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Showing posts with label judicial coup d'etat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label judicial coup d'etat. Show all posts

03 July 2018

Anthony Kennedy Was No Moderate & EMERGENCY: Roe v. Wade & Anthony Kennedy, swing justice, announces retirement 3JUL & 28&27JUN18

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anthony kennedy leaves a dark stain on the history of the SCOTUS beginning with his vote on bush v Gore in 2000 allowing the only judicial coup d'etat in the history of our representative Democracy. Because of kennedy's vote we are still paying for the illegal and immoral Iraq War in blood and tax dollars. kennedy was bought and paid for by corporate America and the 1% and his court votes reflect he was guided by greed and not the concept of the common good and the American social contract. kennedy could have waited to announce his retirement after the 2018 Midterm election but he is the same kind of person as drumpf/trump-pence and the rest of their fascist administration and knows his successor will be a neo-nazi committed to eliminating more of our rights and protections enshrined on the American constitution while increasing the wealth and power of corporate America and the 1%. From Politico followed by a call to action from UltraViolet I hope you will participate in and then a report on kennedy's retirement from the SCOTUS blog..... 

Anthony Kennedy Was No Moderate

Progressives mourning his departure from the Supreme Court have the guy all wrong
By RAHM EMANUEL
 
July 03, 2018
Conventional wisdom holds that Justice Anthony Kennedy was a moderate whose rulings hewed down the center of the fairway with the centrist wisdom of a modern-day King Solomon. I don’t buy it. Neither should you.
To paraphrase a famed retort, I have known moderate Supreme Court justices, I have worked with moderate Supreme Court justices, moderate Supreme Court justices have been friends of mine, and Anthony Kennedy was no moderate Supreme Court justice.
Although he wrote the majority decision in favor of marriage equality and cast crucial votes for reproductive rights, Justice Kennedy sided far more often with the powerful over the vulnerable. In opinion after opinion, he ruled in favor of corporations over average people and Big Money interests over the best interests of our democracy. Of the 35 justices who have served since World War II, Kennedy was the sixth most reliable pro-business vote. How’s that moderate?
With all the whitewashing of a staunchly conservative record that has been going on lately, it would be easy to forget that Kennedy cast the deciding vote in some of the most consequentially disastrous decisions of a generation. That’s right: This is the “moderate” who gifted a presidential election to George W. Bush on a silver platter in Bush v. Gore. In 2000, the popular vote did not count. It was Kennedy’s decisive vote from the bench that mattered.
This is the “moderate”’ who wrote for the majority in Citizens United v. FEC. He conflated money with speech and corporations with people. Wrong on both counts. That decision overturned a century of campaign finance law and opened the floodgates for unlimited special interest money, including from overseas, to flow unchecked into our elections. The results prove it. In 2016, 25 percent of the money spent on presidential and congressional races came from groups “with access to unlimited and unrestricted sources of funding.”
Kennedy is the “moderate”’ who last month handed powerful corporations yet another significant victory, in another 5-4 decision, in the case of Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis. It made it more difficult for workers to seek recourse against employers engaged in wage theft and discriminatory pay practices.
Just last week, on his way out the door, Kennedy sided with another 5-4 majority to upend decades of precedent and progress for organized labor in Janus vs. AFSCME. It was a parting shot to workers before heading off to his own taxpayer-secured retirement.
I do not overlook the positive aspects of Kennedy’s legacy. I have fought for women’s rights and gay rights my whole life. But a few good votes that are close to my heart do not blind my eyes to a fundamentally reactionary record. They should not obscure your opinion of Kennedy’s tenure either.
The politically correct Beltway view that ce Kennedy stands among true moderates, like Justices David Souter and Lewis Powell, to name just two, is in fact a sign of how far the political center has moved to the right.
The costs of Kennedy’s decisions, and their unforeseen consequences, will reverberate for years to come. Overruling the popular vote in Bush v. Gorebrought us the Iraq War. Overturning every post-Watergate campaign finance reform in Citizens United brought us the best democracy money can buy.
The American people deserve a Supreme Court justice who will stand firmly with us, not consistently throw in their lot with the country’s most powerful interests.
