Stung by criticism from their supporters in the liberal interest groups that they are not opposing Judge Roberts strenuously enough, Democratic senators have ratcheted up their attack rhetoric.
Senator Patrick Leahy describes Roberts as
an eager and aggressive advocate of policies that are deeply tinged with the ideology of the far right wing of his party then, and now.
Not to be outdone, Senator Ted Kennedy said in a letter to colleagues that Roberts
was on or beyond the outer fringe of that extreme group eager to take our law and society back in time on a wide range of issues of individual rights and liberties, and on broad issues of government responsiveness to public needs.
In a letter to the Justice Dept. complaining that the National Archives has been unable to locate a folder of original Roberts document entitled “Affirmative Action Correspondence,” Sen. Kennedy said the documents are potentially of great importance because “the nominee’s opposition to accepted remedies for discrimination may well be a key issue.”
I certainly hope it is a key issue. As I discussed most recently here, I would rejoice if Democrats made Roberts’s opposition to racial busing, opposition to redefining voting rights, and opposition to racial quotas in hiring and admissions the focus of their opposition to him. The more they are forced to say about the “accepted remedies” that Roberts allegedly opposes, the more it will become clear that these “remedies” aren’t remedies all but racial balancing hiring “goals” (quotas) for the future, and that they have been “accepted” only by people (other than liberals and Democrats) who have been given no choice in their adoption and are not allowed to repeal them.
Sen. Kennedy, if these remedies are so widely “accepted,” why are your friends and supporters in Michigan trying so hard to keep an initiative repealing them — and calling for colorblind equal treatment — off the ballot?
He says some pretty scary things about the 4th amendment. Yesterday there was a piece in the post with a pretty strong stance against the exclusionary rule — the idea that evidence gathered in violation of the fourth amendment can’t be used in trials.
Aren’t you curious to see his writings on the Bob Jones University tax shelter for bigotry case?
Leahy and the rest of them said the same thing about ultra-liberal David Souter. They have no credibility. Any who is not a known hard-left activist will be summarily described as a “right wing extremist”. Leahy, etc is just pandering to his base, nobody else cares.
I don’t have the Washington Post article that actus mentions, but I’m getting a little tired of that newspaper, at least as it writes about Roberts. Eg, this quote from Roberts is used as a criticism: “It is difficult to exaggerate the perniciousness of the `comparable worth’ theory. It mandates nothing less than central planning of the economy by judges.”
What are they thinking of? “Comparable worth” is as old-hat as busing. Nobody bought it, then or now.
Dom
Dom,
I think the exclusionary rule thing I read was in the same article. in the last 4 paragraphs.
Are you sure that is being used as a ‘criticism’? or are you just projecting.
Actus, post the snippet about the exclusionary rule so we can analyze it.
Snippet:
Article
In another memo, Roberts indicated that he opposed the “exclusionary rule,” which generally bars the use in court of evidence obtained through illegal searches or other unlawful means.
Noting that a recent federal study had concluded 29 percent of felony drug arrests in Los Angeles were dismissed in 1981 because of improper seizures of evidence, Roberts wrote that “this study should be highly useful in the campaign to amend or abolish the exclusionary rule.”
Dom,
The “comparable worth” thing is presumably the source of Leahy’s
[Roberts] mocked the efforts of women legislators to find a way to remedy the effects of sex discrimination[.]
Apparently Roberts also called “comparable worth” “radical,” thereby shocking the shockable Kevin Drum, who wrote the other day that if this is the sort of stuff the White House is willing to let out, there must be yet nastier skeletons in there somewhere.
Given that “comparable worth” would have meant the government deciding what wages were appropriate for every job in the country, and enforcing its decisions with all legal remedies possible, I think “radical” is rather an understatement.
‘Given that “comparable worth” would have meant the government deciding what wages were appropriate for every job in the country,’
courts have to do that when determining damages for lots of suits anyway.
actus:
Aren’t you curious to see his writings on the Bob Jones University tax shelter for bigotry case?
Actually, I would like to know what Roberts’s position was on the Bob Jones case since, as I’ve written here before, I think Bob Jones was wrongly decided.
The exclusionary rule is not my department. On the one hand, I tend to think it’s a good thing; on the other, I think it’s unfortunate when it allows clearly guilty people to go free.
To say that Roberts opposes equal pay for women because he opposed comparable worth is the same as saying he opposes civil rights because he opposes racial quotas and busing … which figures, since it’s the same people saying both things.
“Actually, I would like to know what Roberts’s position was on the Bob Jones case since, as I’ve written here before, I think Bob Jones was wrongly decided.”
Its too bad that memo is being withheld.
Perhaps Ted Kennedy’s seat should be targeted for an “accepted remedy” — He should be forced to step down, and have a woman or minority appointed to serve the remainder of his term.
Only then will he (and the other “social tinkerers in government) know what the rest of us, in the real world, have to endure.
actus, sorry for not following up sooner.
