difficult issues. so that was useful. reassuring them she will follow that model. right, even though she s never been a judge if you listen to that answer it would be hard to say, as conservatives want, she s an activist, but they don t buy it right? in fact, it s actually interesting you ask that question, because you did see some republican, sort of the wheels churning as they tried to push her as a liberal activist, kind of shrugging, giving up, because it was hard to do that. she made the case she wouldn t be. just very quickly what she was responding to, as you said, sheldon whitehouse, several democrat, they used their time today, not a lot of democrats talked today, they used their time not really to talk about her but to talk about the current conservative court, calling that an activist court and that s what she was responding to there. they re all being confirmed at once or debated at once in the same confirmation hearing. dana bash, joe john, thanks so much. next
federal or state statutes if they don t jive with jurisprudence. it s a word to degrade justice who s don t do what republicans want. no one has a problem with an activist who s acting on their behalf of. the court roberts court which has overturned precedent and struck down local laws in the recent gun cases is a conservative activist court and democrats on the judiciary committee have decided to pull back the curtain. during questioning, they have been vocal about the problems with the current court particularly its consistent privileging of corporate interests over citizens interest interests. five conservative justices rejected the court s own precedent, rejected the bipartisan law enact bid congress, rejected 100 years of legal development, in order to open the door for massive corporate spending on elections was such a jolt to the system. joining me now is senator ben
the abuses of government and against the abuses of special corporate interests. that s a very activist court but it s a very conservative activist court. i thought it was interesting because there was a very strange theme the first few days around justice thurgood marshall. you were quite spirited in defense of him. we have a piece of tape i d like to roll and get your response to it. justice marshall s judicial philosophy, however is not what i would consider to be mainstream. as he once explained, you do what you think is right and let the law catch up. he might be the epitome of a results-orient the judge. miss kagan has associated herself with well yoen activist judges who have used their power to redefine the meaning of words of our constitution and laws in ways that not surprisingly have the result of advancing that judge s preferred social policies. and agendas. aside from sticking up for a local hero from baltimore, i
offensive. she pained herself into this box and academia, probably maybe when she dreamed of being on the court but didn t think she would be on the court and said these hearings are awful. they have to be more candid. talking about everything. a situational decision here as when you get in there. i think you don t want a supreme court justice who tells you what they think about a certain issue, abortion or guns. you know they are going to come up. can we just talk a second about the 50 thousand-foot view? i don t think anybody believes that this elena kagan is not going to be the next supreme court justice. so what are the hearings about? they are about republicans sort of we have a mid-term election coming up in november. republicans will use this as an opportunity to talk about barack obama s agenda, the big government democratic agenda, the so-called activist court, democratic agenda, to take on the standard of empathy we were talking about yesterday. and use this as a wa
run over by kagan and by half the democrats on the senate panel, as well. yeah, the idea that they, and among they, i m including one of the keebler elves who represents the great state there. are they trying to push that marshall saw himself as above the actual law or not constrained by the actual law because he would rule what he thought was best for the country and what was right and just? put this into context in terms of kagan s nomination for us. well, as i say, she stressed the point that what the record of marshall really stands for and what the record of the so-called activist court of the warren years in the 50s, 60s, and early 70s stood for, was the idea of broadly interpreting individual rights to include racial minorities and religious mine minorities and sexual minorities and so forth. the idea of, again, equal justice under law.