Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) told The Washington Post on Sunday he won’t confirm any Supreme Court justice nominee who do not have a record noting that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided.
“I will vote only for those Supreme Court nominees who have explicitly acknowledged that Roe v. Wade is wrongly decided,” Hawley told The Post. “By explicitly acknowledged, I mean on the record and before they were nominated.”
“I don’t want private assurances from candidates. I don’t want to hear about their personal views, one way or another. I’m not looking for forecasts about how they may vote in the future or predications. I don’t want any of that. I want to see on the record, as part of their record, that they have acknowledged in some forum that Roe v. Wade, as a legal matter, is wrongly decided,” he said.
Hawley’s decision to focus on abortion in the next confirmation battle, which may not even occur for years, is part of an effort to curb the judicial activism that has been emanating from the nation’s highest court.
“Roe is and was an unbridled act of judicial imperialism. It marks the point the modern Supreme Court said, ‘You know, we don’t have to follow the Constitution. We won’t even pretend to try,’” said the freshman Republican senator.
“This standard, for me, applies to Supreme Court nominees, whether they’re a sitting judge or whatever,” he said.
After the Supreme Court ruled that discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation and transgender identification was unconstitutional back in June, Hawley criticized the 6-3 court opinion as representative of “the end of the conservative legal movement.”
“It would have been better to say the text means what it meant when it was written in 1964,” said Hawley, of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which was the legal basis for the case, as reported by The Washington Examiner.
“You really can’t do that from the bench,” he said. “These decisions have massive scope. This is a huge decision with major repercussions across different fields of law.”
President Donald Trump, who was presented with the rare opportunity to nominate two justices in his first term in office, has since promised to update his list of potential Supreme Court nominees on the occasion another vacancy should occur.
“I will be releasing a new list of Conservative Supreme Court Justice nominees, which may include some, or many of those already on the list, by September 1, 2020. If given the opportunity, I will only choose from this list, as in the past, a Conservative Supreme Court Justice,” tweeted Trump.
“Based on decisions being rendered now, this list is more important than ever before,” he added, citing Second Amendment, pro-life and religious liberty concerns.”
…Based on decisions being rendered now, this list is more important than ever before (Second Amendment, Right to Life, Religous Liberty, etc.) – VOTE 2020!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 18, 2020