Of the many unworthy judicial nominees President Bush has put forward, Janice Rogers Brown is among the very worst. As an archconservative justice on the California Supreme Court, she has declared war on the mainstream legal values that most Americans hold dear. And she has let ideology be her guide in deciding cases. …
She has attacked the New Deal, which gave us Social Security and other programs now central to American life, as ”the triumph of our socialist revolution.” …
Justice Brown’s record as a judge is also cause for alarm. She regularly stakes out extreme positions, often dissenting alone. In one case, her court ordered a rental car company to stop its supervisor from calling Hispanic employees by racial epithets. Justice Brown dissented, arguing that doing so violated the company’s free speech rights. …
President Bush, who promised as a candidate to be a ”uniter, not a divider, has selected the most divisive judicial nominees in modern times. The Senate should help the president keep his campaign promise by insisting on a more unifying alternative than Justice Brown.