ASHINGTON, July 6 — Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said today that she would serve out the next term of the Supreme Court, dismissing speculation that she was ready to retire.Posted on 07/06/2003 12:25:01 PM PDT by sarcasm
ASHINGTON, July 6 — Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said today that she would serve out the next term of the Supreme Court, dismissing speculation that she was ready to retire.
In an unusual televised interview together with Justice Stephen G. Breyer she also denied longstanding reports that she had intended, in the year 2000, to retire unless Vice President Al Gore became president.
The two justices appeared on the ABC program "This Week," an appearance that ABC said was the first by any sitting justice on the networks' Sunday morning interview programs.
The show's host, George Stephanopoulos, referring to widespread speculation that she was about to retire, asked, "Should we take your silence to mean you intend to serve out the next term?"
"Oh, I assume so," she answered.
Anticipating a vacancy on the court, interest groups and politicians on the right and left had already begun mounting vigorous campaigns to influence President Bush's choice of a new nominee. But when neither Justice O'Connor nor any other justice announced a retirement when the court's term ended in June, it was widely seen as making those campaigns moot.
Speaking out shortly after the court had split sharply on several contentious matters, including gay rights and affirmative action, both justices seemed intent on playing down the court's ideological divisions, which had become especially plain in dissents by Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, the most conservative members of the court.
Even when fundamental disagreements boil over into sharply worded opinions, they said, the justices do not take it personally.
"When you work in a small group of that size, you have to get along, and so you're not going to let some harsh language, some dissenting opinion affect a personal relationship," Justice O'Connor said. "You can't do that."
Justice Breyer said that he sometimes felt when he read "rather sharp words about something I've written, perhaps that it's sort of a question of rhetoric, more than it is of actual human feeling.
"So if I'm really put out by something, I can only go to the person who wrote it and say, `Look, I think you've gone somewhat too far here.' "
Justice Breyer, who joined the majority opinion in the court's ruling to overturn its own precedent and declare unconstitutional a Texas law that prohibited sex between homosexuals, briefly discussed one of the disagreements on the court that was aired in the opinion, written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, and in Mr. Scalia's scathing dissent.
Their difference was over whether the court should pay attention to legal opinions of other world courts, such as the European Court of Human Rights. Justice Breyer held that the foreign court's view that gay men and lesbians had a fundamental right to privacy in their sexual behavior showed that the Supreme Court's prior decision to the contrary was unfounded in the Western tradition. Mr. Scalia said that the views of foreign jurists were irrelevant under the United States Constitution.
"We see all the time, Justice O'Connor and I, and the others, how the world really — it's trite but it's true — is growing together," Justice Breyer said.
"Through commerce, through globalization, through the spread of democratic institutions, through immigration to America, it's becoming more and more one world of many different kinds of people," he continued. "And how they're going to live together across the world will be the challenge, and whether our Constitution and how it fits into the governing documents of other nations, I think will be a challenge for the next generations."
Before I'm nit-picked, and by Bobby Novak in one of his recent hysterical columns."
onyx, I just don't get comments like this.
Why are so many people so focused on another, as though he's the biggest problem in the country?
The comments by O'Connor and especially Breyer in the article at the top are far more dangerous than anything any of us could conceive of doing.
If it's on a thread, it's not private business. This schoolyard groupthink is way out of hand. I think you're above that.
I've set the record straight when things were said about another poster that weren't true. Whatever his faults may be, plenty of his detractors are more than willing to twist facts, leap to conclusions, and spread rumors about him, apparently thinking that they can get away with it because he's not winning popularity polls. There is one such rumor that I've corrected a half a dozen times, both on threads and via Freepmail, with links and evidence. Doesn't seem to matter, though, the same honking, clucking crowd keeps spreading it, despite not having anything with which to back up their claim.
Does TLBSHOW always get it right? No. So what? People should deal with the errors, not descend into playground taunts.
What's with the so-played-out "Todd" thing? I never see it used but that the poster is trying to insinuate a sense of their own superiority. It has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any issue, it's just an air of condescension. Yeah, I think you're better than that.
There are plenty of posters in this forum who can not bring themselves to confront the possibility that President Bush is mortal, and that not every ill-advised thing he does is part of some brilliant, long term plan. They twist and contort reality to conform to the needs of the personality cult. Any poster who questions the demigodhood of President Bush risks being targeted as a disruptor, a Bush-basher, or a Bush-hater, hell-bent on spreading division.
The very rationales and methods once used by the Clintonistas are rife on Free Republic, and the fact that President Bush is a more decent and honorable man than his predecessor doesn't excuse the shameless behavior of many of the would-be defenders on his behalf.
It would be a good thing for them to experience, if even for a moment, a pang of embarassment over their actions.
Consider what President Bush might think on seeing some of these threads. He might look at those who are critical of him and his policies (I am one of frequently one of them), and think that we're misinformed, silly, or even stupid. So be it.
However, I can't imagine he'd look at the tenor of many of the posts in his defense, without wincing... frequently
And it would be.
Me too. She seems dazed and confused. She has just enough smarts left to understand that she wants to keep her incredible power.
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