John Roberts may be the perfect stealth Supreme Court candidate, the anti-Souter. From a lawyer's perspective, he has good credentials, and his smooth, collegial demeanor has earned him the admiration of more progressive colleagues and legal scholars such as Richard Lazarus (a Harvard classmate) and Laurence Tribe, one of his former professors at Harvard.
His ties to the Federalist Society and his wife's active involvement in Feminists for Life (she is a former Executive Vice President and currently serves as pro-bono legal counsel) deserve very careful scrutiny. Together, these affiliations suggest that he is more ideologue than mere partisan and has the potential to be an extremely dangerous Justice. Of course, Roberts may not share his wife's views, but he should not be given the benefit of the doubt, particularly given the positions taken by Feminists for Life.
Briefly, regarding the Federalist Society, it is an organization that deserves to be exposed for the extremist cabal that it is. To this day, its website proclaims that: "Law schools and the legal profession are currently strongly dominated by a form of orthodox liberal ideology which advocates a centralized and uniform society. While some members of the academic community have dissented from these views, by and large they are taught simultaneously with (and indeed as if they were) the law." This statement was absurd in 1982, when the Federalist Society was founded and I was a law student, and it is even more ludicrous today.
http://www.fed-soc.org/ourpurpose.htm
A certain liberal orthodoxy may have existed among a small group of professors at my reputedly liberal law school, but most of my classmates went on to Wall Street firms, and few Corporate, Commercial or Tax professors could have been called liberal by any stretch of the imagination. The environment was overwhelmingly corporatist and careerist, and the public interest types were the fringe.
Feminists for Life is perhaps even more insidious than the Federalist Society. The organization looks back to many of the founders of feminism and contends that they were opposed to abortion. I don't have the knowledge to debate the historical accuracy of these claims, but I do contest their relevance to the present debate, since early feminism evolved in the context of late 19th century reformism, a movement that encompassed temperance and had a very puritanical streak.
Feminists for Life embraces in what is called "the seamless garment" approach to these issues. It takes no stand on contraception (although it vehemently opposes "emergency contraception") and opposes the death penalty. Thus, the public stance resembles that of the Catholic Church, but the silence on contraception is puzzling and suggestive, in my mind at least, of a certain disingenuousness.
The organization took a stand on the Schiavo matter, and it would be interesting to know if it filed any amicus briefs in the case. Here's part of the statement:
"Feminists have always challenged the idea that married women have no rights of their own," said Heaton. "A husband should not be granted absolute control over his wife's fate, especially a disaffected husband with dubious motives."
"Terri has parents whose unselfish desire is to simply love her, care for her and let her live. She is not in a comatose state and she is not suffering from terminal disease. Terri may no longer be perfect or complete but she has a fundamental right to life. Her feeding tube must be re-inserted."
The starvation of Terri Schiavo will take at least seven to ten days."
http://www.feministsforlife.org/news/PHSchiavo3-18.htm
The organization also opposes stem cell research and continues to advance the discredited suggestion that there is a link between abortion and breast cancer.
What I find most troubling about Feminists for Life is its virtually Orwellian appropriation of the term feminism. This is not feminism as it is currently understood. It took a good deal of digging to uncover, but the real meaning of "feminism", as deployed by Feminists for Life, is a religious one. In a letter to the Catholic magazine "Crisis", Peter J. Wolfgang, a former Vice Chairman of the Connecticut branch and a district deputy in the Knights of Columbus, revealed it. He wrote:
"It is true that we Feminists for Life do not equate feminism with the sexual revolution. In Pope John Paul II's 1995 encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, he called for "a `new feminism' which rejects the temptation of imitating models of `male domination.'". . . We stand with the Holy Father in refusing to pit the mother's interest against the interests of the child and society.
Nor does this refusal make us anti-family. In every speech she gives, Serrin Foster criticizes 1970s-style feminism and its intellectual antecedents for disconnecting fathers from their children and for the effects this has had on children. The first choice FFL mentions in our 'You Have Choices' brochure is marriage. Our board members and staff are overwhelmingly married, and the moms on staff work from home so they can be close to their children."
http://www.crisismagazine.com/december2003/letters.htm
From what I can tell, Feminists for Life is closely linked to both the Catholic Church and the Knights of Columbus, although it bills itself as non-sectarian. It has been suggested that
"[g]roups like 'Feminists for Life' work within other progressive groups, for example, groups working for peace, to try and prevent these groups from supporting and forming alliances with pro choice organizations. Sometimes it works!"
http://www.svpal.org/~choice/AntisFrame2Source1.htm
It would be very interesting to identify the organization's funding sources.
For years, the Federalist Society has used behind-the-scenes machinations to gain increasing power over the American legal system and advance its radical agenda. Feminists for Life cloaks its hard-right stance in "feminist" garb and the language of progressive politics. Roberts needs to be cross-examined on his involvement in one organization and his family ties to the other
