Posted on 03/12/2006 6:49:12 PM PST by blam
Former top judge says US risks edging near to dictatorship
· Sandra Day O'Connor warns of rightwing attacks
· Lawyers 'must speak up' to protect judiciary
Julian Borger in Washington
Monday March 13, 2006
The Guardian (UK)
Sandra Day O'Connor, a Republican-appointed judge who retired last month after 24 years on the supreme court, has said the US is in danger of edging towards dictatorship if the party's rightwingers continue to attack the judiciary.
In a strongly worded speech at Georgetown University, reported by National Public Radio and the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, Ms O'Connor took aim at Republican leaders whose repeated denunciations of the courts for alleged liberal bias could, she said, be contributing to a climate of violence against judges.
Ms O'Connor, nominated by Ronald Reagan as the first woman supreme court justice, declared: "We must be ever-vigilant against those who would strong-arm the judiciary."
She pointed to autocracies in the developing world and former Communist countries as lessons on where interference with the judiciary might lead. "It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings."
In her address to an audience of corporate lawyers on Thursday, Ms O'Connor singled out a warning to the judiciary issued last year by Tom DeLay, the former Republican leader in the House of Representatives, over a court ruling in a controversial "right to die" case.
After the decision last March that ordered a brain-dead woman in Florida, Terri Schiavo, removed from life support, Mr DeLay said: "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behaviour."
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
" middle-of-the-road "
There are only two things in the middle of the road, yellow stripes and dead skunks!
I'm glad she's off the bench. Upholding abortion as a constitutional right and racial discrimination is her legacy.
Still, she has a better grasp of what is right and holy than do Ginsburg and Stevens.
Like being vigilant against Franklin Roosevelt and his direct threats against the independence of the Supreme Court? Like threatening to add 6 more justices to the Supreme Court, which caused the SC to balk and rubber stamp Roosevelt's remake of the federal government into the grotesque welfare state we have now, where citizens are now property of the state? Is that what we should be on guard against?
Now that is a juicy worded " Good one " - forgot the sarcasm tag.
Not really so much. Giving foreign jurisprudence precedent is more Breyer's pet anaconda. Souter and Ginsberg will play along sometimes, as well. Kennedy has hinted that Europe has begun to change its outlook on dealing with foreign jurisprudence, and that's a bad sign to me.
This reference to foreign jurisprudence was used in Lawrence v. Texas to overturn sodomy laws and then again in Atkins v. Virginia.
As you can imagine, Scalia is fighting it tooth and nail.
MUst be that the SCOUTS is so insulated from the rest of society.
"The only tyranny needing to be combated and rejected in the United States is that of the judiciary"
Thanks........bears repeating.
LOL. Okay, Sandra Day O'Connor...here's the deal: SEPARATION OF POWERS...and ACCOUNTABILITY. Your branch of government is NO BETTER THAN THE OTHER TWO...and the judiciary, despite your desire to the contrary, is accountable, just like the Legislative and the Executive branches are accountable.
GET OVER IT!
Opps. Sorry. Will strive harder. Been a really long day. Going to take a while to come down from this article though. :-)
As a retired member of the oligarchy, I believe that she continues to be paid by us.
But a dictatorship of the Judiciary is just fine.
That's what I thought when I saw this. I don't believe a single word Nina Totenberg says in any of her broadcasts, and I don't believe this one. The author Julian Borger is another left-wing nutter from the Grauniad. The breathless tone in which he wrote this article is amusing.
She did seem to leave Washington in silence. I figured she was ticked off.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35367
I don't know why Reagan made that pledge, but it was a huge mistake to do so. For one thing, its highly unlikely that it gained him any votes against the inept and hapless Jimmy Carter. For another, making such a pledge boxed him into a corner by pretty much forcing him to honor the promise with his first Sup Court vacancy since there was no guarantee that he'd get another.
Had he waited, then perhaps by the time of the Bork-Kennedy nomination there would have been a known conservative woman qualified for the job.
These loathsome look-at-me people remind me of the clowns who pull the fly-paper off their shoes only to get it stuck on their hands.....and then they slap their heads and the flypaper sticks on their faces.....and.......
Leni
I would rank GWB ahead of Reagan on judicial picks up to this point, but it's good that Harriet Miers didn't go through.
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