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uring his failed bid for the Republican 2000
presidential nomination, Utah Senator Orrin Hatch made a statement with
which many people in both parties agree: he predicted that the Supreme
Court would be “the most important single issue of this election.”
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Some telling facts lend credence to Hatch’s predication. For one thing, there’s history. On average, Supreme Court vacancies have occurred once every two years. It has now been six years between appointments. To find a longer period without a single new justice being named, you’d have to go back 177 years — to James Monroe’s administration. Then there’s simple math. Four of the nine justices are 67 or older and two more will turn 65 next year. It’s no surprise that many Court watchers are expecting two, three or even four retirements within the next president’s term of office. Do voters care about the Supreme Court and its rulings? Polls increasingly say they do. In a recent Newsweek poll, over a third said they consider Supreme Court nominations “very important” to them in making their choice for the White House and 50 percent of women believe that the right to choose hinges on the next president’s appointments. A New York Times/CBS News poll in late July revealed that 62 percent believe Vice President Al Gore would appoint justices who favor abortion rights, while only 43 percent thought Texas Governor George W. Bush would. That poll also showed that social conservatives overwhelmingly expect Bush to nominate justices who oppose abortion. The Religious Right and their political allies have long treated the Court as the spoils of politics and this year they are going all out to drive home that message. Their leaders, such as televanglists Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, are exhorting their followers to work to take home the Court as their prize this year. What Robertson and the others understand is that they are this one election away from achieving everything they’ve worked for but couldn’t overcome presidential vetoes to win, such as more government restrictions on abortion and laws permitting school-sponsored prayer. The Religious Right has been complaining for years that some of the Reagan and Bush picks on the current Court have failed to advance its agenda. Intent on not repeating what they see as mistakes of the past, they’ve fastened on the most conservative justices now on the Court, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, as their models for the right kind of nominee. This summer, Religious Right leaders, including Gary Bauer and perennial presidential candidate Alan Keyes, gathered on Capitol Hill to urge the Republican Party to maintain an anti-abortion plank within its platform and to call for justices like Scalia and Thomas to be placed on the Supreme Court. “In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s latest assault on the Constitution and the sanctity of human life in the two abortion rulings that were handed down yesterday, it is vital that the Republican platform maintain its commitment to the appointment of judges who will respect the sanctity of innocent human life,” said Marty Dannenfelser, a vice president at the Family Research Council, a leading Religious Right organization. “That commitment must be more than words on paper. It must be put into practice when vacancies occur in the federal judiciary, particularly on the Supreme Court.” During the Republican National Convention, Robertson seconded that idea when he told supporters that, “We need to have the election of a man who will appoint righteous justices to the Court of the United States.” The Religious Right’s hopes are high that electing George W. Bush on November 7 would make their dream a reality – and with good reason. While Vice President Al Gore has said he would model judicial appointments after Justice Thurgood Marshall, who championed individual and minority rights throughout his career on the bench, Bush has declared publicly that his favorite high court justices are Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Just what impact would a Supreme Court dominated by Scalia and Thomas have? People For the American Way Foundation set out to answer that question by analyzing the two justices’ dissenting and concurring opinions during their years on the bench. PFAW Foundation’s report of its findings is entitled “Courting Disaster” and that title is no overstatement. As the report carefully documents, a Court majority that shared Scalia’s and Thomas’ views would uproot more than 100 Supreme Court precedents protecting fundamental rights. Women’s rights, voting rights, reproductive rights, rights of older Americans, environmental protection, gun control, campaign finance reform – |
