(Supreme)Court decision still rankles law professors
By Dave Zweifel
January 24, 2001
" Many of the nation’s law professors are wondering how to
justify the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on the Florida
election recount to their law students.
Some 585 of them are so dismayed that they spent big
bucks on a full-page advertisement in the New York Times
the other day.
Among the 585 were 14 from the University of Wisconsin.
"We are professors of law at 115 American law schools,"
their ad began. "But we all agree that when a bare majority
of the U.S. Supreme Court halted the recount of ballots
under Florida law, the five justices were acting as political
proponents for candidate Bush, not as judges.
"It is not the job of a federal court to stop votes from being
counted," they continued. "By stopping the recount in the
middle, the five justices acted to suppress the facts. Justice
SCALIA argued that the justices had to interfere even before
the Supreme Court heard the Bush team’s arguments
because the recount might cast a cloud upon what (Bush)
claims to be the legitimacy of his election.
"In their words, the conservative justices moved to avoid
the ‘threat’ that Americans might learn that in the recount,
Gore got more votes than Bush. This is presumably
‘irreparable’ harm because if the recount proceeded and
the truth once became known, it would never again be
possible to completely obscure the facts.
"But it is not the job of the courts to polish the image of
legitimacy of the Bush presidency by preventing disturbing
facts from being confirmed. Suppressing the facts to make
the Bush government seem more legitimate is the job of
propagandists, not judges."
The law professors’ ad concludes: "By taking power from
the voters, the Supreme Court has tarnished its own
legitimacy. As teachers whose lives have been dedicated to
the rule of law, we protest."
Excerpt from Captimes
captimes.com |