[me:] ‘Given that “comparable worth” would have meant the government deciding what wages were appropriate for every job in the country[,]’
[actus:] courts have to do that when determining damages for lots of suits anyway.
Do they? I’m not being sarcastic; I’m genuinely curious. I suppose that if a labor dispute goes into arbitration, the prevailing wage for a particular job in a particular industry might be pertinent. But surely there’s no general requirement in any field that people doing the same work receive the same pay; and “comparable work” takes the further step of equalizing the pay for allegedly “comparable” jobs. The difficulty is that most jobs aren’t “comparable” in ways that make sense.
Take, say, driving a truck and working in a laundry. (Not my example, but one put forth by someone in the thread at Kevin Drum’s site.) Both in some ways nasty work, but in different ways. The laundry is hot, hectic, involves a lot of physical activity and the constant presence in cramped quarters of co-workers (and customers) you may or may not like. The trucking involves total solitude, boredom, long hours sitting on your butt, and getting to sleep in your own bed a couple nights a month, with luck. Which is “more valuable”? Which is “worth more”? Are they “comparable”?
I vaguely remember a caustic George Will column about this idea roughly when it was first being floated (late 70s?). A team of social scientists/wonks/whatever had looked long and hard at how jobs could be compared, and had come up with an index of factors. The authors reasonably assumed that work that was more difficult or more unpleasant ought to be better compensated, but you can see the difficulties here already. “More difficult” meant, among other things, “requiring more formal education” (putting, as Will noted, the study’s authors near the top of the scale). “More unpleasant” meant, among other things, having to work outside — which is “unpleasant” unless you actually prefer working outside. And so forth.
For what it’s worth, Will also, about the same time, gave sympathetic airing to a proposal for, essentially, domestic conscription. There are some jobs that no one particularly wants to do (picking up the garbage was the one that made it into the lede). Should these fall to the people who have no choice but to do them? People who (as Will quoted someone in the piece) “when they were young, dreamed of doing something else”?
“Do they? I’m not being sarcastic; I’m genuinely curious.”
well, the problem is that the alternative is to use the prevailing market wage. But if the claim is that the maket wage is discriminatory … then how to measure .. .
actus,
That was what I was trying to find out. Do courts now try to compare wages in completely different fields; and if they do so, how do they do it?
(And the claim isn’t exactly that the market wage is “discriminatory”; the claim is that the market wage differs when there are more women than men, or more men than women, doing this sort of work. Everyone agrees that the workers doing identical work in a given company should be paid the same regardless of sex — or at least that employers are violating the law if they don’t pay in that fashion.)
But you haven’t answered my question. Do courts [now, quite absent CW] actually “decid[e] what wages were appropriate for every job in the country” [my words]? Routinely? When and where? I am, again, genuinely curious, because I haven’t seen any evidence of this.
” actually “decid[e] what wages were appropriate for every job in the country” [my words]?”
They decide what wages are appropriate when there are cases of, say, lost wages. When a person is hurt and can no longer work, a court needs to determine how much they would have earned in their life.
” When a person is hurt and can no longer work, a court needs to determine how much they would have earned in their life.”
I believe they use the person’s actual wage in cases like this.
There are several problems with comparable worth. First, an index generally does not take into account the supply of labor, only it’s demand. Doctors make more than teachers in part because society wants more doctors. When government sets a salary, it short circuits society’s wishes.
Second, there are times when setting a salary will actually hurt an employee. I am 50 years old. I can only compete with new grads by accepting lower wages. I am using my strengths (life’s savings, a paid mortgage) to compete with a younger man’s strengths (newer skills).
I believe that every example of non-market determinations of wages has led to extreme poverty and tyranny (tyranny because the agency setting wages has far to much power). Can anyone think of any exceptions?
Dom
actus,
Away from the computer for a long time again — sorry.
[Courts] decide what wages are appropriate when there are cases of, say, lost wages. When a person is hurt and can no longer work, a court needs to determine how much they would have earned in their life.
The key here is “would have,” which doesn’t mean “should have.” If the question is only what someone in a particular industry would have made had s/he been able to keep working in the same line of work until retirement age, there are ways to estimate it, by looking at the person’s current salary, the other pay scales at higher ranks in the same line of work at the company, the average time to promotion from each rank to the next, &c. The answer will still be approximate, but there’s no way to get a better one.
(I might say that I personally dislike the idea that injury to anyone should be compensated on the basis of what s/he might have earned in the future. If someone is killed due to negligence on a Hollywood set, am I supposed to believe that it’s hundreds of times more important if it’s a 25-year-old hot actor than if it’s a 75-year-old makeup artist? )
But guessing what someone would have earned in a given milieu doing a given thing for a given period is not anything like deciding whether two people doing two different things in two different milieux are being paid adequately relative to one another or not; still less yet like designing a comprehensive wage structure for the whole country.