Sandra Day O'Connor has second thoughts on Bush V. Gore. I'm having trouble linking to the Chicago Tribune article. http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/...nd-thoughts-on-bush-v-gore?lite&lite=obinsite Ex-Supreme Court justice has second thoughts on Bush v. Gore Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor expressed doubts that the nation's highest court should have ruled on the controversial Bush v. Gore case that decided the outcome of the 2000 presidential election. "It took the case and decided it at a time when it was still a big election issue," O'Connor told the Chicago Tribune editorial board on Friday. "Maybe the court should have said, 'We're not going to take it, goodbye.'" The Tribune has more from O'Connor: The case, she said, "stirred up the public" and "gave the court a less-than-perfect reputation." "Obviously the court did reach a decision and thought it had to reach a decision," she said. "It turned out the election authorities in Florida hadn't done a real good job there and kind of messed it up. And probably the Supreme Court added to the problem at the end of the day." O'Connor, who was appointed to the court by Ronald Reagan in 1981, was part of the 5-4 majority deciding to stop the recount in the crucial battleground state of Florida.
They did what was asked and expected of them as the third branch of government. It's good that someone as principled and thoughtful as a retired Supreme Court justice would question their decisions; but let that horrible election die already. Such an awful coda to the two or three least productive years in our government's history.
Oh, great! You goofy chick. First you go along with a ruling that was pure excrement, and then over 20 years later decide to say that maybe, just maybe, it was a bad idea? After resigning from the court when you could have stayed, helping to create the extreme majority we have now? What a ****ing chump. Maybe you should shut the **** up and enjoy your "retirement." (man, this pisses me off! can anyone tell?)
can give Obama the ammo to appoint a pretty strong liberal justice next time one of the Reagan appointees decide to call it quits.
Not subtle enough. Warren Christopher, Donna Brazile or, if you watched Digger Barnes's acceptance speech, "thuh innernet."
What's next? that goof ball Dubya taking a break from such activities as painting his toes in the bathtub and "having a bad day" in which he has a stray thought of remorse for the continuing mayhem in Iraq or the daily suffering of wounded American soldiers he lied into war. Sadly I don't think so.
Did you mean over 10 years later? This doesn't mean much now but is an insight into the history of the ruling.
I didn't pay any attention to the ruling at the time (I was young and not interested in politics) and haven't yet felt a strong need to go back and review the case. From a legal perspective, what is your issue with the ruling they made?
For one thing, it seemed a bit suspect that all the more conservative judges sided with Bush, while all the more liberal judges sided with Gore. In a nutshell, I think that was what really called the integrity of the Supreme Court into question for a lot of people.
Which has nothing to do with whether or not he legitimately won the Floridian popular vote three years earlier, or if any real objective effort was made by either side at the time to find that out.
Odds they leave in his term are getting less and less. I think some of them are going to try and hold out.
Speaking for myself Bush V Gore had several problems. The first was that it went it against the precedent. Part of the reasoning behind the majority decision was that states needed to elect Electors by a certain date so that the Electoral College could vote. The argument was that dragging out the Florida count would mean that Florida wouldn't have electors in time so that the count should be stopped. There had been a previous case where Hawaii was late with getting electors and that wasn't considered a problem. The second was that it went against Federalism. Presidential elections are not national elections but actually 50 + DC separate elections. The USSC and Constitution say that it is mostly up to the States to conduct elections as they see fit. Florida's elections are governed by the Florida Constitution that empowers the Florida Supreme Court to see that the election was carried out according to the FL Consitution. The USSC stepped in and overruled the FL SC when it shouldn't have. This view of allowing the federal to override the state went against the expressed views of Justices Rhenquist, Scalia and Thomas who have generally maintained that states rights should take greater precedence. Next was that the basis of the majority argument was on equal protection that the recounts of specific counties violated the equal protection rights of all Florida voters. First the FL SC had mandated that all of Florida should be recounted so there was no equal protection problem there and also as noted above this was the USSC imposing a view of equal protection over Florida. Again Rhenquist, Scalia and Thomas have generally argued against that sort of expansive view of equal protection but changed their mind when it came to this case. Finally and in my opinion the biggest problem with the ruling is that it smacks of corruption. As noted Rhenquist, Scalia and Thomas ruled in a way on this case not consistent with their own previous rulings and stated legal philosophy. Further since Scalia and Thomas had family ties to the Bush campaign they should've recused themselves from the case. All of that combined with that the majority opinion was written so that it couldn't be used as a precedent for future case does strike me as the justices knew that they were doing something that wasn't consistent but did so out of their own political bias. Frankly I strongly suspect that one of the fallout of Bush V Gore was the ACA ruling. This is speculation but I suspect that Roberts feared seeing the court politicized again in a major case regarding separation of powers and with a possible affect on the presidential election that he felt the convoluted opinion he wrote was necessary to prevent that.
