from the bigdumbHoosier Archive - 12.20.2000
On the Party Line
Okay, you've got your conservative Supreme Court Justices (Rehnquist, Kennedy, O'Connor, Scalia, Thomas) and you've got your liberal Supreme Court Justices (Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter, Stevens). I can understand that. The law is, after all, mostly a fancy system for deciding what is, or isn't, socially acceptable. Liberals and conservatives don't seem to agree on that kind of thing.
People in general (certainly Americans) like to see the world in simple black and white dichotomies; and therefore we have a two-party system that is supposed to reflect this. But how did it happen that gun control is generally favored by the left, and resisted by the right? Maybe because lots of liberals live in urban areas where guns mean crime, and many conservatives live in rural areas where guns are used for noisy, but mostly harmless fun. Here in Hoosierland the right opposes regulation of real estate, unless it help farmers, who are about 10% of the population, tops. Nobody seems much bothered by this paradox. Conservatives like to say they're for smaller government; that doesn't seem to include prisons. Liberals say they're for freedom of speech - until you say something they don't want to hear. [okay, libertarians are consistent, but in a creepy way]
Getting back to the Supreme Court - Justice Stevens, for example, voted against the Communications Decency Act, intended to 'clean up' the Internet. But he voted to uphold a prohibition of flag burning. Contradictory? Not necessarily; the CDA would have been difficult to enforce and would have led to lots of granstanding by ambitious (you might say ruthless) prosecuting attorneys, particularly in backwater county seats. Flag burning is really quite rare (most Americans actually like their country, though not always its leaders), and therefore despite the fact that it's arguably constitutionally protected free speech there's really little social impact either way. This is the kind of independent thinking that enhances the court's credibility, regardless of your personal opinion.
What I can't quite figure out is how, if the Supreme Court decides issues on the basis of careful review of the law, precedent, statutes and the constitution - even filtered, inevitably, through their philosophical bents - they end up on the party line on the kind of issues presented in Bush v. Gore. Now, on issues like abortion, gun control, capital punishment, the environment, law enforcement there's an obvious philosophical component, because all these involve the relationship of the government to individuals. But where's the philosophy in deciding whether to hand count ballots or not? Obviously, being the 'techno-luddite review' and all I personally have a philosophy somewhat applicable to that point. Machines serve humans, not that other way; regardless of how it appears. But even that doesn't answer the question, which really comes down to whether you think speed in counting is more important than accuracy and whether you think hand counts are more or less accurate than machine counts. Assuming, that is, the public actually participates in this process.
These just aren't Republican/Democrat issues. I mean, seriously, are you trying to tell me that somebody grew up with their grandpappy telling them "now son, you just remember, don't you never count a hangin' chad?" I didn't. It's going to be hard to believe that a Supreme Court vote along party lines has any nexus to the underlying legal issues of this case. A party line vote will hurt the high court's credibility, regardless how it ends up. But then, I'm just a bigdumbHoosier.
