Edith Hollan Jones for the Supreme Court

By Wes Vernon

If President Bush said what he meant and meant what he said during the campaign about the kind of judges he will appoint to the U.S. Supreme Court, he can make no better choice for the second High Court vacancy of his presidency than to nominate Judge Edith Hollan Jones of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

This family-oriented woman has shown her qualifications by her incisive mind, her judicial philosophy, her professional background as a lawyer and a judge, her patriotism, her sense of values, and her experience as a wife and mother.

President Bush said during both of his presidential campaigns that he would nominate justices to the court who were philosophically in the mold of Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, two originalists who have shown time and again they see their role as interpreting the law and the Constitution according to what these documents actually say in the plain English language, not what a judge may think their authors should have said.

In that respect, one would have to search far and wide to find a more sound forthright judicial declaration than Judge Jones' comment that over the years, Supreme court majorities have demonstrated a "willful blindness" that should "trouble any dispassionate observer" about a number of areas "in which the court unhesitatingly steps into the realm of social policy under the guise of a constitutional adjudication."

These words were used in connection with an abortion case that came before her court. She took the occasion to speak out against Roe vs. Wade, which she said was an "exercise in raw judicial power." She cited recent studies showing the emotional effects on women post-abortion, and also evidence babies feel the pain earlier than previously believed. Judge Jones concluded that "a woman's choice is far more risky and less beneficial, and the child's sentience far more advanced than the Roe court knew."

Judicial restraint? How can you beat this quote from the good judge?

"The federal judiciary has an important but ultimately limited role in society. I favor legislative authority over judicial authority. (Italics mine)."

As one shining example of Edith Jones' respect for the boundaries inherent in a judge's "ultimately limited" role was highlighted in her opinion in Barnes vs. Mississippi wherein the judge and her colleagues ruled in a majority opinion that it is not a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to require a minor seeking an abortion to obtain the consent of both parents. Translation: Trying to link the post-Civil War Fourteenth Amendment prohibiting any state from depriving any person "of life, liberty, or property without due process of law" does not authorize state interference with lawful parental authority.

The problem of judicial over-reach was the focus of a dissenting opinion Judge Jones wrote in GDF Realty vs. Norton wherein she made some common-sense observations that are certain to appeal to property rights advocates and have the corollary effect of driving the "Bugs-Before-People" environmental extremists out of their minds.

"For the sake of species 1/8 inch-long cave bugs, which lack any known value in commerce, much less interstate commerce, the [majority] crafted a constitutionally limitless theory of federal protection," she said, and added, "Their opinion lends new meaning to the term reductio ad absurdum," she said. Jones was one of six judges to dissent in this case.

Judge Jones takes a dim view of the legacy of the Warren Court — best remembered for its soft lenient position on the jailing of communists and criminals, and other decisions that have had far-reaching negative ramifications in such areas as pornography, education, and public order. President Eisenhower came to regret that he had appointed California Governor Earl Warren as chief justice as a payoff for Warren's support among California delegates at the 1952 Republican National Convention. In Judge Jones's view, the Warren Court "extravagantly assumed the power to dictate new 'rights' not expressly stated in the Constitution, and in so doing foisted its philosophical vision on the United States with consequences far beyond the court's imagining."

Judge Jones has said publicly that the framers of the Constitution were not deists, but that they believed in faith and reason and did not see the two as mutually exclusive, nor does it breed "intolerance" as the ACLU often claims is the case with in today's church vs. state cases.

She has also cited the trend toward the increasingly litigious society as an example of the abuse of the legal system. Judge Jones has observed that lawsuits are brought "that ultimately line the pockets of lawyers rather than their clients." And she asks the appropriate rhetorical question, "When lawyers cannot be trusted to observe the fair processes essential to maintaining the rule of law, how can we expect the public to respect the process?"

Judge Edith Jones was nominated for the Fifth Circuit by President Ronald Reagan in 1985 at the age of 36. She was on a short list of potential Supreme Court nominees during the administration of the first President Bush. Conservative judicial groups at the time lobbied hard for her appointment. Unfortunately, she lost out to David Souter who ranks with Earl Warren as one of the biggest disappointments for Republican nominees to the High Court.

Now is the time for the current President Bush to more than make up for that error on the part of his father. Here is a woman who has the judicial temperament, the smarts, and the values to assume a place on the highest court in the land.

She knows who she is, where she stands, has values that are those of the Founders of the this country, and understands — as she told a University of Virginia audience not long ago — that the foundations of this nation were Biblical.

Here is a judge who — by the way — can empathize with those who have experienced personal tragedy in their family lives. One of the sons of Edith and Woody Jones (a lawyer who works at his wife's old law firm in Texas) was recently killed in an automobile accident.

At 56, Judge Edith Jones would be an ideal pick to replace Sandra Day O'Connor. Her selection would advance the (not always successful) effort on the part of Republican presidents to appoint justices who read the law and the Constitution for their meaning as written and with a full appreciation for the fact that the Supreme Court was never intended to be a super-legislature. She would fit right in with Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and (hopefully) Chief Justice-to be John Roberts.

The left-wing will scream and smear if this good woman is nominated. That will only reinforce support among those who voted for President Bush last year in part because they approved of him for the enemies he had made, and because they wanted conservatives on the Supreme Court. This president has not backed down from a good fight on principle. And Judge Jones has shown she is of stern stuff and can withstand the verbal brickbats.

Let them holler, Mr. President. Follow your instincts. Do what has to be done.

© Wes Vernon