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CNN Live Sunday

Interview With Paul Rosenzweig, Kate Michelman

Aired June 08, 2003 - 16:01   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: One of Washington's favorite guessing games is shifting into high gear. June means the end of the U.S. Supreme Court term, which is typically when major changes on the bench could be announced. No announcements of retirements have been made, but that isn't stopping the guessing game or the campaigning for potential candidates. And that's a story our White House correspondent Chris Burns is following.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRIS BURNS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The battle lines are already drawn, the war games pondered and the fight is being waged over the airwaves over the future makeup of the highest court of the land. There's talk in Washington that conservative Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor may soon retire, perhaps after the court wraps up its session late this month.

Judicial sources say no word yet of retirement, and the White House won't comment. But one consultant says he recently met with Bush administration officials on how to battle opponents in any confirmation process.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're playing real catch-up to try to be able to provide the White House with some sort of counter to the attacks that the White House is going to get from them.

BURNS: The key issue galvanizing administration critics is the fear that new Bush-appointed justices could help roll back Roe v. Wade, the 30-year-old Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. One pro-choice group is waging a preemptive strike.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, AD)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's still time to protect your right to choose.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNS: And the Democrats have already made it a campaign issue.

REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT (D-MO), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: That if George Bush can put a lot of new judges on the Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade is in danger.

BURNS: The White House declines to take a position on Roe v. Wade, but it says it supports a, quote, "culture of life." The Republicans are also on the attack, with ads criticizing the Democrats for filibustering other Bush judicial nominees, including Miguel Estrada for Federal Appeals Court.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, AD)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But the radical left says he's not liberal enough.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNS: The Bush administration is hoping it can learn from the Republicans' failed nomination of Robert Bork and their successful nomination of Clarence Thomas.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BURNS: Now, the pro-Bush administration is trying to avoid the circus that could erupt after other previous Supreme Court nominations, and how to do that. Well, one way is for a Supreme Court justice right now to announce his retirement soon or to wait until after next year's elections circus -- Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: All right. Chris Burns, thank you very much.

Well, a Supreme Court nomination is one of the most important decisions any U.S. president can make. An appointed justice has serious job security, keeping it for as long as they're physically able to serve. Our senior political analyst Bill Schneider has more on the liberals' and the conservatives' strategies, even though there's still no vacancy on the court. Bill, if there's no vacancy, then why is everyone getting so excited inside the Beltway as if a vacancy is imminent?

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: Because it's going to be a battle royal when the Supreme Court nomination is made, as many of the recent Supreme Court nominations have been. What they're doing is preparing for the battlefield, even though there's no vacancy yet. It's rather like all those months of preparation going into the Iraq war. We know it's going to happen. It's coming down the road. The justices are on the verge of retirement. Bush is likely to have a chance to make one or two appointments. And whenever he appoints someone, the stakes are going to be enormous. So they're preparing the battlefield.

WHITFIELD: Well, Bill, what are the attributes, if any, that perhaps the White House will be looking for?

SCHNEIDER: Well, conservative enough for the conservatives but moderate enough so that they won't be a terrible showdown or filibuster in the United States Senate.

That's virtually impossible these days, because you know, Bush's father made two appointments. One was David Souter. Now, he was assured that David Souter was a conservative, and he appointed Justice Souter, and the conservatives went along with the former President Bush. But now they are enraged because they say Souter votes too often with the liberals on the court, and he has shown himself to be a supporter of abortion rights. So conservatives have drawn a line, and they say no more Souters.

On the other hand, he also appointed Clarence Thomas, who is fine with conservatives, but there was a terrible showdown over not only his personal behavior but his ideological views, and the moderates tried to prevent him of course from being confirmed, which eventually he was.

So it's a very fine line. But the conservatives are saying, we want someone we know will be conservative, not someone we don't know anything about, like Souter.

WHITFIELD: And Bill, already the White House, or insiders at the White House are doing some studying and kind of reevaluating how things occurred already with Clarence Thomas as well as Robert Bork, making sure that they don't have a repeat performance of that kind of confirmation hearings?

SCHNEIDER: Well, that's right. Robert Bork was really a watershed in the Supreme Court process in this country, because really for the first time ideological questions became front and center. Historically, when the Senate had confirmed or rejected a Supreme Court nomination, it was largely on grounds of personal qualifications or lack thereof, extremist behavior or affiliations in a candidate's background.

