Alberto Gonzales

Jamie Dakis, a member of the Hispanic Business forum, asks in response to my summary of Emilio Garza if I “believe Gonzales is not as good a choice as Garza, and if so why?” I certainly like Garza, and to know why you need only to read my prior post on him. But I can’t say the same thing for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

From the outset I will note that Gonzales’s prior cases do not make it clear that he would be a reckless judge or support Roe v. Wade. His fiercest opponents often read too much into very narrow holdings in Texas about parental notification laws concerning abortion. On the other hand, there is nothing to suggest he would be a judge in the same vein as Justice Scalia or Clarence Thomas.
Countless numbers of conservatives were unhappy with Bush in 2004, but voted for him anyway because of the likely vacancies on the high court. “Much better to have Bush nominate them than Kerry,” they reasoned. With Gonzales, though, those voters may not be getting what they bargained for. We just don’t know where Gonzales stands, and that’s part of the problem.
What we do know isn’t very heartening. When the administration decided to take a stance on racial preferences used in college admissions, it was Gonzales that weakened the administration’s brief. Solictor General Ted Olson wanted to say that such preferences were unconstitutional. Gonzales did not, and he prevailed.
For libertarian-minded conservatives such as myself, Gonzales’s approach to the “war on terror” has been equally disturbing. In Gonzales’s view, non-Iraqis captured in Iraq are not protected by the Geneva convention, which prevents prisoners being transfered out of the country in which they are held.
As White House counsel he approved an administration memo against torture that was so narrow it appeared to define “torture” only as treatment that led to “dying under torment,” presumably meaning that if a victim survived, he could not have been tortured. That same memo also claimed torture only occurs when the intent is to cause pain, so that if the intent is to gather information, it is not torture. While parts of this memo are justifiable, other parts are not, which may be why Gonzales eventually rewrote the memo.
Many conservatives will be pleased to remember that it was Gonzales would helped select a long list of “conservative” judges for the appeals courts and that is was Gonzales who removed the American Bar Association’s grip on the process. But relatively speaking these are minor accomplishments and have little to do with the important factor – his judicial jurisprudence.
In the end, we know little about Gonzales’s judicial philosophy or how he would approach any number of pressing constitutional issues. For that reason alone I cannot support him and would much prefer Judge Garza.