It is one of the vagaries of the US constitution that patient amassing of US Supreme Court appointees over many years can make a fundamental difference to the country's law-making.
Even though Gerald Ford is dead, his appointee to the Supreme Court, John Stevens, still sits on the bench. Ronald Reagan is long gone but Messrs Scalia and Kennedy, who he appointed, carry on in the Supreme Court. So do two of G.H.W.Bush's (Senior) appointees.
Whether or not the judges are appointed by a Republican President is no guarantee of a conservatism as judges, as Day O'Connor and Souter have shown.
However, with the replacement of Day O'Connor with Alito, in the last week, the shift of power to a clear conservative agenda has become evident in the decisions of the court on subjects such as:
School integration
Abortion
Campaigns
Discrimination
Students' free speech
Erwin Chemerinsky, a liberal Duke University law professor, comments:
This was the year the conservatives finally got their court. Roberts and Alito have been everything conservatives could have hoped for and everything liberals could have feared.
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Meanwhile, the UK is heading rapidly for the dark ages = http://iaindale.blogspot.com/2007/07/apology-for-floods.html - unbelievable! The really scary part is that these guys get to sit in the House of Lords.
ReplyDeleteI think you meant to post this comment against a different posting, didn't you?
ReplyDeleteInterestingly they made two judgements on freedom of speech.
ReplyDeleteFirst they upheld the freedom of speech for political campaigns against McCain-Feingold.
Second they restricted free speech in the 'Bongs for Jesus' case.
'Liberals' are up in arms about both of them.
It shows that neither side of the debate in the US is liberal.