President Barack Obama nominated just such a jurist in Merrick Garland. Mitch McConnell robbed my old boss of his constitutional right to put forth his pick for the high court on the flimsiest possible grounds that it was an “election year.” In this election year, with Senator McConnell’s rank hypocrisy already exposed for the world to see, will the Senate confirm a judge even further to the right than Kennedy? If President Donald Trump has his way, the court will continue its rightward shift and leave the rest of us behind.
Yesterday, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy--the critical swing vote protecting Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion--announced his retirement.1 This news will set off a furious fight to replace him that we absolutely must win, because Trump has vowed to nominate ONLY justices who will vote to overturn Roe.2
Craig, this is a CRISIS. We simply can't go back. In recent months, multiple states have put laws on the books to challenge Roe and ban abortion, in anticipation of Kennedy's retirement.3 Anti-abortion lawmakers expect Trump will get the Senate to confirm an extremist--and once one of these laws is challenged in the Supreme Court, that extremist would provide conservatives' long-awaited fifth vote to overturn Roe. That could happen in just over a year's time, and once it does, more than a dozen states have "trigger" laws to automatically ban abortion--with other states set to follow.4
But there's a path to victory. Rapid, intense pressure has convinced pro-choice senators like Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) to repeatedly side with us before. They've voted against abortion bans and to protect Planned Parenthood and the Affordable Care Act.5 Their votes, along with those of several swing Democrats, will be key in any nomination fight--and that's why your voice is so urgently needed to put pressure on them now. Can you sign the petition?
Tell the U.S. Senate: "Block any Trump nominee who will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade."
Sign the petition
The right to an abortion is not the only issue for which Justice Kennedy's replacement is critical. While Justice Kennedy has not always supported progressive causes, his vote has been decisive on many. In 2016, he voted to strike down the notorious Texas law that forced the closure of dozens of abortion providers throughout the state.6 He was the swing vote on decisions to block the death penalty for crimes committed by minors under 18, and for those with intellectual disabilities.7 He was recently the deciding vote to protect race-based affirmative action at colleges and universities.8 And perhaps most notably, he was the swing vote--and wrote the landmark decision--that legalized the freedom to marry for same-sex couples nationwide.9
Legal experts predict a Trump nominee would almost certainly overturn those decisions.10 We can't let the Senate vote in an extremist to replace Kennedy and turn back the clock. But just like we did with the campaign to protect the Affordable Care Act, we can pressure the senators who hold key swing votes. If enough of them go on record refusing to vote to confirm an extremist nominee, Trump will have to backtrack and nominate a more moderate individual.
It's up to us to make that happen--and to do it we will need to pile on the pressure, big time. Nearly every one of the Senate's 49 Democrats supports Roe, and our voices are critical here. If we loudly demand that every last Democrat vote against turning back the clock, and add just two Republicans, we can block an extremist Trump nominee.
Thanks for speaking out!
--Shaunna, Kat, Karin, Adam, Holly, Kathy, Susan, Anathea, Audine, Shannon, Emma, Pilar, Natalie, Melody, Pam, Lindsay, and Ryan, the UltraViolet team
 Sources:
1. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy to Retire, The New York Times, June 27, 2018
2. Trump promised judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade, Washington Post, March 21, 2017
Abortion Policy in the Absence of Roe, Guttmacher Institute, June 5, 2018
7. Supreme Court strikes down juvenile executions, The New York Times, March 1, 2005
Want to support our work? UltraViolet is funded by members like you, and our tiny staff ensures small contributions go a long way. Chip in here.

Anthony Kennedy, swing justice, announces retirement

Amy Howe Independent Contractor and Reporter
Posted Wed, June 27th, 2018 7:01 pm
[Editor’s Note: This post, originally published at 2:23 p.m., has been moved back to the top of the blog.]
Justice Anthony Kennedy announced today that he would retire from the Supreme Court, effective July 31. In a letter to President Donald Trump, Kennedy wrote that “it is the highest of honors to serve on this Court,” and he expressed his “profound gratitude for having had the privilege to seek in each case how best to know, interpret, and defend the Constitution and the laws that must always conform to its mandates and promises.” The decision by the 81-year-old justice, who spent much of his 30 years on the court as a pivotal vote on a wide range of high-profile issues, especially since the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in 2006, is all but certain to kick off a pitched confirmation battle because of the possibility that his successor could move the court significantly to the right on a number of those issues.

