DEVELOPING: Roberts Involved with Romer v. Evans
The LA Times is reporting that John Roberts gave pro bono advice to gay rights groups, serving on a moot court, in the Romer v. Evans case while a Partner at Hogan and Hartson.
Gryphmon’s Grumbles has more. A salute to Mudville Gazette.
Nathan Newman is enjoying the story.
It’s another smear! The Post is deliberately dredging this up to split Republican support for Roberts! There’s no reason why this case needed to be mentioned at all except to cruelly cast doubt on Roberts’s conservative credentials. What possible relevance could his instrumental work on behalf of a recent landmark gay rights case have on his credentials as a Supreme Court Justice?
And why delve into his personal life like this? This is about his private work as a lawyer, not about his ability to serve the President on the Supreme Court. Maybe he didn’t mention this work in his report to Congress because it’s none of their business! It’s cowardly, dirty journalism.
The left thinks the right will see this story and wonder if Roberts really is the across-the-board conservative they thought he was.
But they are wrong! There are NO anti-gay Republicans. No Republicans even care about Romer v. Evans. It won’t work!
And there’s no way on earth that this story could possibly increase Roberts’s support on the left. It’s 100% impossible for a liberal gay-loving American to read this article and think anything positive about Roberts.
No, the only logical conclusion possible is that the Post is yet again engaging in a sinister plot to use irrelevant ‘facts’ from Roberts’s private past to make non-existent gay-hating Republicans drop their support for Roberts.
Pathetic.
How is this not relevant? How is this personal? How is the legal work a future Supreme Court Justice has done in the past none of anyone’s business?
I have no idea how this will affect his confirmation or even if it will but you seem to be a little smear paranoid if you ask me…
Roberts and Romer
The LA Times reports Judge Roberts worked behind the scenes with gay rights activists in crafting their 1996 landmark victory before the Supreme Court in Romer vs. Evans:
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John Roberts Helped in Gay Rights Case
Are we seeing the initial signs that we have another Souter in John Roberts? The jury is out, so to speak.
NewsMax: Supreme Court nominee John Roberts donated his time to work behind the scenes for gay rights activists – and helped win a decisio…
The adoption research is despicable. enough said.
On the Gay case, as I understand the facts.
1. The Bar and his law firm expect lawyers to perform community service in an effective fashion. For one of the best appellate trial lawyers in the country to dish mashed potatoes in a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving isn’t giving real value to the community. Roberts gave freely of his extremely valuable time to a pro-bono case.
2. He didn’t pick the case. The partner responsible for pro-bono work came to him and asked for help. At this point the Gay group was a client. Honest work (to the extent that lawyers can be said to do honest work (LOL)) by a lawyer for a client doesn’t ever attribute much to the personal opinions of a lawyer.
3. He contributed expertise in helping the Gay group lawyer and one would assume also his firm’s associates doing the scut work to appreciate the way they would be treated during oral arguments, what sort of questions they would likely get from the right side of SCOTUS and played the part of Scalia during a moot court. This served the pro-bono client and one would assume educated the associates along the way.
4. This sounds like an extremely effective use of Robert’s time in support of his firm and the principle of pro-bono law. I think it brings only credit to Roberts, whether you agree with the position of the group represented. It is the equivalent of the ACLU defending the KKK. Somebody needs to do it to make the legal system work, and once you have a client, you are bound to do everything legal and ethical to support the case.
The ACLU defends the KKK in defense of a specific principal of American law, and our core values — they are standing up for a fundamental principal that they beleive in very deeply: The First Amendment, free speech.
Besides “duty as a lawyer”, what specific principle was Bolton upholding when he worked on this case? What lofty principle do you think trumped his presumed opposition to “special rights for gays”? Was it his duty to the bar? Was it his belief that man’s law is higher than God’s law?
Is it admirable to let one’s duty to the legal profession supercede one’s most essential, even one’s spiritual values?
Is it ethical for a lawyer to work on behalf of a client whose core arguments you beleive to be unconstitutional, illegal, and immoral?
Do you think that Roberts, a powerful lawyer, ever had the option to simply NOT involve himself with this case? Could he have abstained from the case by saying “It would be unethical of me to defend a client’s right to do something I morally oppose and legally believe to be unconstitutiona.” If so, why didn’t he exercise that option?
I suspect that he helped out on the case because he beleived that the cause (gay rights) was just. Or possibly he thought that the opposition was unjust.
Pro Bono work by an attorney! What is this world coming to, oh the humanity.
I can’t beleive I wrote “Bolton” above. I meant Roberts, of course.
Askrom: I submit to you that Roberts’ assistance with the gay rights case was relevant, and was destined to come out at some point – unlike his female dramatic credentials or “reprentative” photos from his “early years”.