1. A ghostly apparition; a phantom.
2. A haunting or disturbing image or prospect….
Arlen Specter: Republican Senator from Pennsylvania.
The specter of Arlen Specter often rises up to haunt the Republicans in the Senate, and it happened again recently during Janice Brown’s hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
As reported in passing in an excellent NRO article by Sean Rushton, the following exchange took place between Specter and Brown:
Specter: Well, doesn’t the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution mean that the equal protection of the 14th Amendment trumps California Proposition 209?
Brown: Doesn’t the Supremacy Clause mean that?
Specter: Yes.
Brown: Well, the U.S. Supreme Court has not said that.
Specter: Well, the state cannot have a constitutional provision which conflicts with a U.S. constitutional provision, can it?
As Rushton says, “Specter has his facts wrong” because the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that Proposition 209 did not violate the Equal Protection clause. Rushton then moves on, but I think it’s worth pausing here a moment, because this exchange reveals Specter to be worse than merely wrong.
The Supreme Court has held — in Bakke and again in Grutter — that the Equal Protection Clause allows race to be taken into account, i.e., racial preferences, in a constrained manner to promote “diversity” in higher education. Neither the Supreme Court nor any lower federal court has ever held, however, that the Equal Protection Clause compels states to implement racial preference policies, which is what the ACLU demanded in its unsuccessful suit against Prop. 209.
Does Sen. Specter really think that the Fourteenth Amendment bars a state from placing in its constitution a provision that bars the state from discriminating on the basis of race?
Perhaps the more salient question is, does Sen. Specter really think….?