Justice Anthony Kennedy (Art Lien)
When he was nominated to the court in November 1987, Anthony McLeod Kennedy was only President Ronald Reagan’s third choice to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice Lewis Powell. Reagan had first nominated Robert Bork, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to succeed Powell, but the Senate rejected Bork’s nomination by a vote of 42 to 58. Reagan next nominated another judge on the D.C. Circuit, Douglas Ginsburg, but Ginsburg withdrew his nomination after the revelation that he had used marijuana as an adult. Kennedy, then 51 and a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, was confirmed to the court in February 1988 by a vote of 97-0.
When he nominated Kennedy, Reagan billed Kennedy as a “true conservative,” but he was generally regarded as a consensus pick after the failed Bork and Ginsburg nominations; Reagan himself noted that Kennedy “seems to be popular with many senators of varying political persuasions.” The Kennedy nomination drew disapproval from some conservatives, however. Senator Charles Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, characterized Reagan’s choice as a “basic compromise of principle,” while political activist Richard Viguerie described the nomination as a “total surrender to the left.”
Over the next three decades, conservatives were indeed often disappointed with Kennedy and his votes on a variety of issues, particularly social ones. One such topic was abortion. Anti-abortion voters had played a key role in Reagan’s election, and Kennedy initially provided both the president who appointed him and those voters with reason to be optimistic. Just a little over a year after his confirmation, Kennedy joined the majority in upholding a Missouri law that (among other things) defined life as beginning at conception and required doctors to conduct fetal viability tests before performing abortions on women who were 20 or more weeks pregnant. Along with Justice Byron White, Kennedy also joined a separate opinion, written by then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist, that would have effectively dismantled the test outlined in Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 decision establishing a woman’s basic right to an abortion. And in 2007, Kennedy wrote the majority opinion when a closely divided court upheld a federal law that criminalized a procedure known as a “partial-birth” abortion.
But in 1992, in a challenge to a Pennsylvania law restricting abortions, Kennedy wrote an unusual joint opinion, along with O’Connor and Justice David Souter, that reaffirmed the “essential holding” of Roe. “Men and women of good conscience can disagree,” the trio said, about “the profound moral and spiritual implications of terminating a pregnancy, even in its earliest stage. Some of us as individuals,” the opinion continued, “find abortion offensive to our most basic principles of morality, but that cannot control our decision.” At the same time, the Kennedy/O’Connor/Souter joint opinion established a new and less stringent test for evaluating challenges to the constitutionality of abortion regulations: Efforts to regulate abortions before the fetus is viable are constitutional as long as they do not impose an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to end her pregnancy.
Fourteen years later, Kennedy joined the court’s four more liberal justices – Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan – in striking down two parts of a Texas law that had made it significantly more difficult for abortion clinics to operate in the state. In enacting the law, the Texas legislature had pointed to the need to protect women’s health, but the majority declined to take that justification at face value.
During his 2016 presidential campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump declared that he would appoint “pro-life” justices. When pressed later about whether he wanted the Supreme Court to overturn Roe, Trump responded that, if he were able to put two or three justices on the court, it would “happen automatically.” As Reagan’s experience with Kennedy reflects, there is no way to guarantee how a nominee will vote once confirmed. At the same time, however, Trump has relied on the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group, to vet his judicial nominees. Members of that group have repeatedly vowed that, when it comes to Supreme Court nominees by Republican presidents, there should be “no more Souters” – a reference to their disappointment with the George H.W. Bush nominee. If Trump does replace Kennedy with a new justice who fulfills the president’s promise, the result could be a substantial shift on the court on abortion rights.
Kennedy’s pivotal role in the Supreme Court’s gay-rights cases prompted one law professor who studies the court to dub him the “first gay justice,” but that role could also now provide an opening for a shift in the court’s gay-rights jurisprudence.  In 1996, in Romer v. Evans, Kennedy wrote for the court – over the objections of three of his colleagues –striking down an amendment to the Colorado constitution that barred state and local governments from adopting laws or policies prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. The law, Kennedy explained, “classifies homosexuals not to further a proper legislative end but to make them unequal to someone else. This Colorado cannot do. A State cannot so deem a class of persons a stranger to its laws.”