But with Robert Bork, even though there were a lot of attacks on him personally, basically it came down to his views, his views on issues like abortion rights, civil rights, a whole list of things, which his opponents argued would be fair, because those are crucial issues to large numbers of Americans. But that was really a departure in the Supreme Court process.

So now the idea is that ideology is fair game in any Supreme Court nomination, so any nomination, including those recent ones, Bork and Thomas, those nominations become ideological battlefields on the most divisive issues on the agenda -- affirmative action, civil rights, gay rights, abortion rights, and now probably civil liberties involved in the war on terrorism.

WHITFIELD: All right, Bill. And this term ends in about three weeks, right?

SCHNEIDER: Yes. Exactly. And that's when we may have, we may have an announcement of a retirement.

WHITFIELD: All right. Thanks very much. Bill Schneider. And Bill will be back at 6:00 Eastern time with a look at the swing votes who blocked Robert Bork but approved Clarence Thomas. You may be surprised at who the swing votes could be this time.

Right now we want to talk about why any vacancy on the high court matters to you. Our next guests have very different views on who should get an empty seat on the Supreme Court, if there is one, no matter when a vacancy were to come up. In Washington our Kate Michelman, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. And Paul Rosenzweig of the Heritage Foundation. Good to see both of you.

Kate, I want to begin with you and why this multimillion-dollar campaign from NARAL has already begun. What do you believe is at stake if potentially there is one or maybe even two vacancies?

KATE MICHELMAN, PRESIDENT, NARAL PRO-CHOICE AMERICA: Well, American women are in great danger of losing their constitutional right to privacy and their constitutional right to freedom of choice. The court has a razor thin majority that continues to protect the right to choose, and just a shift of one or two more justices and women could well lose a fundamental right that is essential not only to their health and lives but to their equality.

It is a landmark decision that really changed women's lives and their role in society and allowed women to control their lives. And losing that freedom would be devastating.

And this ad campaign is to tell Americans, pro-choice Americans, stand ready, it's not too late to protect your right to choose. That right has not been lost yet. But if you wait too long, you could wake up one day and find you have no right to choose.

So our campaign is to educate and to mobilize and to enlist people right now, in the fight to save this right.

WHITFIELD: Well, how do you suppose that would happen, this campaign would mobilize, when ultimately it would be the president's decision on who -- who to nominate, and if it is indeed this president, how do you expect the people who will be watching these campaigns to be mobilized to do anything?

MICHELMAN: Well, there's no question that the president has made it very clear that his judicial nominations are ultraconservative. It has been astonishing to see the ideology and the court packing that has gone on in the appellate court, the district court nominations. He's made it very clear he has a model of a judge and a justice in mind, and that model does not include protecting the right to choose. And we fully expect that he will nominate someone who will be hostile to Roe v. Wade and who will want to overrule that right.

So Americans, remember, the Senate is the second partner in these nomination battles. And our mobilization is to ensure that senators understand that they must filibuster any nominee that will -- who will overrule Roe or not uphold the fundamental right to choose.

WHITFIELD: Paul, let me bring you into this equation. Do you see that the next nominees, if there is at least one vacancy within this Bush administration, that perhaps there's a potential of overturning the '73 Roe v. Wade?

PAUL ROSENZWEIG, THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION: Well, I don't think that that's clear. I guess I disagree with Ms. Michelman in the view that we can bind judges and get commitments from them and that we know what they're going to be like in advance. WHITFIELD: So what do you think the issues are at stake if there is at least one vacancy?

ROSENZWEIG: Well, assuredly, that's an issue that might be at stake or might be at issue. But let's step back for a second and think about the unusual nature of actually having a political campaign for a judicial slot. For over 180 years, our country understood that law and what judges do was something different than what senators do or what presidents do. What we've now converted the law into is, in effect, or what we're trying to convert it into is, in effect, just another election where we're going to conduct campaigns in the public.

Judicial nominees should be chosen for their capacity to engage in the kind of judicial analysis we want. They should be chosen to some degree based upon their viewpoint, and a president should choose one. We shouldn't expect President Bush to choose a liberal anymore than we expected President Bush not to choose Justice Ginsburg or Justice Breyer. That's the nature of the electoral process.

