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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Tuesday, October 4, 2005

Justice nominee must be asked for her views

For many, it may seem that the announcement of a new Supreme Court nominee — Harriet Miers — and the swift and detailed parsing of her personal, political and judicial philosophies is a little extreme.

President Bush, after all, has the right to appoint the person he chooses. And her credentials as a staunch Bush loyalist should matter far less than her personal integrity and her abilities as a lawyer.

Indeed, it is those larger issues — life, death and social equity — that do matter. And these issues underscore the importance of Bush's decision.

Consider, for example, just a few of the issues that will be before the court this term as enumerated recently by the Washington Post:

  • Campaign spending reform laws, including a fresh challenge out of Vermont to the established law that campaign spending limits on candidates are, per se, unconstitutional.

  • Abortion, including further study of the ban on "partial birth" abortion and parental notification law.

  • Assisted suicide, and the Justice Department's off-base effort to throw out Oregon's limited assisted-suicide law.

  • Military recruiting on college campuses.

  • Death penalty cases, particularly trying to decide the proper balance between established appeals procedures and new evidence based on DNA science.

    That's just a sampling of what is on the docket this year alone. The Senate has both a right and an obligation to probe deeply into the nominee's thinking on these and other issues. The public deserves nothing less.