Cato Daily Dispatch for October 11, 2005
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Confirmation Process Compromises JudiciaryKatrina Offers Opportunity for Education Reform
Angela Merkel: Thatcher Again?
Confirmation Process Compromises Judiciary
"Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, often extolled by conservative Republicans as their ideal model of a judge, said yesterday the confirmation process was too politicized and that he wouldn't want to experience it again. When asked whether he thought he could be confirmed again by the Senate, Justice Scalia said: 'I don't know. I wouldn't want to go through it today, I'll tell you that much,'" The Associated Press reports.
In the forward to the Cato Supreme Court Review, Roger Pilon, vice president for legal affairs at the Cato Institute, writes: "Confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominees are 'political' because, under our Constitution, those are occasions on which politics and law come naturally together. Although the Constitution belongs to all of us, and judges are expected to adjudicate impartially under it, not legislate, the president's selection of a nominee for the Court is a political, not a legal act, as is the Senate's decision whether or not to confirm the nominee. That means that the president and members of the Senate are free to decide on any ground they wish -- including 'politics,' in its many senses -- not simply on such neutral criteria as the nominee's competence and integrity, as Alexander Hamilton recommended.
"The problem with going down that political road, however, is its potential for undermining the rule of law, for turning everything into politics. At the extreme, for example, both the president and the Senate might demand that a nominee pass a so-called ideological litmus test as a condition for being nominated or confirmed -- the idea being to try to bind him to deciding future cases in accordance with his answers on the test. Were that approach to prevail -- and we are already part way there -- the independence of the judiciary would be seriously compromised as judging would no longer be a function of dispassionate and apolitical reason but of nomination and confirmation politics. That political process would determine the legal process, in effect, rendering the latter a sham."
Katrina Offers Opportunity for Education Reform
"As Hurricane Katrina put the issue of poverty onto the national agenda, many liberal advocates wondered whether the floods offered a glimmer of opportunity. The issues they most cared about -- health care, housing, jobs, race -- were suddenly staples of the news, with President Bush pledged to 'bold action.' But what looked like a chance to talk up new programs is fast becoming a scramble to save the old ones," The New York Times reports.
"While the right has proposed alternatives including tax-free zones for businesses and school vouchers for students, Mr. Butler said, 'the left has just talked up the old paradigm: 'let's expand what's failed before.'"
Neal McCluskey, an education policy analyst at the Cato Institute, comments: "An important step in recovering from this calamity is for the children to reclaim a level of normalcy in their lives, and going to school enables them to do just that. Now is the time to help people whose lives were turned upside down by Katrina, not by forcing them into government schools, but by letting them choose the schools they actually want their children to attend, whether public or private."
In Voucher Wars: Waging the Legal Battle over School Choice, Clint Bolick, writing for the Cato Institute, recounts the dramatic 12-year battle to finally give families a choice in education and looks ahead to a future when every child can get the best education possible. While the battle over educational freedom is not over, Bolick notes that school choice "will begin to help our nation finally deliver on its promise of opportunity."
Angela Merkel: Thatcher Again?
"On Nov. 9, 1989, the day the Berlin Wall fell, Angela Merkel made her weekly visit to a sauna. Hours later, she caught up with thousands of East Germans, who were streaming jubilantly into the West," The New York Times reports. "It was not the last time her rendezvous with German history was delayed. On Monday, three weeks after a deadlocked election that she had once been expected to win handily, Mrs. Merkel finally emerged as the designated leader of Germany's next government."
In "Thatcher Again?" Marian L. Tupy, assistant director of the Project on Global Economic Liberty at the Cato Institute, and Patrick Basham, senior fellow in the Center for Representative Government, write: "Yet, the question remains: Is the probable new chancellor a centrist sheep in Thatcherite clothing or is she the real thing? Despite growing evidence that the German welfare state is incompatible with high rates of economic growth and rising living standards, German political elites continue to proclaim their commitment to the 'soziale Marktwirtschaft' (the social market economy), and explicitly reject an American-style market economy. For most German politicians, that is a successful electoral strategy; but it is not a winning strategy for Germany's economic future.
"Germans want a change of government but are ambivalent about the direction the new government should take. Margaret Thatcher might suggest Merkel's responsibility is to have the courage of her apparent convictions and confidently lead Germany along a freer and more prosperous path."
Kristen A. Kestner, editor, kkestner@cato.org
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