WHITFIELD: All right, Kate, if it is true, and rumors have it that perhaps 78-year-old William Rehnquist or 73-year-old Sandra Day O'Connor might be the first ones to retire, and if either one of those vacancies were to come about, do you suppose that this administration would be looking for a candidate very close to the records of Rehnquist or O'Connor?

MICHELMAN: I think the president has made it clear that he will be looking for a candidate who is close to Thomas and Scalia in their judicial philosophy. And if I might say with all due respect, this idea that these nominations should not be political, well, if it were not true that Reagan and Bush -- president -- former President Bush and the current President Bush were not using the nominations process to effect social change, which is to nominate those who will roll back rights, civil rights, women's rights, reproductive rights, then there might not be a question.

But the fact is it has been made clear that these nominees are to achieve a certain end, and that end includes ending legal abortion and robbing women of their right to privacy and their right to freedom of choice.

And of course, we're going to fight back, and that's what this campaign, this education campaign and mobilization ad campaign is about, to...

WHITFIELD: OK. Well, Paul, if it's not a political process, then isn't the appointment of a Supreme Court justice always ends up being the legacy of an administration? And why would it be any different this time?

ROSENZWEIG: Oh, absolutely. A judge is a president's longer legacy. But the politization of the judiciary goes well back before Reagan. The Reagan revolution was a response to the Warren court and the beginnings of the judiciaries taking over from the American people the right to make their own laws through their legislatures and their elected representative. I don't disagree that it's become politicized. What I disagree with or what I think is a shame that it's become so overly politicized now that we're actually running political campaigns and ads as if this were an election for county commissioner, or president, or senator. That's not what the law is about and not what it should be about. The law should be about the statutes, the constitution, and what they actually say, not about what our policy preferences are and not about our -- well, with respect, fear mongering about the apocalyptic visions that will happen if somebody who doesn't happen to uphold the same vision of the constitution that (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

WHITFIELD: All right. Paul Rosenzweig of the Heritage Foundation and Kate Michelman of NARAL, thanks very much for joining us.

ROSENZWEIG: Thanks a lot.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired June 8, 2003 - 16:01   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: One of Washington's favorite guessing games is shifting into high gear. June means the end of the U.S. Supreme Court term, which is typically when major changes on the bench could be announced. No announcements of retirements have been made, but that isn't stopping the guessing game or the campaigning for potential candidates. And that's a story our White House correspondent Chris Burns is following.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRIS BURNS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The battle lines are already drawn, the war games pondered and the fight is being waged over the airwaves over the future makeup of the highest court of the land. There's talk in Washington that conservative Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor may soon retire, perhaps after the court wraps up its session late this month.

Judicial sources say no word yet of retirement, and the White House won't comment. But one consultant says he recently met with Bush administration officials on how to battle opponents in any confirmation process.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're playing real catch-up to try to be able to provide the White House with some sort of counter to the attacks that the White House is going to get from them.

BURNS: The key issue galvanizing administration critics is the fear that new Bush-appointed justices could help roll back Roe v. Wade, the 30-year-old Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. One pro-choice group is waging a preemptive strike.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, AD)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's still time to protect your right to choose.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNS: And the Democrats have already made it a campaign issue.

REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT (D-MO), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: That if George Bush can put a lot of new judges on the Supreme Court, Roe v. Wade is in danger.

BURNS: The White House declines to take a position on Roe v. Wade, but it says it supports a, quote, "culture of life." The Republicans are also on the attack, with ads criticizing the Democrats for filibustering other Bush judicial nominees, including Miguel Estrada for Federal Appeals Court.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, AD)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But the radical left says he's not liberal enough.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNS: The Bush administration is hoping it can learn from the Republicans' failed nomination of Robert Bork and their successful nomination of Clarence Thomas.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BURNS: Now, the pro-Bush administration is trying to avoid the circus that could erupt after other previous Supreme Court nominations, and how to do that. Well, one way is for a Supreme Court justice right now to announce his retirement soon or to wait until after next year's elections circus -- Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: All right. Chris Burns, thank you very much.