Seven years later, the court – again, by a vote of 6-3 – ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that a Texas law criminalizing private consensual sexual relations between two adults of the same sex violates the Constitution. Some of the lawyers for the men challenging the law wept openly in the gallery as Kennedy read from his opinion for the court, emphasizing that the plaintiffs “are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime.”
In 2013, Kennedy would provide the key vote and write for the court in United States v. Windsor, the case that invalidated the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman for purposes of over a thousand federal laws and programs. Kennedy described the legalization of same-sex marriage by some states as a decision that gave same-sex couples “a dignity and status of immense import.” By contrast, he observed, “DOMA’s principal effect is to identify a subset of state-sanctioned marriages and make them unequal.”
Exactly two years after the decision in Windsor, Kennedy delivered the court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, striking down Ohio’s ban on same-sex marriage. Kennedy’s opinion used the same lofty rhetoric found in his earlier gay-rights decisions, explaining that the “limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples may long have seemed natural and just, but its inconsistency with the central meaning of the fundamental right to marry is now manifest. With that knowledge must come the recognition that laws excluding same-sex couples from the marriage right impose stigma and injury of the kind prohibited by our basic charter.”
In an interview with 60 Minutes shortly after the 2016 election, Trump described same-sex marriage as “done. These cases have gone to the Supreme Court,” he indicated. “They’ve been settled. And I’m—I’m fine with that.” But even if Trump regards the question as resolved, and the conservative successor that Trump has promised agrees, the Supreme Court has not yet weighed in on a variety of other legal issues related to marriage – such as divorce and child custody – or, more broadly, on civil-rights protections for LGBT people, for example in the workplace, schools and the military. Kennedy’s successor could hold the deciding vote in such cases, which could determine the scope of LGBT rights even if the right to same-sex marriage remains intact.
Kennedy also provided the key vote in the Supreme Court’s most recent decision on affirmative action. His vote was not entirely predictable: In 2003, in Grutter v. Bollinger, the court – by a vote of 5-4 – upheld the University of Michigan Law School’s affirmative-action policy. O’Connor wrote for the majority, in an opinion joined by Souter and Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. Kennedy joined then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s dissent but also penned his own dissent, in which he reasoned that there “is no constitutional objection to the goal of considering race as one modest factor among many others to achieve diversity, but an educational institution must ensure, through sufficient procedures, that each applicant receives individual consideration, and that race does not become a predominant factor in the admissions decisionmaking.” The law school in this case, he continued, had not met that test.
Thirteen years later, Kennedy would write for the court in a ruling that upheld the University of Texas at Austin’s consideration of race in its undergraduate admissions process. He was joined by Ginsburg, Breyer and Justice Sonia Sotomayor in the 4-3 decision; Justice Elena Kagan was recused from the case, while Justice Antonin Scalia died before the court issued its opinion. Kennedy cautioned that the court’s decision was not a “blank check” for universities to use the same race-conscious policy indefinitely. Instead, Kennedy stressed, it “is the University’s ongoing obligation to engage in constant deliberation and continued reflection regarding its admissions policies.”
Lawsuits challenging affirmative-action policies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Harvard University are currently winding their way through the lower courts and could reach the Supreme Court in the next few years. There’s no way to know how Justice Neil Gorsuch, who replaced Scalia on the bench, would vote in such a case, but if he shares his predecessor’s views, the outcome could hinge on the vote of Kennedy’s successor. Then again, even the majority in Grutter, writing in 2003, suggested that affirmative action might not be necessary in 25 years – a sunset that is now only 10 years away.
In recent years, Kennedy has sided with the court’s four more liberal justices on a wide variety of other issues, ranging from the death penalty and the Sixth Amendment to redistricting and the Fair Housing Act. Kennedy’s successor could play a central role in determining the direction of these areas of the law as well, and we can expect whomever Trump nominates to face persistent questioning about his or her views on these subjects. Of course, if past confirmation hearings (for nominees put forward by both Republican and Democratic presidents) are any predictor, whether we learn anything about those views beyond what the nominee has already written will be another matter. But what we can say with certainty is that, given Kennedy’s role on the court, the upcoming confirmation battle will be a heated one.
This post was originally published at Howe on the Court.

