Old Article but interesting.....


http://www.nationalreview.com/ponnuru/ponnuru021103.asp



February 11, 2003 9:00 a.m.
Judging Gonzales
Conservatives worry about Bush’s Supreme Court pick.

s White House counsel Alberto Gonzales on the short list to fill the next Supreme Court vacancy? That's been the subject of speculation since even before President Bush took office. That speculation had declined in recent months, and a recent Washington Post story suggested he was out of the running. But the rumor mill is up and running again. Some social conservatives are reporting that the White House is trying to sell them on Gonzales's merits. They're worried that a Justice Gonzales could be in our future.


In the Senate, Republican staffers who share this alarm have taken to saying that "Gonzales is Spanish for Souter." The reference is to Justice David Souter, a nominee of the first President Bush. Souter was picked because he lacked a paper trail and could thus easily be confirmed. Souter got 90 votes in the Senate. But on the bench he turned out to be a fairly reliable liberal vote.

In the latest issue of NR, my colleagues editorialize that it is unfair to compare Gonzales to Souter: "When Souter was nominated, we didn't know anything about his views. We do know something about Gonzales's views, and what we know is not encouraging."

Gonzales opponents say there are two strikes against him. The first is that he weakened the administration's brief to the Supreme Court in the University of Michigan racial-preference cases. Solicitor General Ted Olson wanted the administration to say that the use of racial preferences to achieve diversity is constitutionally impermissible. Gonzales overruled him.

The second strike is Gonzales's record on abortion as a justice of the Texas supreme court. The state had passed a law requiring parents to be notified before a minor could get an abortion. That law, like most parental-notification laws, allowed judges to waive the requirement if observing it could be expected to lead to the abuse of the girl in question. In its first cases dealing with the law, the court read this judicial-bypass provision broadly â€â€