So is President Obama’s first judicial nominee moderate or liberal or somewhere in between? It matters because the President doesn’t want to be seen as a wide eyed-liberal by the masses. If a fight erupts over ideology then that doesn’t help this President. The last thing Obama needs is a judicial side show. It’ll put a dent in bi-partisan relations and sour the mood for other legislation he wants to pass.
Having said all that, there are some conservative legal scholars who are praising Judge Hamilton. Read below from The Los Angeles Times:
Although Obama's first nominee may not end Washington's war over judges, Hamilton drew wide praise from lawyers and law professors in Indiana, including the president of the local Federalist Society, a conservative legal group.
"I regard Judge Hamilton as an excellent jurist with a first-rate intellect," said Geoffrey Slaughter, a lawyer in Indianapolis. "He is unfailingly polite to lawyers. He asks tough questions to both sides, and he is very smart. His judicial philosophy is left of center, but well within the mainstream, between the 30-yard lines."
The Federalist Society invited Hamilton to speak at its January meeting in Indianapolis, Slaughter said. In praising the judge, Slaughter said he spoke only for himself, not for the organization.
Indiana University law professor Patrick L. Baude described Hamilton as "a careful judge who genuinely cares what the law is. That makes him a 'moderate' in the sense that he has not pursued a political agenda."
Daniel Conkle, an expert on church-state law at Indiana University, said the criticism of Hamilton's ruling against sectarian prayers in the Indiana Legislature was unfair. "His opinion was extremely careful, thoughtful, balanced and well-reasoned. It was in no way hostile to religion or to religious liberty," Conkle said.
On that note, The Brody File should clarify a post from yesterday. While Judge Hamilton’s decision on prayer was overturned it was not done so because of Judge Hamilton’s opinion. It was due to a technicality because it was found that the plaintiffs did not have proper standing.
A conservative scholar at the time actually applauded Hamilton’s decision in the Jesus prayer case. Read below from The South Bend Tribune:
“Daniel O. Conkle, a constitutional scholar at Indiana University who writes on religion and the law, said Hamilton's opinion reflects prevailing doctrine established by the U.S. Supreme Court, and is unlikely to be reversed on appeal. That doctrine holds that government cannot express a preference for one religion over another, Conkle said, even though prayer and religious references have never been banished from public life. ‘But the history of the United States ... is a history that supports a relatively generalized governmental invocation of God,’ he said, ‘as opposed to a more specific or particularistic invocation of a Christian God or of any other more specific conception of God.’"