The Executive Council today voted 4-1 to confirm Judge Dan Will to the NH Supreme Court for the rest of his career. Despite thousands of emails from Granite Staters demanding an originalist nominee, Councilor Dave Wheeler – a stalwart conservative – was the only member of the Council to vote against Will’s confirmation.
The Council approved Will’s lifetime appointment even though both audio recordings and court documents show Will lied to the Council in two hearings. Will flatly told the Council that, as Solicitor General, he never asked constitutional rights to be suspended.
In fact, as every Republican Councilor learned yesterday, both an audio recording and a court order showed that Will asked a court to hold that civil liberties must be suspended in an emergency for the greater good. Will’s failure to discuss this argument candidly should have spoken for itself.
This confirmation was not about Covid: it was about whether New Hampshire’s highest court, the only meaningful safeguard of Granite Staters’ constitutional rights, would have an originalist majority.
Republicans have confirmed judges like Souter, Stevens, and Brennan, each time promising they would be strong originalists. New Hampshire’s Republican establishment – including some of the same people who supported Will – once promised that David Souter would be a “home run” for conservatives. Still, the party is unable or unwilling to learn.
Although thousands of conservatives outspokenly opposed this nomination, Republican Councilors greeted Will with softball, adulatory questions during his confirmation hearing. Will was not even pressed with the evidence that contradicted his denials or asked to explain it.
And, throughout this process, the Democrats have not offered a peep of opposition to Will. That’s because Democrats are confident that Will will be a judicial liberal. While the GOP establishment chastises conservatives for disloyalty to the party, it is the establishment who have sided with Democrats against their own voters.
Cornerstone will remain firmly committed to defending the constitutional rights of all Granite Staters through Superior Court litigation, statutory changes, helping principled personnel get and keep positions of official authority, and any other instrument at our disposal.
“Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the LORD.” Psalm 31:24