During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Jeffrey Rosen, who, if confirmed, would become the second-in-command at the Justice Department, wouldn’t say whether he believed landmark Supreme Court rulings that legalized abortion and desegregated school were correctly decided.
When pressed on Roe v. Wade by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Rosen acknowledged that it’s been the precedent for more than 40 years and “unless and until that changes, it’s the law.” Blumenthal asked the same of Brown v. Board of Education.
“Senator, I don’t think that it would be a productive exercise for me to go through the most–thousands of Supreme Court opinions and say which ones are right and which ones are wrong,” Rosen responded.
“These are pretty simple questions,” Blumenthal said. “They’re answerable by yes or no. Most lawyers, I suspect, would agree based on knowledge of the law that these two cases, pillars of our jurisprudence were correctly decided by the United States Supreme Court.”
“I have views about lots of Supreme Court cases,” Rosen said, “but I’m not being nominated for this position to be the Solicitor General nor a judge and I think in this context the point I’m trying to make is that, whatever the law is, whether it’s a decision I would favor or disfavor, I see it as the role of the Department of Justice to uphold the law such as it is, unless Congress or the courts change it.”
Watch the exchange here, which begins at the around 1:32:00.