decades of advances in all these areas would be rolled back under a Scalia-Thomas Court. Two areas of fundamental rights – women’s reproductive rights and the rights of religious liberty for adherents of minority faiths – would face special dangers under a Scalia-Thomas majority. A woman’s right to decide for herself about reproductive matters would be one of the first rights to go. There’s no mistaking Scalia’s and Thomas’ intention on this issue. The Supreme Court’s 1973 landmark ruling on abortion grew out a1965 cased called Griswold v. Connecticut. In that earlier case the Court struck down a Connecticut law barring the use of contraceptives. In the majority opinion, Justice William O. Douglas wrote that the idea of the state intruding into “the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives” was “repulsive to the notion of privacy.” Then, eight years later in Roe v. Wade, the Court concluded that, in the words of Justice Harry Blackmun’s majority opinion, “The right of privacy … is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” Justices Thomas and Scalia have repeatedly used their rulings in subsequent cases to attack abortion rights. In a 1992 case, for example, in which the Court majority voted to overturn a Pennsylvania law that sharply restricted abortion rights, Scalia was joined by Thomas in a scornful dissent. Scalia wrote: “I reach [this conclusion] for the same reason I reach the conclusion that bigamy is not constitutionally protected – because of two simple facts: (1) the constitution says absolutely nothing about it, and (2) the long standing traditions of American society have permitted it to be legally proscribed.” Last year Robertson told a Wall Street Journal columnist that, “the fact is you can’t repeal Roe v. Wade without three more Supreme Court justices, and you aren’t going to name those justices without winning the White House.” Robertson was dead right about the potential impact of Supreme Court appointments on a woman’s right to reproductive choice, even though his math was off. In fact, it would only take two more anti-choice justices to outlaw abortion again. In the area of religious liberty, the Court has been zigzagging toward a position that permits greater blurring of the line between church and state, leaving the rights of minority religions balanced more and more precariously. Two cases decided at the end of this past term illustrate the point. In the first case, the Court issued a traditional school prayer decision when it ruled against a public high school’s practice of opening football games by turning the public address system over to a student-led prayer. Justices Scalia and Thomas disagreed. In a dissent joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist they accused the majority of hostility toward religion, despite ample evidence in the case that students who were members of minority religious faiths were not only made a captive audience to these prayers but were even subjected to harassment and ridicule from students and school officials when they joined in a lawsuit to protect their religious freedom. The second ruling shows how much the wall between church and state has already been eroded, even by a Court that not always willing to go to the extremes that Justices Thomas and Scalia advocate. In that case, Mitchell v. Helms, Scalia and Thomas led the majority that concluded that virtually any aid to religious schools is permissible under the First Amendment, as long as those schools use the funds to further a secular purpose. And just how far would Scalia and Thomas go? In 1992, the Court majority ruled that a public school’s policy of having clergy lead prayer during graduation ceremonies violated the separation of church and state. Scalia and Thomas dissented, accusing the majority of laying waste to a “history and tradition of our Nation” that is “replete with public ceremonies featuring prayer of thanksgiving and petition.” If Pat Robertson and others on the Religious Right get their wish for a president who will appoint more Supreme Court justices like Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, it is very likely that we will once again see majority religion prayers in our schools and other public institutions. The bottom line is inescapable. A shift on the Supreme Court to a majority that agrees with Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas would mean a radical redefinition of Americans’ fundamental rights and a rolling back of decades of progress toward equality and justice for all. |
| The Supreme Court Online: A Guide to Relevant Websites | ||
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The official website of the Supreme Court of the United States (http://www.supremecourtus.gov/) has only been available since April 17, 2000. It is very comprehensive in its scope, including information for the general public, the media and for lawyers. Most of the general information about the court is in the About the Court Section, which contains A Brief Overview of the Supreme Court, The Court and Constitutional Interpretation, The Court as an Institution, The Court and Its Procedures, Biographies of Current Members of the Supreme Court etc.
You can also learn about the docket, the calendar of the
court, case handling guides, court rules, visiting the court, where to
send comments, etc.
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The Supreme Court Section of Cornell University’s Legal
Information Institute. The Institute is a non-profit activity of
Cornell Law School. The site provides a variety of information related to
the Court, including:
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This part of the
New York Times website, provides information about the Supreme
Court, including articles relating to Supreme Court decisions; Supreme
Court Q&A, where Reporter Linda Greenhouse answers readers’ questions;
a Cyber Law Journal, which reflects on the legal issues raised by the
Internet; and a searchable database to find specific decisions. Not as
comprehensive as the Legal Information Institute, but less academic in
nature. — compiled by Sheila Grossm |
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