McCain Talking More About Judicial Issues Than Obama In Recent Stump Speeches, The Politico Reports

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Article Date: 10 Jul 2008 - 5:00 PDT

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The Politico on Tuesday examined the amount of attention presidential candidates Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) are giving to Supreme Court appointments.

According to The Politico, despite Obama's background as a lawyer and college constitutional law lecturer, he does not talk about judicial nominations in his stump speech. "Even when opportunities have arisen" to talk about nominations, Obama has "mostly found ways not to elaborate on his support for nominating justices who would oppose overturning" Roe v. Wade, The Politico reports.

McCain, who has no legal background and has not focused on judicial issues in the Senate, recently has spoken more about judicial issues while campaigning. Some conservatives have had "lingering concerns" about McCain's potential judicial nominees in part because he participated in the so-called "gang of 14" -- a group of seven senators from each party who reached a deal on judicial nominations that "conservatives considered a betrayal of the prerogatives of the Senate's then-Republican majority" -- The Politico reports. McCain "mostly soothed his base's concerns" when in a May 6 speech he said he would appoint justices who are similar to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito.

According to New Yorker legal analyst Jeffery Toobin, the speech made clear that McCain would nominate judges who are skeptical of a constitutional right to privacy that is the foundation of the Roe decision. Cass Sunstein, a University of Chicago law professor and informal Obama adviser, said, "If you want a [Supreme] Court that would rethink Roe and defer to the president on large questions of presidential power, that's more likely with McCain."

Part of the reason McCain might be mentioning his views on court decisions more is that the cases before the Supreme Court this year were "much less politically palatable" for liberals, according to Thomas Goldstein, head Supreme Court attorney for the law firm Akin Gump Strauss and founder of SCOTUSblog. According to The Politico, even if Obama "continues to focus elsewhere," it is unclear if McCain would benefit by talking about judicial issues. "There is not an independent voter in America ... who is going to choose a president on the basis of the Supreme Court," Goldstein said (Zenilman/Adler, The Politico, 7/8).

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