Following up on what Allahpundit wrote earlier, it’s easy to lose sight of what’s happening up in Maine. But plenty of Mainers are clearly hopping mad about the overturning of Roe v Wade and they’re not venting their anger at the Supreme Court, or at least not all of their anger. They are launching broadsides against Senator Susan Collins (who, curiously enough, is not an opponent of abortion). They are blaming her for putting Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch on the bench, enabling the final decision in Dobbs. Some are demanding an apology while others are calling for her resignation. (Associated Press)
Sen. Susan Collins was blasted Friday for the overturning of Roe v. Wade, as opponents targeted her votes to confirm two justices to the Supreme Court who were in the majority opinion allowing states to ban abortion.
Critics of the Maine senator haven’t forgotten the key role she played in confirming Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, and she was ripped anew on social media.
Some opponents took to name-calling and attacked Collins for being naive or complicit. Others called for her resignation. University of Maine professor Amy Fried said Collins “helped make this happen,” and the Maine Democratic Party said part of the blame lies at Collins’ feet.
While this isn’t the main issue here, it’s worth noting that 49 other Senators voted for Kavanaugh and any one of them could have derailed his nomination if they had chosen to do so. I understand that Collins is their senator, so she’s an obvious target, but the point remains. As for Gorsuch, he received 54 votes so Collins couldn’t have blocked him anyway.
The bigger concern in this debate is whether or not Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, or Coney Barrett actually lied during their confirmation hearings, as many are now accusing them of doing. Collins herself quickly blasted Kavanaugh and Gorsuch for “misleading” her both during the hearings and in private meetings she took with them while considering their nominations. (Collins voted against Barrett, so that point is off the table.)
There’s a lot of misinformation and misleading descriptions making the rounds this weekend when it comes to what the justices did or didn’t say during their confirmation hearings. Media talking heads and high-ranking Democrats are repeating the accusations of lying and misleading the Senate, but the transcripts of the justices’ confirmation hearings say otherwise. At Heritage Foundation, Tom Jipping has pored through the actual transcripts and found that the answers that all three associate justices gave when being asked about Roe and Casey were not only consistent, but they followed the stock answers given by virtually all justices nominated by presidents from both parties when they are asked to comment on past rulings or predict how they might vote on hypothetical future cases.
He notes that some of the most inflamed accusations have come from Democrats including Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. She is quoted as saying, “several Supreme Court justices, including Justice Alito … stated during their confirmation hearings that they would not overturn Roe v. Wade.” She goes on to expand on that, claiming that they said “they would actually preserve Roe.” As Jipping goes on to document, this is complete and utter malarkey, as Joe Biden would say. None of them, including the most recent three members to join the court, ever said any such thing.
No Supreme Court nominee has ever come close to saying any such thing about any precedent. In fact, for decades, nominees of both parties have studiously avoided giving even what Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg described in her 1993 hearing as “hints … forecasts … [or] previews.” Transcripts of those hearings, which are available here, here, and here, show exactly what the Justices said and expose how accusations of “lying” are pure fiction.
Republican nominees have carefully duplicated the Sotomayor/Kagan strategy. During Gorsuch’s March 2017 hearing, for example, he told Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) that Obergefell v. Hodges, holding that the Constitution protects a right to same-sex marriage, is “absolutely settled law.” Similarly, Gorsuch told Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) that Griswold v. Connecticut and Eisenstadt v. Baird, which created and extended a constitutional right to use contraception, “are precedents of the U.S. Supreme Court” that “have been settled.” He told Sen. Chris Coons (D-CT) that Casey, Lawrence v. Texas, which created a right to same-sex sodomy, and Obergefell are all “settled law in the sense that [they are] decision[s] of the U.S. Supreme Court, entitled to the weight of precedent.”
Jipping notes the way that both Kagan and Sotomayor used the phrases “precedents of the court” and settled law when being asked about favorite Democratic targets such as Citizens United. Chuck Schumer and the Democrats were not put off by those answers because they all knew what they meant. “Settled law” means that the law is currently settled based on the precedents established by previous court decisions. But that does not indicate any sort of contract suggesting that the law might not become “unsettled” in the future. And the Supreme Court has overturned many of its precedents over the years, with a mixed bag of results.
Do any of these accusers want to suggest that Dred Scott shouldn’t have been overturned? All of the current justices nominated by both Republicans and Democrats have refused to make predictions about how they might vote on hypothetical future cases. They are trained to do that when preparing for their confirmation hearings. Jipping offers a plethora of examples. So these current accusations of “lying” by people who were unhappy with the most recent decision should ring hollow.
