To: jlallen who wrote (8995 ) 12/31/2001 12:20:01 PM From: jttmab Respond to I'll do this in a few posts....we'll do the quick part now. Using the LIFO system...The USSC had before it a hard task. Each side argued its case well. The law is not an exact science and so reasonable minds may differ over whether the case was correctly decided. However, the charge that the decision was indefensible is indefensible itself. Ours is a nation of laws. One of our most basic principles is that disputes should be settled in Courts of law when necessary and that once decided, in the absence of obvious fraud or collusion, those decisions are to be respected by winners and losers alike. There are many opportunities in this free and open society we enjoy as US citizens for those who feel aggrieved by the decision to bring about change to ensure that there is no repeat of the circumstances which brought about the unique situation the Court was presented in Bush v Gore. However partisan attacks on the USSC without adequate basis in law or in fact do not promote reasonable discourse nor justice. In any case, there must be a winner and a loser. The losers in this case who attack the Court and call for unreasonable punitive actions against the majority and the Bush Administration ignore the basic tenet of US jurisprudence which is that final judicial decisions, lawfully decided, are to be respected or at least tolerated in order to maintain an orderly society. It is these critics who do damage to our freedoms and democratic principles. Finally, the prediction that the decision would undermine the legitimacy of the Bush administration and the Court itself turned out to be wishful thinking on behalf of the critics. Even before the WTC tragedy, Mr. Bush enjoyed a 55-63% approval rating. Fully 62% answered in the affirmative that he had been legitimately elected after his first 100 days. (Washington Post/ABC poll). Another charge has been that the majority was driven by a self interested political motive. That motive has been alleged to be that a conservative President would appoint like minded justices to the Court. It is impossible for any of us to know what exactly was in the minds of the majority, but the failure of most critics to actively engage the reasoning in the decision might lead a cynic to conclude this was the premise the critics proceeded from rather than a conclusion they reached. One wonders if these critics have considered how easy it might be for those cynics to point to potent partisan interests of the accusers. Many critics of the decision were staunch supporters of the previous Democrat administration. The defects I perceive in the liberal reaction to the decision are many. First many critics offered rather intemperate assertions for public consumption supported only by their authority as “legal scholars”. These critics called the decision “unprincipled”, “illegitimate”, “undemocratic”, etc. but offered no explanation for these conclusions. Unfortunately, these assertions are remembered by virtue of the nature of the inflammatory language used and the unsophisticated listener might not notice that such reasoning was totally unsupported. No doubt the ultimate “correctness” of the Court’s decision will be debated for years to come. The case is complicated and raises many difficult questions of law, of fact and of politics. However, the critics who claim that there is nothing about the decision that can not be explained by “partisanship” are all wet. The hasty and ill considered denunciations of what the critics see as “partisanship” may apply more aptly to the accusers than to those accused. And in fact that hasty and overheated criticism has not helped to engender a careful consideration of the decision about two of our most important democratic institutions, the election of the President and the USSC itself. This hasty, overheated and ill-considered criticism is more harmful to the political process than anything the USSC did, in my humble opinion. The complaints about the decision are many. Critics claim the conservative majority, Rehnquist, O’Connor, Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy hypocritically disregarded their long held and frequently cited judicial philosophy of restraint, deference to the states and a preference to see the political process as opposed to the Courts resolve disputes. Critics claim the USSC, counter to its practice in previous cases, extended the protections of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment, failed to defer to the FLSC’s interpretation of Florida law and aggressively intervened in the political process before it had a chance to work itself out. According to the critics, an illegitimate partisanship was the only explanation for the actions of the majority and the damage flowing from these actions was supposed to be substantial. It was said the decision would undermine the Presidency of George W. Bush and the Court itself. And yet the speed and ferocity with which the decision was denounced was unprecedented in my opinion. And the critics attacks generally were offered without a careful analysis which would justify the opprobrium the decision received. In fact the speed with which the decision was condemned seems to confirm that a careful analysis was not considered before such intense, uncompromising denunciations were issued by liberal critics of the decision. And the critics attacks generally were offered without a careful analysis which would justify the opprobrium the decision received. How the hell would you know whether there was carefull analysis or not? How long does carefull analysis take when you've already been pulling the case law while the USSC is making a decision. And whether the critics were hasty or not has nothing whatsoever to do with the correctness of the decision. More yada, yada that's irrelevant. Delete the paragraph.“The conservatives stopped the democratic process in its tracks, with thousands of votes yet uncounted, first by ordering an unjustified stay of the statewide recount of the Florida vote already in progress and then declaring in one of the least persuasive Supreme Court opinions I have ever read, that there was not time left for the recount to continue.” ...and those decisions are still largely not understood by the public.
