Politics Daily
Posted:
01/31/10
01/31/10
Gosh, I step away for a couple of years and there's no telling what's going to happen," former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor joked recently in a speech at Georgetown University.
No kidding. Just a few days earlier, the court had issued a 5-4 ruling that liberates corporations to spend as much as they want on political campaigns. It was one of those what-if moments -- as in what if O'Connor, a former state legislator and a supporter of campaign finance regulation, had not left the court in 2006 to care for her sick husband?
(Listen to Jill Lawrence, Melinda Henneberger, Patricia Murphy, Emily Miller and Bonnie Erbé discuss what O'Connor presence on the court meant in this week's Woman UP video).
I'm in the deeply-respect-but-even-more-deeply-regret camp. Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center, perfectly captured this wistful ambivalence. "I wish she had made different personal decisions for the sake of the law and the country," she told me. "But I would never criticize her for making the decision that she did."
The latest reminder of O'Connor's lost vote is the Jan. 21 campaign finance ruling, so controversial that President Obama attacked it in his State of the Union address and Justice Samuel Alito mouthed "not true" as he did so. Based on Connor's opinion in a 2003 campaign finance case and her comments on the new one, it's almost certain she would have voted against giving corporations this massive new way to influence elections.
Legal scholars say O'Connor's absence has had a similar effect, or will have one, in major cases involving race, gender, religion, abortion, and the death penalty. She was the swing vote on what SCOTUSblog.com publisher Tom Goldstein calls the "highest profile, most consequential social questions" that touch every person's life. Her departure, he told me, has been "profoundly important" in its impact.
No kidding. Just a few days earlier, the court had issued a 5-4 ruling that liberates corporations to spend as much as they want on political campaigns. It was one of those what-if moments -- as in what if O'Connor, a former state legislator and a supporter of campaign finance regulation, had not left the court in 2006 to care for her sick husband?
(Listen to Jill Lawrence, Melinda Henneberger, Patricia Murphy, Emily Miller and Bonnie Erbé discuss what O'Connor presence on the court meant in this week's Woman UP video).
I'm in the deeply-respect-but-even-more-deeply-regret camp. Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center, perfectly captured this wistful ambivalence. "I wish she had made different personal decisions for the sake of the law and the country," she told me. "But I would never criticize her for making the decision that she did."
The latest reminder of O'Connor's lost vote is the Jan. 21 campaign finance ruling, so controversial that President Obama attacked it in his State of the Union address and Justice Samuel Alito mouthed "not true" as he did so. Based on Connor's opinion in a 2003 campaign finance case and her comments on the new one, it's almost certain she would have voted against giving corporations this massive new way to influence elections.
Legal scholars say O'Connor's absence has had a similar effect, or will have one, in major cases involving race, gender, religion, abortion, and the death penalty. She was the swing vote on what SCOTUSblog.com publisher Tom Goldstein calls the "highest profile, most consequential social questions" that touch every person's life. Her departure, he told me, has been "profoundly important" in its impact.
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