A negative verdict on Bush’s nominee

Re “The faith of John Roberts,” Opinion, July 25

Re “Sitting in judgment on John G.,” Current, July 24

I agree with the Erwin Chemerinsky analysis on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge John G. Roberts Jr., with one additional perspective: The Bush administration’s raw suppression of access to basic information about Roberts’ public record is a deliberate effort to thwart the constitutionally ordained advise-and-consent authority of the Senate.

Roberts’ responses to questions about his membership in the Federalist Society suggest that he is a willing participant in this charade. So let us take his memory loss at face value. Because the judge cannot remember whether he joined the Federalists, a secret society considered an absolute necessity for Republican judicial nominees, would any member of the Senate willingly confirm a 50-year-old early victim of a degenerative mental condition? By his own admission, Roberts is clearly not qualified to be a member of the U.S. Supreme Court.

John Schmidhauser

USC Professor Emeritus

of Political Science