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TechnoratiWASHINGTON -- The new Supreme Court is more conservative than it has been in decades. It's also meaner.
It is a dream come true for Republican presidencies dating back to the "strict constructionist" court aspirations of President Nixon and now made possible by the conservative George W. Bush.
Before closing down for the summer last month, the high court tossed out a flurry of decisions that overturned or reinterpreted long-standing liberal precedents.
The court under Chief Justice John Roberts seems intent on rolling back advances in race and gender relations that have helped America achieve a more equal and humane society.
The 5-4 decisions of the conservative court dealt with race, abortion, free speech, church-state relations and a host of other issues. They also showed a pro-business and anti-consumer slant.
The majority justices are running counter to the current trend against right-wing ideologues and a power-grabbing unilateral presidency.
On race, the court apparently has decided to return to the "good old days" when separate was considered equal when it came to racial segregation, a concept that the high court discarded in the 1954 landmark decision of Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kan., which desegregated the nation's schools.
Last week, the Supreme Court junked the Brown rule when it struck down the use of race in school admissions in Seattle and Louisville. Officials had used race as a factor in school assignments in order to build diversity.
The historic Brown ruling paved the way for the banning of segregated public facilities, hotels, restaurants and theaters.
The Roberts court also upheld an unconditional ban on the procedure that opponents dub "partial birth abortion." Supporters of abortion rights see this decision as a harbinger of doom for the 1973 Roe vs. Wade ruling that legalized abortion.
The court also ruled that public school principals and teachers can discipline students who display signs or wear T-shirts that carry messages counter to the schools' anti-drug policies. The decision overturned a 1969 ruling that students do not shed their rights "at the schoolhouse door."
And the justices threw out a 1911 ruling that barred manufacturers from setting minimum retail prices on goods.
In a blow to the principle of separation of church and state, the court rejected a challenge by the "Freedom From Religion Foundation" against a White House program that helps church charities competing with government programs obtain federal grants.
The ruling is a bow to the president who for the first time in history set up a White House office to promote faith-based entities.
The conservative jurists who have won the day in most cases included the usual suspects -- Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy. So much for the hope that Kennedy would be as moderate as former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in pivotal cases.
The liberal justices -- who were outraged at the court's far-right swing -- were John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer.
Breyer summed it up when he said: "It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much."
And yet, it seems the old cliche that the Supreme Court reads the newspapers has hit home -- at least when it comes to the shameful treatment and torture of detainees from Iraq and Afghanistan.
In a surprise ruling, the court agreed to review whether Guantanamo Bay detainees can use federal courts to challenge their imprisonment, reversing a decision in April not to hear arguments in the case.
With the Roberts court in command apparently for a long time, all I can say is: "Cry the beloved country."
Helen Thomas is a columnist for Hearst Newspapers. E-mail: helent@hearstdc.com
Copyright 2007 Hearst Newspapers
16 Comments so far
Show AllDownsizer.org is working on getting the "Read the Bills" Act passed in Congress. Go to their site and read it.
Two bills could revolutionize our alleged government.
1. A bill to require single purpose legislation. A bill must address one subject. Any amendments must speak to the bill. No riders, no pork. If you want to build a bridge to nowhere for a billion dollars, submit a bill for it, don't tack it on to a budget bill at 4:30 Friday before the legislature shuts down for the holiday.
2. The Read the Bills Act. All bills will have to be read in their entirety at least twice in the full house or senate. The legislators have to certify that they have read and understood the measure before it is voted on.
That will have two benefits. First, it will put legislators on the spot (and make them have to do some work for their pay) and Second, it will get rid of the "Gone With the Wind" length bills that are regularly brought out by staff and lobbyists and passed with a simple reading of the title.
I think it is worth a try. If not, bring the pitchforks!
Spartacus…
And while you're at it, how about you abolish that club started by the elitist Founding 'Fathers' (i.e, rich, white MEN) - the Electoral College? Try to put some truth into that phrase, "one MAN, one vote."
Oh well, it's a start anyway. The other 50% or more of the population will just have to wait to have their voices heard, let alone heeded. After all, men do really know better ... know better how to kill each other maybe.
Libertas fugit: Right on!
Spartacus...
While we're at it can we also develop a lottery system for the House of Reps and finally see that it becomes what it was originally intended? Imagine how much more actually representative that body would become?
Let's also institute term limits on Senators and finally put to the grave one of America's grand aristocracies.
The bottom line is that there are small governmental reforms which are both majoratively palatable and operationally effective that, if instituted, would go a long ways towards returning the United States to actually being under the control of it's citizenry as opposed Daddy Warbucks.
Small steps towards big gains.
Be peaceful and peaceful will you be.
We need an Impeachment Party, a little fete where the criminal scum who have stolen their way into power can be properly "recognized" for their depradations.
Cheney and Bush will be the guests of dishonor, but we should also add the Supreme Court's Fascist Five as well as Gonzales and every other impeachable officer in the Executive Branch.
Then, once they all have been impeached, we should have the big pigs--Cheney, Bush, Gonzales for starters--stay around for a post-party indictment soiree. And the culmination of the whole affair would be a Treason Recognition Day, where the dishonorees will be hanged by the neck until dead.
Do this, and the country will be rapidly and effectively returned to the people. Do NOT do this, and the country continues on its breakneck journey to hell.
Good one, Spartacus. We should have a national draft and the selectees will be required to serve in various government positions. We could hardly do worse than we have been with our present "system".
Imagine, instead of a psychotic monkey for president we might end up with a street-smart kid who can actually speak in coherent sentences and understands the meaning of honor.
I just say that the supreme court is to small in numbers . It should refleck the larger population at large. nine is just not enough, Just think what a 15 member court could look like?
We can't afford to have the highest court in the land playing politics.
If I'm elected, I'm going to change the way we choose The Supremes. I'll ask for a constitutional amendment to the end that the supreme court justices will be selected at random from a pool of qualified candidates selected and endorsed by the leading law schools and such organizations as the ACLU and the National Lawyers Guild.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on that, pro or con.
SJ
www.spartacusjones.com
Wonder if these same judges will have the same view of race and sex if all the non-white or non-male people made up a new majority and turned the tables on these guys.
Maybe it's time to resurrect those old "Impeach Earl Warren!" banners only with a new list of names.
The theory was that by appointing justices for life, they would not be subject to political pressures and could rule based upon the Constitutionality of issues.
Nice theory, except that the judges were expected to be selected from the absolute cream of the crop of American jurisprudence, not failed political hacks with no qualifications except loyalty and obedience to their powerful masters.
Conservatives have fucked things up so badly and for so long into the future that nothing short of a revolution will change things. Peak Oil and our mounting debt to China and other countries could force change, but the neocons will take us to their Armageddon before much good can come of it. Survival may be the name of the game now. Be prepared.
Term limits for justices!
pjkobulnicky, you left out the fourth estate. Now a fifth column.
Did Rupert Murdoch really buy the Wall street Journal? I can't imagine the editorials getting any more hysterical, but I can well imagine some fine reporters' heads rolling off their necks. And is Rupert Murdoch going to end up owning every newspaper in the country while Americans sit staring at their TVs with glazed eyes?
They're just busily taking us back to the original intent of the framers as well as the framer's culture (male, wealthy, slave owning, child-employing and business-oriented).
We may as well get used to the idea that all three branches of government (or maybe it is 3.5 counting Cheney) believe that there are two god given classes of people ... them and us.
Next I expect them to un-abolish slavery...and annoint Bush as "Grand Poohbah for Life", like the lap-dogs of some some tin-horn 3rd world dictatorship (which the USA has saddly become)