MBC leaders urge Roberts’ confirmation
By Staff
July 12, 2005
JEFFERSON CITY – Missouri Baptist Convention (MBC) leaders sent a letter July 26 to U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, urging a fair hearing for John G. Roberts Jr., President Bush’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, and his confirmation by Sept. 30.
Those signing the letter urging senators to swiftly vote yes on Roberts are: Mitchell Jackson, MBC president, and pastor, Miner Baptist Church, Sikeston; David Clippard, MBC executive director; Roger Moran, research director, Missouri Baptist Layman’s Association; Rodney Albert, chairman, MBC Christian Life Commission (CLC); Kerry Messer, lobbyist, CLC; Jim Wells, president, Missouri Directors of Missions Fellowship; and Don Hinkle, editor, The Pathway.
The letter asks Specter to conduct prompt and fair hearings, while noting that Roberts is “exceptionally qualified” and possesses all the attributes needed to make a superb justice on the land’s highest court.
“By all appearances, the confirmation of John Roberts to the United States Supreme Court will be the beginning of the end of the long national nightmare of judicial tyranny,” Albert said. “President Bush has kept his promise give America a strong constitutionalist who will provide sanity and dignity to judicial rulings. The last bastion of the liberal political machine—activist courts—is about to be obliterated.”
President George W. Bush nominated Roberts July 19, saying the 50-year-old is “one of the best legal minds of his generation” and someone who would “not legislate from the bench.”
“President Bush promised he would appoint a conservative candidate and I believe he’s picked a good man,” Jackson said. “He’s a very, very good judge with good credentials.”
Copies of the MBC letter to Specter were sent to Missouri’s two senators, Kit Bond and Jim Talent, both of whom have already indicated that they will vote to confirm Roberts.
Among prominent national Southern Baptist leaders on record supporting the confirmation of Roberts to the high court are Richard Land, president, Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, Southern Baptist Convention, and R. Albert Mohler Jr., president, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Ky.
Bush said Roberts has “superb credentials and the highest integrity.” The president expressed confidence that Roberts will “faithfully apply the Constitution and keep our founding promise of equal justice under law.”
Bush asked for a “dignified confirmation process” in the Senate and said he hoped to see Roberts on the court when it reconvenes in October. He also said he had consulted with more than 70 senators –a topic that received much attention during the debate over judicial filibusters earlier this year.
Roberts said it was “very humbling” to be nominated.
“I am very grateful for the confidence (Bush) has shown in nominating me, and I look forward to the next step in the process before the United States Senate,” he said.
If confirmed by the Senate, Roberts, who currently serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, would replace Sandra Day O’Connor, the first female Supreme Court justice. Conservatives hope Roberts will tilt the court to the right and issue favorable rulings on a host of cultural issues, including abortion and the public display of the Ten Commandments. The court eventually could weigh in on “gay marriage.”
O’Connor was a swing vote on several hot-button issues but disappointed conservatives multiple times, including her vote in a 5-4 decision to overturn Nebraska’s partial-birth abortion ban.
“President Bush promised in 2000 and again in 2004 that he would only nominate strict-constructionist, original-intent judges and justices in the Scalia-Thomas mold,” Land said in reference to two of the court’s most conservative justices.
“I have found the president in the 17 years I have known him personally to be a man of integrity and a man of his word. I will trust the president until I have compelling evidence to the contrary. The nomination of Judge Roberts has certainly not given me any reason at present to believe that the president has done anything other than to fulfill his campaign promises. Justice-nominee Roberts gives every indication of being the kind of judge that will be a neutral judicial umpire, calling them the way the Constitution sees them, not seeking to ‘fix’ the game by tilting judicial decisions toward those who do not offend his personal sense of right and wrong.”
Roberts has served on the D.C. Circuit since 2003. From 1993 to 2003 he served as an attorney at the Washington law firm Hogan & Hartson, and prior to that he worked as deputy solicitor general under the first President Bush. He has argued more than 30 cases before the Supreme Court.
Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the Christian legal group American Center for Law and Justice, applauded the pick.
“Judge Roberts is an exceptional choice who will bring sound legal reasoning to the Supreme Court of the United States,” Sekulow said in a statement.