who comes from outside the Washington Beltway and does not neatly fit into conventional wisdom,” the article commented.

Meanwhile, the president’s remarks to reporters aboard Air Force One earlier this week, warning about conservative judicial activism, drew heightened attention–especially in the context of his current search for a potential Supreme Court nominee.

A New York Times article was headlined, “Obama Says Liberal Courts May Have Overreached.” It put Obama’s remarks in a historical context:

“Mr. Obama?s comments…amounted to the most sympathetic statement by a sitting Democratic president about the conservative view that the Warren and Burger courts ? which expanded criminal defendant rights, required busing to desegregate schools and declared a right to abortion ? were dominated by ‘liberal judicial activists’ whose rulings were dubious.”

Aboard the airplane, Obama had said some judges ignore the will of Congress and the democratic process. Rather than let the political process fix problems, they impose judicial answers, he told reporters.

Obama also said, ?In the ?60s and ?70s, the feeling was, is that liberals were guilty of that kind of approach.? He added, ?What you?re now seeing, I think, is a conservative jurisprudence that oftentimes makes the same error.?

The backdrop for Obama’s remarks, the Times article asserted, was a series of recent high court decisions in which conservative justices have tossed out laws that liberals support. Most notable among them was Citizens United, lifting prior restraints and permitting corporations to spend unlimited dollars on independent political advertising.

In a Huffington Post commentary, author Jeff Shesol took a different approach to the views of the president. “Today, with a confirmation battle looming, it is encouraging to see that Mr. Obama is ready to explode the right-wing conceit that only liberal judges can be ‘activists,’” Shesol wrote. Before he became a U.S. senator, Obama taught constitutional law.

In Salon, Glenn Greenwald called Obama’s discussion “striking.”

To learn more about the nomination process, politics, and Obama?s criteria, check out other Gavel Grab posts or visit Justice at Stake?s ?Replacing Justice Stevens? page.

Full post as published by The Gavel on April 30, 2010 (boomark / email).