Janice Rogers Brown STILL Rocks!

As I read JK's post on the "Great Fillibuster Compromise of 2005" I was a little concerned about TNR's reference to "higher law than the Constitution" on the part of Bush judicial nominee Janice Rogers Brown.

Loyal readers will recall my May 18 posting, All Hail: Janice Rogers Brown, wherein I praised the jurist vociferously for her individual rights views while expressing uncertainty about her social sensibilities (i.e. should the government tell people how, when and why they may reproduce.) These two factors compelled me to learn more about the woman's judicial philosophy.

I googled the "Janice Rogers Brown" search results for "higher law" and found two articles of interest. From the conservative point-of-view, FrontPage Magazine tells us:

Brown's judicial philosophy amounts to what is sometimes called the "Madisonian" view, because it reflects the allegiance to higher law and transcendent rights embraced by the "Father of the Constitution." Not everything is open to majority rule, and courts must ensure that the majority does not run roughshod over groups that are unpopular or lack political power. As Brown put it in another dissenting opinion, "Courts must be especially vigilant, must vigorously resist encroachments that heighten the potential for arbitrary government action."

Very well. So far, so good.

Then I found this whining essay on something called "counterpunch" that characterized Rogers Brown's legal philosophy as "bizarre."

Virtually every court that has considered the matter has concluded that racist speech can create a hostile, abusive and discriminatory work environment, and that when it does so, a court can stop it. No court in recent decades has held that the First Amendment gives people the right to use speech to harass fellow workers on racial or religious grounds at work.

Just as a court can order a company to take down a "Whites Only" sign outside its employment office, even though this is "speech," so judges have consistently held that other words can constitute unlawful racial discrimination, and that when they do, the courts must step in and call a halt to such discrimination.

That is the established view under American law, supported by years of precedent. But it is not the view of Janice Rogers Brown, President Bush's nominee to the D.C. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. Brown, a member of the California Supreme Court, is one of 12 judicial nominees previously rejected due to their extremist positions, whose nominations were recently exhumed by Bush.

How very matter-of-factly this liberal corpuscle tramples the boundary between speech and action, and denies freedom of speech as a right to those whose speech he disagrees with. A "whites only" sign is speech, but its removal is predicated on the presumption that discriminatory action will follow. The entire post-modern notion of "hate speech" as an act of agressive physical violence is preposterous.

But I digress. Here is the corpuscle's passage on higher law:

Justice Brown's bizarre view that this social contract constitutes "collectivism" is much more than a curiosity because her appointment to the important D.C. Circuit (and possibly thereafter to the U.S. Supreme Court) would give her the power to try to reverse these "socialist" triumphs.

Brown certainly means to try. She has advised that conservative judges need not be concerned with the "activist" label and urges judges to be "audacious enough to invoke higher law," by which she means a judge-imposed vision of so-called natural law that protects property from the will of the majority.

Well bully once again. Brown adheres to an individual's natural right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and apparently manages to say so without mentioning "God" or "Creator." This Supreme Court Justice from the Golden State is my kind of girl!

Second Bush Administration Posted by JohnGalt at May 27, 2005 3:19 PM