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.
Do these people get paid to be hateful douche bags? I guess the answer indirectly at least is yes.
Wow, that’s actually a reasonable and proper position to take. Now, whether or not he really believes that is another question entirely…
When asked if he believes it should be ok to murder and eat people he went on to say that its not his place to make such a decision, that if the law passed saying that the first born child was to be sacrificed to the FSM then that is what he will defend, unless its Obamacare.
That’s a “no”…he does not believe they were correctly decided and is just another white Christian nationalist out to abuse power in an attempt to save the white Christian hegemony from demographic shifts. Anyone who believes the answer is “yes” would just fucking say so.
Frankly, the most honest answer he could have given would have been “Sir, I’m not interested in those opinions. I’m being hired to help defend voter suppression, gerrymandering and the dismantling of the VRA. We’re not even planning on getting to Roe and Brown until AFTER we’re structured our elections laws and processes to guarantee white Christian nationalist conservative minority-rule by the GOP.”
I guess we’re reduced to hoping that these contortions are to avoid the rhetorical trap of having to answer the Roe question and not that he’s unwilling to pay even lip service to Brown. But with the kind of freaks they’ve been nominating it’s hard to know.