Roberts and Right-Wing Judges

As important and dangerous as Judge Roberts's decision on Guantanamo was (he gave full and unreviewable authority to the U.S. president to declare people enemy combatants and hold and try them in secret military tribunals without lawyers), and as crucial as it is to keep reproductive rights for women and even expand them, we should not forget or downplay the significance of information published in the July 20 Wall Street Journal front page news story about the Roberts nomination: he was at the top of the list of preferred nominees constructed by the business community.

In fact, this is the first time that the corporate elite has established a formal mechanism to vet court nominees (this point was not in this WSJ piece, but appeared somewhere earlier this month, I think in the NY Times). They did this because they want to limit the influence of the Christian right insofar as "Christian" nominees might not have a "proper" understanding of business issues. In this case, not to worry! The Journal reports that Roberts is fully qualified to protect business interests and cites as an example an anti-worker ruling he wrote in a workmen's compensation case.

I raise this for two reasons: 1) we should understand how the right-wing in this country is an uncomfortable coalition of corporate and religious elements, and 2) we should not be blinded to the economic agendas at work even as we attend to the "cultural" or "values" dimensions of American politics.

We must find ways to address both aspects of this political dynamic, simultaneously, separately but in their intertwining as well.