Senator John Cornyn writes in Roll Call (no Internet link available):

Nan Aron’s May 10 Guest Observer, “What’s Wrong With President Bush’s Gang of Seven,” criticizes certain opinions authored or joined by Justice Priscilla Owen. As a former Texas Supreme Court justice who served with Owen, I welcome any serious dialogue about the law or about her rulings in particular. Unfortunately, Aron’s charges are deeply flawed and badly misrepresent the cases.

Unfortunately, I can’t simply copy Cornyn’s entire piece without violating Roll Call’s copyright. However, I can summarize some of his arguments, and quote liberally from others.

Cornyn explains that Aron misrepresented one products liability case involving Hyundai Motor Co. Cornyn notes that “the U.S. Supreme Court later adopted her approach, in an opinion authored by Clinton appointee Justice Stephen Breyer.” Cornyn notes another Aron misrepresentation, in which she claimed that a woman who was raped by a vacuum cleaner salesman could not “sue the company, which had hired him without a background check.” Cornyn says this is flatly wrong; Owen did not dispute that the company was liable. “The justices simply disagreed on whether another company – one that had not hired the rapist and had no relationship with the rapist – should also have been held liable. Out of the mainstream? Of course not.”

But the passage that interests me the most relates to the abortion cases I have discussed on this blog over the past couple of days (in this post and this post):

Finally, Aron claims that Owen “ignored” a Texas law “designed to help pregnant teens obtain an abortion with court permission.” Wrong yet again.

First, the law simply empowers parents to be notified about the actions of their minor children. Many pro-abortion interest groups actively opposed the enactment of the law – but that was the act of the Texas Legislature, not Owen.

Moreover, Aron repeats the tired and refuted claim that then-Justice Alberto Gonzales accused Owen of an “unconscionable act of judicial activism” in one parental notification case. In fact, Gonzales has sworn – under oath – that he supports Owen and that he never accused her of any such thing.

Ask yourself this question: Who is more credible to talk about the quality of Owen’s legal analysis of the parental notification statute? The author of the statute – who supports her? The pro-choice Democratic law professor appointed by the Texas Supreme Court to craft procedures under the statute – who also supports her? Or the special interest groups who never wanted the law to go into effect in the first place?

Cornyn concludes:

We can have serious debates about the law. There are real issues of judicial activism in our nation – whether it’s the redefinition of marriage, or the expulsion of the Pledge of Allegiance and other expressions of faith from the public square, whether it’s the elimination of the three-strikes-and-you’re out law and other penalties against convicted criminals, or the forced removal of military recruiters from college campuses. But there is a world of difference between struggling to interpret the ambiguous expressions of a legislature and refusing to obey a legislature’s directives altogether.

Owen is a good judge. She deserves to be confirmed, and most of all, she deserves an up-or-down vote.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas)