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Title: Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. Declared That He Would Support Creating A National Identification Card
Source:
Boston Globe
URL Source: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/w ... _aide_backed_national_id_card/
Published: Aug 19, 2005
Author: Charlie Savage and Rick Klein
Post Date: 2005-10-12 22:04:29 by Uncle Bill
Keywords: Identification, Declared, Creating
Views: 60
Comments: 5
Roberts Takes Oath As Chief Justice - Ocober 12, 2005 Trove of judge's papers released Boston Globe WASHINGTON -- As a legal aide in the Reagan administration in 1983, Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. declared that he would support creating a national identification card in order to combat ''the real threat to our social fabric posed by uncontrolled immigration," a memo released yesterday by the National Archives revealed. In a memo that offered new insight into how he might rule on cases that test the balance between national security and civil liberties, Roberts said he ''yield[ed] to no one in the area of commitment to individual liberty against the spectre of overreaching central authority." However, he wrote, ''We already have, for all intents and purposes, a national identifier -- the Social Security number -- and making it in form what it has become in fact will not suddenly mean Constitutional protections would evaporate and you could be arbitrarily stopped on the street and asked to produce it." The memo, written to his boss, White House counsel Fred Fielding, was among nearly 39,000 pages of documents released yesterday from Roberts's tenure as an associate White House lawyer. The documents revealed Roberts's opinions on social and legal issues including the First Amendment, the role of judges, and programs intended to bring equality to women in the workplace. One internal memo could be of particular interest during Roberts's upcoming hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee next month. In it, he ridiculed an anticrime proposal by Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican who is the current chairman of the judiciary committee. As a younger senator in 1983, the memo showed, Specter had proposed the federal government help fight violent crime by allocating an additional $8 billion a year to federal law enforcement agencies. In an advisory memo, Roberts said it was unlikely Specter's proposal ''will receive any serious consideration" because the plan is ''the epitome of the 'throw money at the problem' approach" that the Reagan administration had repeatedly rejected. Specter's office did not respond to a request for a comment. Other memos underscored Roberts's strong support for race-blind and gender-blind policies. In 1983, shortly after the push for a constitutional amendment guaranteeing equal rights for women faltered, Elizabeth Dole -- then a Reagan aide -- produced a report detailing efforts in each of the 50 states to improve the status of women. Asked to review the report before it became public, Roberts worried it could be perceived as a White House endorsement of all the efforts -- some of which, he said, were ''highly objectionable." Roberts listed a California law that required layoffs ''to reflect affirmative action programs and not merely seniority"; another state law he said was ''staggeringly pernicious" that codified ''the anti-capitalist notion of 'comparable worth' (as opposed to market value) pay scales"; and a ''presumably unconstitutional" proposal to charge women less tuition at Florida schools because they have ''less earning potential." In a Sept. 26, 1983, memo to Fielding, Roberts denounced an alternate version of the Equal Rights Amendment proposed by a group of Los Angeles-based Republican women. The women suggested the ERA, which many conservatives opposed, could be acceptable with alternate wording. Roberts wrote this strategy to close ''the purported 'gender gap' " was ''neither theoretically nor practically sound." President Reagan's objection to the ERA, he wrote, is not because of its wording, but because it would be a constitutional amendment. ''Any amendment would . . . override the prerogatives of the states and vest the federal judiciary with broader powers in this area," he wrote. Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said yesterday's papers and others released earlier demonstrate ''a pattern of at least insensitivity concerning Judge Roberts's views on civil rights and economic equality for women." On First Amendment issues, several memos showed that Roberts believed that the media's rights are limited. In an Aug. 28, 1985, memo to Fielding, Roberts suggested that the White House stay out of a debate over whether to change the rules governing what could happen when a public figure sued a media organization for libel. At issue was a proposal that Schumer, then a congressman, made to the White House that would bar punitive damages in libel cases, so that public figures could only win a declaration that they had been wronged. Roberts wrote that he didn't think the White House should take sides in ''the raging debate about whether the current state of libel law threatens the media (because of the cost of defense and the rare large verdict) or public figures (because of the near-impossibility of prevailing under the [current law])." But in his personal opinion, ''a legislative trade-off relaxing the requirements for public figures to prevail . . . in exchange for eliminating punitive damages would satisfy the First Amendment." Another memo added further evidence that Roberts shared the view of Justice William Rehnquist, who has repeatedly argued that the Constitution doesn't require as high a wall separating church and state as the Supreme Court has ruled. Roberts was a clerk for Rehnquist after graduating from law school. Writing on Aug. 6, 1985, Roberts approved a speech by Education Secretary William Bennett that scorned recent Supreme Court decisions in church-state cases, such as a decision striking down the posting of the Ten Commandments in Kentucky schools. ''Bennett's point is that such decisions betray a hostility to religion not demanded by the Constitution," Roberts wrote, noting that he was Rehnquist's clerk at the time Rehnquist wrote the lone dissent in the Kentucky Ten Commandments case. ''I have no quarrel with Bennett on the merits." The memos also showed that Roberts consistently warned other members of Reagan's administration to stay away from efforts to send funds to Contra rebels in Nicaragua. He repeatedly objected to White House efforts to encourage private donations to help the Contras buy weapons, noting that such donations would be illegal because the United States was not at war with Nicaragua. ''I recommend stopping any White House involvement in this effort," he wrote concerning a proposed 1985 fund-raiser. ''The White House generally does not lend its facilities for private fund-raising. The corporate CEOs would doubtless view the solicitation from the 'private' organization as having official backing if they learn about it at a White House briefing." Many memos on less serious matters showcased Roberts's wit. In one memo, replying to an eccentric octogenarian who had written in suggesting that the 17th Amendment, which mandated the direct election of US senators, was invalid, Roberts said the White House would normally not reply, but should make an exception in this case. ''Anyone who can quote inspiring passages from Plato and Webster, however, and use a word like 'slumgullion,' deserves a reply, and I have drafted one," he wrote. Globe staff writer Susan Milligan contributed to this report.
Roberts, as Reagan aide,
backed national ID card
By Charlie Savage and Rick Klein
August 19, 2005
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#2. To: Uncle Bill (#0)
Point in Robert's favor. Could've been worse, I suppose.
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Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/LatestSenator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said yesterday's papers and others released earlier demonstrate ''a pattern of at least insensitivity concerning Judge Roberts's views on civil rights and economic equality for women."
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