Politics and the Supreme Court
On October 5, 2009, the first Monday of October as mandated by the Constitution, the United States Supreme Court will officially convene for its 2009-2010 session with a new Associate Justice, Sonia Marie Sotomayor. Sotomayor brings with her more judicial experience than any other new justice in years. Sotomayor is probably best known for her decision in 1995 to issue a preliminary injunction against Major League Baseball that ended the 1994 baseball strike.
Sotomayor graduated from Princeton and went on to attend Yale law school. She was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1992 by the first President Bush, George H.W. Bush. In 1998, President Bill Clinton nominated her for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. President Barrack Obama nominated her for the United States Supreme Court, to take the place of retiring justice David Souter. The Senate confirmed Sotomayor’s appointment in August 2009 by a vote of 58-31. Sotomayor lists her political affiliation as Independent, but she tends to side with conservatives more often than not.
Some people and groups advocate the appointment of a justice to the Supreme Court based upon a single issue. Whether the judicial candidate is for or against abortion has been the litmus test of religious conservatives ever since the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the 1973 case of Roe v. Wade, which upheld a woman’s right to obtain an abortion. Today, another issue – whether or not the nominee is for or against same-sex marriage – has become a second issue in the judicial nomination spotlight.
The problem with a litmus test based on a single issue or two is that it completely ignores the fact that justices are called upon to settle questions spanning the whole legal spectrum. A candidate for judicial appointment may be against abortion, but how does he or she feel about such legal issues as affirmative action, racial or sexual discrimination, anti-trust law, civil rights, interstate commerce, the death penalty, or the right of the government to take people’s homes through the power of eminent domain for private purposes, such as the development of a shopping center or a planned residential housing community.
The United States Supreme Court is composed of nine justices, and many decisions that present difficult decisions, legally and morally, are decided by one vote, 5-4. Then when a member of the majority vote retires or dies in office, the push is on by the opposing side to get a justice who agrees with their viewpoint appointed to the high court so they can get the decision overturned. The problem with this situation is that it results in instability in the law. People do not know from one judicial term to the next what is legal and what is not. When a controversial decision has been made 5 votes to 4, a newly appointed justice should respect that decision except in the most egregious situations.
Judicial nominees should be appointed to the courts based on their overall legal scholarship and temperament, and not a single political issue or two. Only by looking at the judge’s entire record can we assure that legal decisions are made based on “the law of the land” and the Constitution. It is hoped that Justice Sotomayor will keep these principles in mind, as well as exercising judicial restraint in infringing upon the fundamental rights of the people to seek life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
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