http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=82d246a2-60b9-45e0-9ff7-faf565ec9105Constitutional Biden
Civil liberties' greatest salesman.
Jeffrey Rosen, The New Republic Published: Wednesday, September 24, 2008
The Obama-Biden slate is historic in many ways, but for law professors it has a special cachet: It's the first time that professors of constitutional law have occupied both slots on a ticket. Barack Obama was a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, and Joe Biden has been an adjunct professor at Widener University School of Law since 1991. More to the point, it's the most civil-libertarian ticket ever fielded by a major U.S. political party.
Moments after the September 11 attacks, as Biden watched his colleagues evacuate the Capitol, a reporter asked him whether America would have to revisit the way it protects our public institutions. "I hope that's not true," Biden replied, according to his autobiography. "
we have to alter our civil liberties, change the way we function, then we have truly lost the war."
It was a telling response, given the situation unfolding around him--and a perfect reflection of his career. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the veteran of some of the most bruising Supreme Court confirmation battles, Biden did more than champion civil liberties. He developed an uncanny knack for making them politically palatable to Middle America. In fact, during the Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas hearings, he shepherded a new and expansive conception of privacy into public discourse. This gift for marketing civil liberties won't just serve Obama well as he rebuts Republican attacks during the campaign; if the ticket prevails, Biden's instincts will help guide the selection of judges and the challenging task of reconstructing civil liberties after the assault of the last eight years.
...
This visceral distaste for abuses of power has undergirded his passionate defense of the right to privacy. Call it the blue-collar view of civil liberties: You defend the little guy against the bullying intrusions of government.
...
...
How would Biden's blue-collar defense of privacy influence the kinds of Supreme Court nominees he might encourage Obama to appoint? As it happens, Obama and Biden share a belief that the most effective justices have been practical politicians rather than ivory-tower academics. Obama has embraced Earl Warren, the former governor, as a model of the kind of justice he would appoint, noting that Warren understood that segregation had real effects on schoolchildren that went beyond its theoretical indignity. Biden's instincts are similar. "He is a strong advocate of people with practical experience," says Gitenstein. "He thinks there are enough academics up there right now and he likes the idea of practical people. I remember during one of the early Clinton nominations, Mario Cuomo was in play, and Biden would have thought Cuomo was a good choice."
There has never been a national political constituency for civil liberties, which means that the damage of the past eight years can't be reversed without committed leadership from the next White House. And, even with that commitment, restoring civil liberties will be difficult, in light of the Republican knack for tarring concern about government abuse as soft on terrorism. But, with Biden at his side, Obama has more than a like-minded defender of civil liberties; he has one of the nation's most effective spokesmen on their behalf.