Bauen

Friday, February 10, 2006

The Supreme Court.

" 'Your opinions are not your children,' Breyer told me. 'What they are is your best effort in one case. The next one will come along, and you'll do your best. You'll learn from the past. (Justice) Goldberg taught me to never look backward...'

'One of the great things about our Court is that there are two rules which I love--not written-down rules, but ways of behaving,' he went on. One involves the Justices' conference, at which they discuss their decisions and announce their votes in order of seniority. 'The first rule...is that nobody at conference speaks twice until everybody has spoken once. Great rule. Helps preserve the peace...

The second rule, he said, is that 'tomorrow is another day. No dependency of a decision of one case on another: You join me, I join you. None of that. None of that, zero. The coalitions float. Each one, each case, is a new day. Each day is a new day...' "

Jeffrey Toobin, Breyer's Big Idea, The New Yorker Magazine, October 31, 2005, p. 43

I think Justice Breyer is being a little disingenuous. He almost contradicts himself when he denies trading votes in cases yet admits to coalitions. Besides, how much do the coalitions really float? Maybe Kennedy, ex-Justice O'Connor float... but not many other Justices float around... maybe Souter.

It is a shame that our "democratically" elected legislative branch is such a sham that we have to rely on the Court to preserve some amount of sanity. It's especially scary because the Justices hold so much power, yet are fairly normal people. We even have an evolution-denier on the Court. Do you trust him with your rights?

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