Dissociated Press
Week of June 26, 2005
This has been a week of surprises. First Newt Gingrich, one of my least favorite people, comes out with a proposal for reform of the United Nations which seriously appeals to me, partly because he isn't just proposing to abolish it or pull the US out of it, but mostly because he takes seriously the disadvantaged position in the UN of the state of Israel. Israel is the one nation in the entire world that can never become a temporary member of the Security Council, because only "regional groups" can appoint such members, and Israel (alone among all the nations of the world) is not a member of any regional group. Gingrich doesn't exactly talk about the reason for this anomaly (which is that neither Christian Europe nor the Muslim Middle East wants to accept the Jewish state as a member), but he does say it has to be remedied.
Then the Supreme Court issues a decision on eminent domain, which in its substance is no surprise at all, but merely endorses the way things have been in this country for at least the last sixty years, in that government can seize private property for ostensibly public purposes and then hand it off to private developers to profit from (frequently for some sort of ethically questionable remuneration, but nobody mentions that.) The surprise is that all my favorite justices voted for this result, with Stevens writing the majority opinion. The dissent included all the justices I love to hate, most notably Scalia and Thomas.
And finally, of course, Sandra Day O'Connor has announced her impending retirement. When I was first admitted to the Bar back in 1977, I went out and bought a photo of the Supreme Court of that time, and posted it on the wall of my office with a caption, "What's Wrong With This Picture?" What was wrong, of course, was the all-male composition of the Court at the time. I wisecracked to my friends back then that my ambition wasn't to be the first woman on the Supreme Court, but the fifth. The first, I pointed out, would be a mere token. The fifth would be the swing vote. I was wrong, of course. Sandra Day O'Connor was no token, and she was very often the swing vote.
Lots of commentators have talked about that role, but none of them have noticed something that became apparent to me fairly soon after she was appointed--that she did wonders for the group process of the Court. Before that, the Court was always coming down with opinions that were divided into so many parts as to be utterly useless for precedential purposes. The worst of the lot was Bakke vs. UC Davis Board of Regents, which came in something like 59 single-spaced pages consisting of two dissents and three separate concurrences (I may be mistaken in some of the details after all these years) and a "majority" opinion in two parts, which was endorsed in its entirety by only one justice. I had visions of the Court ordering lunch--pizza: one slice sausage, two slices mushroom and green pepper, one slice each Canadian bacon and anchovy, you get the idea. All that stopped after Sandra stepped in. Nobody ever talked about it at the time or since, but I could only conclude that she sat them all down and said softly, "Now boys..." and they shaped up.
Also, Justice O'Connor forced the resolution of one of those maddeningly trivial protocol/etiquette problems that so often stand in the way of equality for women: since at the time, all the other justices were officially referred to as "Mister Justice Whoever," would she be "Mrs. Justice O'Connor" or "Madam Justice O'Connor" or what? Instead, they all became simply "Justice Whoever," the simplest and most elegant solution possible. We will probably never know if it was her idea, but I'm betting it was.
The ideological battle lines are already forming for the struggle over her replacement (make that "successor"--I'm not sure anybody could replace her.) I worry about the fate of Roe v. Wade too, but I worry a lot more over what could happen to the tone of the Court if the right-wing ideologues have their way. Tone is intangible, but sometimes its results last a lot longer than the win-lose scores and the legal precedents. Let's hope that what Justice O'Connor has done for the tone of the Court outlasts her tenure on it.
This has been a week of surprises. First Newt Gingrich, one of my least favorite people, comes out with a proposal for reform of the United Nations which seriously appeals to me, partly because he isn't just proposing to abolish it or pull the US out of it, but mostly because he takes seriously the disadvantaged position in the UN of the state of Israel. Israel is the one nation in the entire world that can never become a temporary member of the Security Council, because only "regional groups" can appoint such members, and Israel (alone among all the nations of the world) is not a member of any regional group. Gingrich doesn't exactly talk about the reason for this anomaly (which is that neither Christian Europe nor the Muslim Middle East wants to accept the Jewish state as a member), but he does say it has to be remedied.
Then the Supreme Court issues a decision on eminent domain, which in its substance is no surprise at all, but merely endorses the way things have been in this country for at least the last sixty years, in that government can seize private property for ostensibly public purposes and then hand it off to private developers to profit from (frequently for some sort of ethically questionable remuneration, but nobody mentions that.) The surprise is that all my favorite justices voted for this result, with Stevens writing the majority opinion. The dissent included all the justices I love to hate, most notably Scalia and Thomas.
And finally, of course, Sandra Day O'Connor has announced her impending retirement. When I was first admitted to the Bar back in 1977, I went out and bought a photo of the Supreme Court of that time, and posted it on the wall of my office with a caption, "What's Wrong With This Picture?" What was wrong, of course, was the all-male composition of the Court at the time. I wisecracked to my friends back then that my ambition wasn't to be the first woman on the Supreme Court, but the fifth. The first, I pointed out, would be a mere token. The fifth would be the swing vote. I was wrong, of course. Sandra Day O'Connor was no token, and she was very often the swing vote.
Lots of commentators have talked about that role, but none of them have noticed something that became apparent to me fairly soon after she was appointed--that she did wonders for the group process of the Court. Before that, the Court was always coming down with opinions that were divided into so many parts as to be utterly useless for precedential purposes. The worst of the lot was Bakke vs. UC Davis Board of Regents, which came in something like 59 single-spaced pages consisting of two dissents and three separate concurrences (I may be mistaken in some of the details after all these years) and a "majority" opinion in two parts, which was endorsed in its entirety by only one justice. I had visions of the Court ordering lunch--pizza: one slice sausage, two slices mushroom and green pepper, one slice each Canadian bacon and anchovy, you get the idea. All that stopped after Sandra stepped in. Nobody ever talked about it at the time or since, but I could only conclude that she sat them all down and said softly, "Now boys..." and they shaped up.
Also, Justice O'Connor forced the resolution of one of those maddeningly trivial protocol/etiquette problems that so often stand in the way of equality for women: since at the time, all the other justices were officially referred to as "Mister Justice Whoever," would she be "Mrs. Justice O'Connor" or "Madam Justice O'Connor" or what? Instead, they all became simply "Justice Whoever," the simplest and most elegant solution possible. We will probably never know if it was her idea, but I'm betting it was.
The ideological battle lines are already forming for the struggle over her replacement (make that "successor"--I'm not sure anybody could replace her.) I worry about the fate of Roe v. Wade too, but I worry a lot more over what could happen to the tone of the Court if the right-wing ideologues have their way. Tone is intangible, but sometimes its results last a lot longer than the win-lose scores and the legal precedents. Let's hope that what Justice O'Connor has done for the tone of the Court outlasts her tenure on it.
posted by WiredSisters at 6:09 PM
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