"Justice Souter's decision to retire presents President
Obama and the U.S. Senate with a decision of great and lasting
importance. Although no originalist, Justice Souter
rejected a liberal, activist approach on a number of important
cases, particularly in the areas of crime, punishment, and lawsuit
abuse. Supreme Court appointments are among the most important
decisions of any presidency, but what is at stake is a
potential shift from a center-left justice to a far-left
justice.
"Americans have a right to expect the nomination of a justice who
will fully obey his or her oath to preserve the Constitution,
someone with a proven fidelity to the original meaning of the
Constitution and laws as written. An essential qualification
is that the nominee take the text of our Constitution and laws
seriously. Americans neither want nor need a justice who looks
for excuses to depart from the legal text and read into it
what he or she wants.
"As a senator and again today in the White House,
President Obama has made statements that suggest
he either does not understand these fundamental principles or
that he does not agree with the important, but limited, role
judges are given under the Constitution. Essentially,
the president has signaled that he wants judges who would let
their sympathies trump what the laws require. Americans don't
want judges who will bend the law toward the side
they favor; they want a fair judge who will apply the law
in the same way-as the people's representatives in the legislature
wrote it-regardless of who is before the court.
"Given President Obama's troubling statements, Americans expect
the U.S. Senate to conduct a thoughtful and searching inquiry into
the nominee's approach to judging. That inquiry must be
allowed to proceed without arbitrary timetables. And, at
the end of the day, the Senate must be sure it does not
grant a would-be activist life-time authority to bend the
Constitution and laws in favor of his or her personal,
political, or social beliefs. Our constitutional system and the
American people require no less."