John G. Roberts and a dose of media bias

I am not holding out much hope that the political battle shaping up over John G. Roberts' nomination to the Supreme Court will yield any brilliant bits of judicial insight, and that will not be the fault of Judge Roberts. Politicians don't get it; neither does the press. Case in point, the lead two paragraphs from a Knight Ridder Washington Bureau story in today’s Pioneer Press.

WASHINGTON — As one of Washington's top appellate lawyers, Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. represented big business against employee claims, coal companies against polluted communities, and contractors seeking an end to government race preference programs.

But Roberts also defended a town's right to prevent development on private property, fought for indigenous people's rights to self-determination and helped welfare recipients who feared losing their benefits.

Okay, what does a reader take away from those paragraphs?

Well, we learn that there is some qualitative difference between representing “big business,” “coal companies” and “contractors” and representing “towns,” “indigenous people,” and “welfare recipients.” The placement of the “but” indicates that the first set is somehow “bad” compared to the second set, which is “good” and somewhat redeeming.

When people talk about “media bias,” that’s what they are talking about. I think one would have a hard time finding a reporter on the planet that would have reversed those two paragraphs to read --

WASHINGTON — As one of Washington's top appellate lawyers, Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. defended a town's right to prevent development on private property, fought for indigenous people's rights to self-determination and helped welfare recipients who feared losing their benefits.

But Roberts also represented big business against employee claims, coal companies against polluted communities, and contractors seeking an end to government race preference programs.

And even that positioning doesn’t eliminate loaded verbs like “defended,” “fought for,” and “helped” in the first paragraph and loaded adjectives like “big business” and “polluted communities” in the second paragraph (of the rewrite). Roberts “good” cases are still pretty much delineated from his “bad” cases.

But it is that kind of analysis -- looking at desired outcomes rather than principles of law -- that defines an “activist” judge, which is what the consensus is nobody wants -- unless of course “activist” means deciding cases the way the royal “we” would like them to go.

The question that should be asked is the judicial philosophy, in Judge Robert’s opinion, that ties together legal principles behind fighting for indigenous people and representing coal companies? What is the principle that provides consistency to the decisions he might render?

The point is, politicians, urged on by we the people, want to pass judgment on Roberts based on outcomes and not principles of law. The first test for Judge Roberts is how well he can keep the discussion on the latter.