Abortion and Integration Dominate US SC’s New Term
Abortion and race dominate the Supreme Court’s agenda for the term that begins tomorrow, with the Bush administration and its conservative allies urging the justices to put limits on abortion rights and affirmative action.
Conservatives want the court to uphold a 2003 federal law banning the procedure opponents call “partial-birth” abortion, and to strike down local integration policies that distribute students by race. They are asking the court not only to rule in their favor, but to limit — or, possibly, overrule — recent constitutional decisions that have drawn heavy fire from the right.
The conservative push on social issues is just what Democrats and liberals, concerned about the future of Roe v. Wade , the 1973 case that recognized a right to abortion, warned against during confirmation hearings for the two Bush appointees now on the court — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.
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Taking up race-conscious public school assignments was a surprise, however. The justices had turned down a similar case a few months earlier, when Sandra Day O’Connor was still on the court.O’Connor wrote the court’s opinion in a 5 to 4 case upholding race-conscious admissions in higher education.
But after Alito replaced her, the court spent almost two months discussing the public school issue before deciding in June to hear it.
As the WaPo notes, both conservatives and liberals will watch the US Supreme Court’s rulings extremely closely. Conservatives, of course, hope that Bush’s decision to appoint Alito and Robert will ‘pay off’, so to speak. Some liberals, on the other hand, are afraid that these appointments will, indeed, ‘pay off’ for conservatives.
It is one of those big differences between the systems in the US and those in most of Europe: for instance in the Netherlands, much less is dependent, or considered to be less dependent on the personal beliefs of judges.
4 Responses to “Abortion and Integration Dominate US SC’s New Term”
Just out of curiousity, what does the Supream Court in the Netherlands base their decisions on? Seems like in a case like this, where there is little precedent or direct constitutional mandate you either have to listen to your personal beliefs, or public sentiment. Each has its downsides.
I would say that in our system, too, the decisions are not supposed to be based on the personal beliefs of the judges. The problem is that for some issues, you can see wildly different interpretations of the constitutional principles involved, and superimposed on that are the differences in philosophy of constitutional law (strict constructionalism, broad constructionalism, originalism, or philosophies that tend toward an interpretation of a “living constitution”)
When something is as unclear as it is about, for instance, abortion, our legislative body would have to say something about it. Regarding abortion, it is quite obvious to just about anyone that the Supreme Court made up a nice legal rule itself in Roe v. Wade.
I think that our Supreme Court would not even take on the case.
I have a lot of thoughts about how personal beliefs influence judges, &c. But I do not have the time to write them down now. Perhaps later. Perhaps it would make a nice post.
I agree with you about Roe, and ironically a lot of pro-choicers privately admit that it was a weak ruling but that doesn’t seem to bother them much.