Should extreme Leftists be allowed on the Supreme Court?

Edward Whelan in a new NRO feature, Bench Memos, points a howitzer at the heart of the contention that extremists should not be allowed on the Supreme Court.

Whelan brilliantly asks what would happen if a Democrat nominated a jurist for the Supreme Court who:
- expressed strong sympathy for constitutional rights to bigamy and prostitution
- attacked the Boy and Girl Scouts for perpetuating sexual stereotypes
- proposed abolishing Mother's and Father's Day with an androgynous Parent's Day
- advocated an end to single sex prisons
- supported court-ordered quotas to change the racial composition of a workforce even in the absence of any intentional discrimination on the the part of the employer but failed to hire a single black in his/her 50 person office even though the city in which he/she worked was majority black.

Surely the Republicans would have blocked someone with these views?

Well, as a matter of fact a Democrat did nominate such a jurist to the Supreme Court.

Bill Clinton. RUTH BADER GINSBURG. 1993.

APPROVED SIX WEEKS LATER WITH A 96-3 VOTE.

(The source for the information in Whelan's report are “Report of Columbia Law School Equal Rights Advocacy Project: The Legal Status of Women under Federal Law,” co-authored by Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Brenda Feigen Fasteau in September 1974 and the transcript of Ginsburg’s confirmation hearing.)

I hope the 'centrist' Republican Senators who are negotiating with the Democrats for a 'deal' to allow most nominees to go through except those under 'extreme' or 'extraordinary' circumstances READ this. Any compromise that doesn't allow an up and down vote on each nominee OR allows the Democrats to have a pre-emptory challenge on a Supreme Court nominee is a capitulation pure and simple.