GOPers Trash Thurgood Marshall At Kagan Hearings
Thurgood Marshall Takes Center Stage At Kagan Hearings (VIDEO)
Looks like Senate Judiciary Republicans have at least one unified talking point today: Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American to ever serve on the Supreme Court, was an “activist judge.” As Elena Kagan kept on her listening face, multiple senators slammed both Marshall’s judicial philosophy and her service as his clerk in the late 1980s.
Ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) criticized Kagan for having “associated herself with well-known activist judges who have used their power to redefine the meaning of our constitution and have the result of advancing that judge’s preferred social policies,” citing Marshall as his son, Thurgood Marshall Jr., sat in the audience of the Judiciary Committee hearings.
In an example of how much the GOP focused on Marshall, his name came up 35 times. President Obama’s name was mentioned just 14 times today.
Sessions said Kagan’s reverence for Marshall “tells us much about the nominee,” and he meant that more as an indictment than a compliment.
Kagan has said Marshall, who served as the lead attorney in the Brown v. Board of Education case leading to the desegregation of schools, is one of her heroes. She honored him in her opening statement later in the afternoon: “In his life; in his great struggle for racial justice, the Supreme Court stood as the part of government that was most open to every American and that most often fulfilled our Constitution’s promise of treating all persons with equal respect, equal care and equal attention.”
While some Democrats praised Marshall today, at least two Republicans quoted Marshall’s famed saying that he advised people to “do what you think is right and let the law catch up.”