Well, a Supreme Court nomination is one of the most important decisions any U.S. president can make. An appointed justice has serious job security, keeping it for as long as they're physically able to serve. Our senior political analyst Bill Schneider has more on the liberals' and the conservatives' strategies, even though there's still no vacancy on the court. Bill, if there's no vacancy, then why is everyone getting so excited inside the Beltway as if a vacancy is imminent?

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: Because it's going to be a battle royal when the Supreme Court nomination is made, as many of the recent Supreme Court nominations have been. What they're doing is preparing for the battlefield, even though there's no vacancy yet. It's rather like all those months of preparation going into the Iraq war. We know it's going to happen. It's coming down the road. The justices are on the verge of retirement. Bush is likely to have a chance to make one or two appointments. And whenever he appoints someone, the stakes are going to be enormous. So they're preparing the battlefield.

WHITFIELD: Well, Bill, what are the attributes, if any, that perhaps the White House will be looking for?

SCHNEIDER: Well, conservative enough for the conservatives but moderate enough so that they won't be a terrible showdown or filibuster in the United States Senate.

That's virtually impossible these days, because you know, Bush's father made two appointments. One was David Souter. Now, he was assured that David Souter was a conservative, and he appointed Justice Souter, and the conservatives went along with the former President Bush. But now they are enraged because they say Souter votes too often with the liberals on the court, and he has shown himself to be a supporter of abortion rights. So conservatives have drawn a line, and they say no more Souters.

On the other hand, he also appointed Clarence Thomas, who is fine with conservatives, but there was a terrible showdown over not only his personal behavior but his ideological views, and the moderates tried to prevent him of course from being confirmed, which eventually he was.

So it's a very fine line. But the conservatives are saying, we want someone we know will be conservative, not someone we don't know anything about, like Souter.

WHITFIELD: And Bill, already the White House, or insiders at the White House are doing some studying and kind of reevaluating how things occurred already with Clarence Thomas as well as Robert Bork, making sure that they don't have a repeat performance of that kind of confirmation hearings?

SCHNEIDER: Well, that's right. Robert Bork was really a watershed in the Supreme Court process in this country, because really for the first time ideological questions became front and center. Historically, when the Senate had confirmed or rejected a Supreme Court nomination, it was largely on grounds of personal qualifications or lack thereof, extremist behavior or affiliations in a candidate's background.

But with Robert Bork, even though there were a lot of attacks on him personally, basically it came down to his views, his views on issues like abortion rights, civil rights, a whole list of things, which his opponents argued would be fair, because those are crucial issues to large numbers of Americans. But that was really a departure in the Supreme Court process.

So now the idea is that ideology is fair game in any Supreme Court nomination, so any nomination, including those recent ones, Bork and Thomas, those nominations become ideological battlefields on the most divisive issues on the agenda -- affirmative action, civil rights, gay rights, abortion rights, and now probably civil liberties involved in the war on terrorism.

WHITFIELD: All right, Bill. And this term ends in about three weeks, right?

SCHNEIDER: Yes. Exactly. And that's when we may have, we may have an announcement of a retirement.

WHITFIELD: All right. Thanks very much. Bill Schneider. And Bill will be back at 6:00 Eastern time with a look at the swing votes who blocked Robert Bork but approved Clarence Thomas. You may be surprised at who the swing votes could be this time.

Right now we want to talk about why any vacancy on the high court matters to you. Our next guests have very different views on who should get an empty seat on the Supreme Court, if there is one, no matter when a vacancy were to come up. In Washington our Kate Michelman, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. And Paul Rosenzweig of the Heritage Foundation. Good to see both of you.

Kate, I want to begin with you and why this multimillion-dollar campaign from NARAL has already begun. What do you believe is at stake if potentially there is one or maybe even two vacancies?

KATE MICHELMAN, PRESIDENT, NARAL PRO-CHOICE AMERICA: Well, American women are in great danger of losing their constitutional right to privacy and their constitutional right to freedom of choice. The court has a razor thin majority that continues to protect the right to choose, and just a shift of one or two more justices and women could well lose a fundamental right that is essential not only to their health and lives but to their equality.

It is a landmark decision that really changed women's lives and their role in society and allowed women to control their lives. And losing that freedom would be devastating.

And this ad campaign is to tell Americans, pro-choice Americans, stand ready, it's not too late to protect your right to choose. That right has not been lost yet. But if you wait too long, you could wake up one day and find you have no right to choose.