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25 July 2013

The National Popular Vote effort, explained 25JUL13

AFTER the US supreme court's judicial coup d'etat in the 2000 presidential election I have been a supporter of the move to have our President elected by popular vote. Here is an update on the National Popular Vote Project, and you can add your yea or nay to this idea by clicking the widget on this blog and casting your vote for or against. From the Washington Post....

By Aaron Blake, Updated:

The National Popular Vote effort is now halfway to its goal of electing future presidents via the popular vote, after Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee (D) made his state the latest to sign on.
The years-old effort is slowly making its way through state legislatures in hopes of changing the way United States presidents are elected — without overcoming the huge hurdle of passing a constitutional amendment getting rid of the Electoral College.
But precisely what is the National Popular Vote effort? And how close are we to electing a future president by the number of votes cast rather than by the number of electoral votes won?
Here’s a quick explainer:
What is the National Popular Vote?
National Popular Vote is a campaign launched in the mid-2000s. It basically seeks to get states that comprise a majority of the 538 votes in the Electoral College — 270, to be precise — to agree to award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote.
These states are not required to allot their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner until the effort has garnered the number of states it needs to get to 270 electoral votes.
So in other words, Rhode Island can continue to award its electoral votes to the winner of its state — rather than the nation — until the effort reaches 270 electoral votes. Once that threshold is met, it would be required, along with the other states that have joined the effort, to award its votes to the national popular vote winner.
Those states would effectively determine who wins the election, and their votes would be based on the national popular vote.
Why are they doing it this way?
Basically, it’s supremely difficult to overturn the Electoral College, because it’s in the Constitution.
In order to get rid of that method of electing a president, two-thirds of both the House and Senate would need to vote to repeal it via a Constitutional amendment, and then three-fourths of state legislatures would need to ratify the amendment. Achieving such a change is intentionally very difficult.
“There’s literally nothing else on the table that has the remotest chance of fixing it and passing,” said Rob Richie, executive director of FairVote, an electoral reform group that favors the National Popular Vote effort.
What the National Popular Vote effort does is effectively reduce the number of states that need to agree to the change; the measure only needs to pass in enough state legislatures and get signed by their governors to get to 270. And, of course, Congress plays no role.
While the Electoral College would technically still be in effect, the agreement among the states to award their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner would effectively render it moot.
How many states have signed on?
Rhode Island’s decision to join the effort means it now has nine states and the District of Columbia, comprising 136 of the 270 electoral votes it needs to succeed — a little more than half.
  • District of Columbia – 3 electoral votes
  • Hawaii – 4 electoral votes
  • Illinois – 20 electoral votes
  • Maryland – 10 electoral votes
  • Massachusetts – 11 electoral votes
  • New Jersey – 14 electoral votes
  • Washington – 12 electoral votes
  • Vermont – 3 electoral votes
  • California – 55 electoral votes
  • Rhode Island – 4 electoral votes
You’ll notice that every state above is a blue state.
How many states are needed?
Just how many states are needed to get to 270 votes depends on which states are involved and how many electoral votes they have. The way things look right now, it would need about 20-25 states.
California (55 votes) is the biggest state in the country to sign on — and the biggest overall — with the next biggest state being Illinois (20 votes).
The measure also recently passed in the New York general assembly, and it passed easily in previous sessions of the state Senate. So far, it’s not clear that the state Senate will pass it again, but if it did and Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) signed it, that would mean another 29 electoral votes.
What are its prospects?
The effort still has a long way to go, and Rhode Island was the first state in the last two years to sign off on it, so it’s not as if the effort is rife with momentum.
If supporters want to succeed, they’ll likely have to branch out into red states, because there are only so many blue states (and so many electoral votes in them) on the map. And passing this legislation in swing states would be very difficult, for reasons to be discussed below.
Do people like the popular vote?
In a word, yes. Polling regularly shows Americans prefer electing the president via popular vote rather than via Electoral College. A Washington Post-ABC News poll in October showed 56 percent preferred the popular vote approach, while 37 percent preferred the Electoral College.
(For an interesting history of how this issue polls, see this piece from our great pollster Jon Cohen.)
In addition, supporters of the effort note that it makes every state — the majority of which are generally ignored because they aren’t swing states — relevant in the process. So if you’re from a clearly red or clearly blue state, this method has appeal.
What are the arguments against it?
Well, for one, the framers of the Constitution constructed the Electoral College for a reason — they were wary of presidents being elected by popular vote.
In addition, some states might balk at the idea that they have to award their votes to a candidate that may have lost their state, even by a very large margin.
Finally, if you’re in a swing state, you probably don’t like this, because it makes your vote much less significant. (On the flip side, of course, it would mean you would no longer be bombarded with campaign ads and phone calls.)
Would National Popular Vote actually change anything?
Ever heard of President Samuel Tilden? Of course you haven’t. That’s because we have the Electoral College.
Tilden in 1876 would have beaten Rutherford B. Hayes if the election were determined by popular vote.
Hayes is one of four presidents to win without carrying the popular vote. The others are John Quincy Adams (1824, Andrew Jackson won the popular vote), Benjamin Harrison (1888, Grover Cleveland), and of course George W. Bush (2000, Al Gore).
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30 April 2013

