Do we need another reason to Question Roberts?
Again, abortion is not the interesting question. The dude ain't going to be a friend of women, that's for sure. But we should hope he at least would be a friend of the rule of law.
Alas, there is strong reason to think he does not believe in the rule of law. He is a rampant right-wing judicial activist who believes that one president's whims should trump decades of international and human rights law.
Roberts concurred as one of the three judges who ruled last week that prisoners in Guantanamo are at the mercy and whim of the president and the Defense Department. They keep making stuff up about how these prisoners should be treated. A federal judge had ruled that the Geneva Conventions should apply to Guantanamo prisoners. However, Roberts and the others don't seem to care about the law of this country, which traditionally and appropriately grants basic rights to those imprisoned by the federal government. These are not crazy rights. We all sleep better knowing that we can't be kept in prison for three years without charge and that we will face a fair trial with competent legal counsel ... except when we can be kept without charge or trial. Consistently, the Bush administration has tried to assert that they should just be able to make suff up (what they heck is an "enemy combatant" besides someone we don't feel like dealing with legally) and treat prisoners (citizens and non-citizens) arbitrarily, in direct violation of the Constitution and binding treaties.
As Georgetown Law Professor Neal Katyal, the attorney for the prisoner in the case, said after the ruling:
The U.S. Court of Appeals’ ruling today is contrary to 200 years of constitutional law. We respectfully disagree with it. As the Supreme Court put it 9 years ago in an opinion authored by Justice Kennedy, 'the Framers harbored a deep distrust of executive military power and military tribunals.' Yet today’s ruling places absolute trust in the President, unchecked by the Constitution, statutes of Congress, and longstanding treaties ratified by the Senate of the United States. It gives the President the raw authority to expand military tribunals without limit, threatening the system of international law and armed conflict worldwide. As many retired Generals and Admirals of our military have stated, the cavalier treatment of individuals at Guantanamo Bay, and the setting aside of the Geneva Conventions in the military commission process, threatens our troops, our interests, and our way of life. These issues demand finality, and we will be seeking appropriate review.
So it looks like the shameful erosion of American values will continue. Roberts will do nothing to uphold the law.