So our campaign is to educate and to mobilize and to enlist people right now, in the fight to save this right.

WHITFIELD: Well, how do you suppose that would happen, this campaign would mobilize, when ultimately it would be the president's decision on who -- who to nominate, and if it is indeed this president, how do you expect the people who will be watching these campaigns to be mobilized to do anything?

MICHELMAN: Well, there's no question that the president has made it very clear that his judicial nominations are ultraconservative. It has been astonishing to see the ideology and the court packing that has gone on in the appellate court, the district court nominations. He's made it very clear he has a model of a judge and a justice in mind, and that model does not include protecting the right to choose. And we fully expect that he will nominate someone who will be hostile to Roe v. Wade and who will want to overrule that right.

So Americans, remember, the Senate is the second partner in these nomination battles. And our mobilization is to ensure that senators understand that they must filibuster any nominee that will -- who will overrule Roe or not uphold the fundamental right to choose.

WHITFIELD: Paul, let me bring you into this equation. Do you see that the next nominees, if there is at least one vacancy within this Bush administration, that perhaps there's a potential of overturning the '73 Roe v. Wade?

PAUL ROSENZWEIG, THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION: Well, I don't think that that's clear. I guess I disagree with Ms. Michelman in the view that we can bind judges and get commitments from them and that we know what they're going to be like in advance. WHITFIELD: So what do you think the issues are at stake if there is at least one vacancy?

ROSENZWEIG: Well, assuredly, that's an issue that might be at stake or might be at issue. But let's step back for a second and think about the unusual nature of actually having a political campaign for a judicial slot. For over 180 years, our country understood that law and what judges do was something different than what senators do or what presidents do. What we've now converted the law into is, in effect, or what we're trying to convert it into is, in effect, just another election where we're going to conduct campaigns in the public.

Judicial nominees should be chosen for their capacity to engage in the kind of judicial analysis we want. They should be chosen to some degree based upon their viewpoint, and a president should choose one. We shouldn't expect President Bush to choose a liberal anymore than we expected President Bush not to choose Justice Ginsburg or Justice Breyer. That's the nature of the electoral process.

WHITFIELD: All right, Kate, if it is true, and rumors have it that perhaps 78-year-old William Rehnquist or 73-year-old Sandra Day O'Connor might be the first ones to retire, and if either one of those vacancies were to come about, do you suppose that this administration would be looking for a candidate very close to the records of Rehnquist or O'Connor?

MICHELMAN: I think the president has made it clear that he will be looking for a candidate who is close to Thomas and Scalia in their judicial philosophy. And if I might say with all due respect, this idea that these nominations should not be political, well, if it were not true that Reagan and Bush -- president -- former President Bush and the current President Bush were not using the nominations process to effect social change, which is to nominate those who will roll back rights, civil rights, women's rights, reproductive rights, then there might not be a question.

But the fact is it has been made clear that these nominees are to achieve a certain end, and that end includes ending legal abortion and robbing women of their right to privacy and their right to freedom of choice.

And of course, we're going to fight back, and that's what this campaign, this education campaign and mobilization ad campaign is about, to...

WHITFIELD: OK. Well, Paul, if it's not a political process, then isn't the appointment of a Supreme Court justice always ends up being the legacy of an administration? And why would it be any different this time?

ROSENZWEIG: Oh, absolutely. A judge is a president's longer legacy. But the politization of the judiciary goes well back before Reagan. The Reagan revolution was a response to the Warren court and the beginnings of the judiciaries taking over from the American people the right to make their own laws through their legislatures and their elected representative. I don't disagree that it's become politicized. What I disagree with or what I think is a shame that it's become so overly politicized now that we're actually running political campaigns and ads as if this were an election for county commissioner, or president, or senator. That's not what the law is about and not what it should be about. The law should be about the statutes, the constitution, and what they actually say, not about what our policy preferences are and not about our -- well, with respect, fear mongering about the apocalyptic visions that will happen if somebody who doesn't happen to uphold the same vision of the constitution that (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

WHITFIELD: All right. Paul Rosenzweig of the Heritage Foundation and Kate Michelman of NARAL, thanks very much for joining us.

ROSENZWEIG: Thanks a lot.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com