Nomination

Captain's Quarters:

"If Miers' evangelicalism remains the top selling point of her nomination, then I submit that the White House has already lost this battle. They need to stop promoting religion as a legitimate point of consideration on Miers' curriculum vitae, or else conservative nominations will face nothing less than an Inquisition on every confirmation -- an Inquisition endorsed by the foolishness of short-sighted conservatives."

I don't really care if Meirs is an evangelical, a catholic, or an aethist. It seems to me that if her support for this nomination is based upon her commitment to a faith, and thereby upon a particular view of abortion, then her support is essentially no different from supporting a "living constitution" view of constitutional interpretation. The reason for my conclusion is that her support seems to be based upon her personal ethics that she will bring to the Court that abortion is wrong. This seems consistent with the "living constitution" approach that says judges are supposed to re-interpret the Constitution over time according to changes in cultural views. In contrast, I want someone on the Court who brings a commitment to the original meaning of the words that have been ratified as our Constitution. With that commitment, a justice might find that abortion is or is not constitutional based upon the meaning of the words, and not because the justice personally thinks abortion is right or wrong, or because the justice discovers that the culture thinks abortion is right or wrong.