by Matt Barr

Required results

Via BTD comes an interesting detail in the candidacy of Judge Roberts for the Supreme Court.

The exchange occurred during one of Roberts' informal discussions with senators last week. According to two people who attended the meeting, Roberts was asked by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) what he would do if the law required a ruling that his church considers immoral. Roberts is a devout Catholic and is married to an ardent pro-life activist. The Catholic Church considers abortion to be a sin, and various church leaders have stated that government officials supporting abortion should be denied religious rites such as communion. (Pope Benedict XVI is often cited as holding this strict view of the merging of a person's faith and public duties).

Renowned for his unflappable style in oral argument, Roberts appeared nonplused and, according to sources in the meeting, answered after a long pause that he would probably have to recuse himself.

Prof. Turley, the article's author, predictably blusters that "a judge's personal religious views should have no role in the interpretation of the laws." True enough, I suppose, but concern is misplaced, in that: There is no conceivable situation in which a case could properly be before the Supreme Court of the United States which would require a result the Catholic Church would consider immoral.

What, now? That's right. The Constitution requires that the States or the people be free to make whatever law they choose touching "moral" subjects such as, to use the article's examples, abortion and the death penalty, or some of BTD Kriston's, social justice, sex and gender.

Were Justice Roberts to vote that states are allowed to provide for and prescribe the death penalty, he would be reaching a result that neither mandated death nor life. Were he to vote to overturn in whole or in part Roe v. Wade, he would be reaching a result that neither mandated abortion nor pregnancy. Were he to vote that there is no constitutional right to some damn fool thing like, I don't know, marry someone of the same sex, he would be reaching a result that mandated neither chastity nor sexual relations. Etc.

The only judges who are compelled to reach results that the Catholic Church would consider immoral are ones who assert federal oversight into our most private and reserved-to-the-States-respectively-or-to-the-people conduct.

The part of me that isn't serious -- and it's a small part -- realizes that the Catholic Church would much prefer that the death penalty were abolished as unconstitutionally cruel and unusual. But holding that the Constitution neither requires nor forbids it is hardly "immoral" in a culture of life. You might even be radical enough to think that liberty is moral.

P.S.: I may as well get the ball rolling, since this seems like it's going to be a theme: no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. Discuss.

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