Saturday, December 14, 2002

Engler and the judges Mike Wowk of the Detroit News writes an article entitled "Judicial appointments cloaked in controversy".  It seems, however, that he is trying to find controversy where none in fact exists.  The early focus of the article is on a newly appointed judge who offends no one: "Richard Caretti started as Macomb County's newest circuit judge on Monday, but he wasn't selected by voters." Of course not; he is an appointee. Caretti is a non-controversial choice, succeeding Judge Patrick Donofrio, a well-respected and moderate jurist just appointed by Gov. Engler to the Court of Appeals to succeed the late Judge Martin Doctoroff, who died in August of this year from Lou Gehrig's disease. The initial focus on Caretti gives way to a general discussion of the fact that Engler has appointed many judges (a total of 160 judges at all levels, we are told) in the course of 12 years in office, but of course that was his right and his responsibility as Governor.  I don't know how Wowk thinks he can find "controversy" here; he certainly doesn't establish any.  For the most part, Engler has appointed eminently qualified and respected jurists over the years of his three terms.  Wowk seems to criticize the appointment of Jeffrey Collins by referring to him as a "Republican activist".  Collins was appointed by Engler to the Court of Appeals in 1998 and then was nominated this year by the President as U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, where he now serves after Senate confirmation.  He is a Republican, yes; he is an African-American as well.  But the most important point, never mentioned by Wowk, is that Collins is widely regarded as a rising star in the political world.  He is an excellent public speaker and has a sharp and engaging mind.  Before being appointed to the Court of Appeals, Collins served as a Recorders' Court judge and then as a Wayne Circuit judge.  He has been widely praised in each of the positions for which he was selected to serve.  He is far from being, as Wowk suggests, a political hack appointed by a cynical governor and then by an equally cynical President.  Wowk serves up several quotes from Geoffrey Fieger about Engler's appointments, but Fieger can generate a controversy at a Sunday picnic.  Given his history, asking Fieger to comment on judges is like asking Anna Nichole Smith to comment on, well, just about anything. There is in fact a significant amount of controversy in legal circles about Engler's appointments to the Supreme Court, but for some reason Wowk is entirely silent about those. 6:09:59 PM     "State's rights" We can write volumes about this topic and how it interplays with the segregationist movement of the 1960s.  The Clymer wrote yesterday: One of the sharpest examples of how Republicans have successfully balanced those two interests occurred in 1980, when Ronald Reagan opened his campaign in Philadelphia, Miss., and set off an outcry when he used the code words "states' rights" to appeal to whites. But it's not all about race. To those of Clymer's mindset, the Federal government is all-powerful and transcendent -- terms that should apply to God rather than to a government of laws under a Federal system.  As we have seen with the Reagan revolution and, in particular, in the development of the ironically-named "new Federalism" in Supreme Court and lower federal court jurisprudence, the concept of "states' rights" is alive and well, outside of the context of race relations. The victory of North over South in the Civil War and the New Deal, the two most significant domestic socio-political events of the last two centuries, blunted but did not kill the concept of the United States as a union of self-governing and sovereign states.  Clymer's reference notwithstanding, state's rights need not be a code word for racism or pro-segregation attitudes.  It can also stand for respecting, maintaining, and even regaining the rights of states to govern themselves, free of improper and unnecessary Federal interference.  And that concept does not disparage the advances won in the civil rights movement by the courage and the blood of thousands of people.  I strongly support the principle of state sovereignty.  I also support the Civil Rights Act (as a necessary and proper Federal limitation on state and private action) because it finally fulfilled for all of our people the promise that was made 99 years earlier, with the passage of the 14th Amendment, but on which delivery was delayed. (As Dr. King said, it was a promissory note on which the American people had defaulted for a century.)  And note the careful wording of my comment: the Civil Rights Act did not benefit blacks, or Asians, or Hispanics.  The Civil Rights Act and its progeny have benefited all of our people.  10:42:19 AM

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