President Obama’s criticism of the Supreme Court, and Justice Alito’s reaction, have received a surprising amount of attention—given that Obama had thousands of words, widely broadcast, and Alito had a headshake and two words, unheard, possibly “that’s wrong.”
Linda Greenhouse—Linda Greenhouse, of all people—writes for the New York TImes that Alito is actually right, and Obama wrong, while over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr remarks: “I image a collective bubble over the Justices at about the 25-second mark, representing their thoughts, with the text, ‘We are so not coming to this next year.’”
The criticism that Obama is politicizing the Court, however, needs to be approached carefully. One of the arguments the pro-life movement has long held is that the Court is, with cases such as Roe v. Wade, a political actor. It’s a little late in the day to attack Obama for acting on an idea on which the more conservative have long been insisting.
January 28th, 2010 | 2:12 pm
[...] Joseph Bottum: Obama snipes at the Court [...]
January 28th, 2010 | 2:13 pm
Personally, I hope he pursues this attack on the court. It should lay some nice groundwork for a new angle of attack on Roe vs. Wade.
January 28th, 2010 | 2:52 pm
Wouldn’t it have been great if he had thrown his shoe at them?
January 28th, 2010 | 3:19 pm
All the criticism I’ve seen is not that Obama was wrong to disagree with the ruling, but that he was wrong to mislead people about the nature of the ruling.
January 29th, 2010 | 5:09 am
Conservatives need be fair. If a President attacked Roe vs. Wade in a similar manner during a State of the Union address, I would laud him. I disagree with Obama on the issue in question, and perhaps his manner of delivery was inappropriate for the setting. However, I am not much of a Supreme Court sympathizer.
January 29th, 2010 | 10:03 am
Jeff, I agree with your point about being fair – in fact, it is probably healthy to have the branches of government suspicious of each others use of power. However, in the setting of the SOTU, with the Justices inability to respond and the fawning applause of most of congress, the President came off as a bully. Even worse, Pres. Obama seems to have ‘misrepresented’ the Court’s ruling. I would hope that conservatives who criticize court decisions can do it with civility and honesty. For people who point out that Pres. Reagan criticized the Roe decision, keep in mind that he disagreed with the actual ruling of the court, not an imagined one. Isn’t accusing the court of doing something it didn’t do a form of slander?
January 29th, 2010 | 1:00 pm
Not only was Obama a bully, but he was WRONG. So much for being a consitutional lawyer.
Mark Levin, who also is a constitutional lawyer, cited on his show yesterday WHY “legally” what Obama said was wrong. The short version, even IF a US company is international, the recent US SC decision does NOT allow campaign monies outside of the US.
Too bad we don’t have a MSM who could get THAT out, proving that either Obama can’t even get his legal facts correct, or “doesn’t want to”, and will throw even the SCOTUS under the bus if it serves him.
January 29th, 2010 | 9:23 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by First Things, DNC DUDES. DNC DUDES said: Obama Snipes at the Court: President Obama’s criticism of the Supreme Court, and Justice Alito’s reaction, ha… http://bit.ly/cKh7bx #tcot [...]
January 30th, 2010 | 10:10 pm
I’m not sure how much President Obama misrepresented the court’s ruling. Individuals from other countried are limited as individuals in contributing to American campaigns. Foreign corporations are definitely limited in how much they can contribute to campaigns.
However, foreign citizens own stock in companies, including American companies. Indeed, many companies have a substantial base of foreign investment. This is what President Obama is really complaining about: that shareholders (many foreign) in corporations are now given protection under the First Amendment to unlimited advertising in elections.
I don’t know what the solution should be, but I am shocked that 1) corporations have First Amendment rights and 2) foreign citizens can have a major influence in our election advertising.
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