After Casting Key Fifth Vote For Bush, Justice O’Connor Now Regrets Bush v. Gore 29APR13

THE Schlempe sandra day o'connor is feeling guilty about the judicial coup d'etat she had a part in? Maybe she feels she has to make her peace with the American people and God before she dies. Who knows? What we can be sure of is the court she sat on, or at least the justices who voted to hand the 2000 election to bush, are guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the subversion of a nation's constitution the likes of which had not been seen in a democracy since hitler's grab of power through the enabling act ( Ermachtigungsgesetz ) of 23 MAR 1933. Shame on you sandra day o'connor, shame on you..... 

By Ian Millhiser on Apr 29, 2013 at 9:00 am

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the conservative retired justice who provided the fifth vote to install George W. Bush as president, is now having second thoughts about that decision:
Looking back, O’Connor said, she isn’t sure the high court should have taken [Bush v. Gore].
“It took the case and decided it at a time when it was still a big election issue,” O’Connor said during a talk Friday with the Tribune editorial board. “Maybe the court should have said, ‘We’re not going to take it, goodbye.’”
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.“
If nothing else, Bush v. Gore demonstrates how justices who are determined to reach a certain result are capable of bending both the law and their own prior jurisprudence in order to achieve it. In Bush, the five conservative justices held, in the words of Harvard’s Larry Tribe, that “equal protection of the laws required giving no protection of the laws to the thousands of still uncounted ballots.”
The Court’s decision to hand the presidency to Bush stunned many legal observers, some of whom were O’Connor’s fellow justices. Retired Justice John Paul Stevens once recounted a story where he ran into fellow Justice Stephen Breyer at a party while a relatively early phase of the case was pending before the Court. According to Stevens, “[w]e agreed that the application was frivolous.”
Indeed, Bush’s own lawyers were skeptical of the legal theory that ultimately made up the basis of the Court’s decision in Bush. As Ben Ginsberg, a top lawyer on Bush’s presidential campaign, explained in 2006, “just like really with the Voting Rights Act, Republicans have some fundamental philosophical difficulties with the whole notion of Equal Protection.”
And, yet, O’Connor and four of her fellow Republicans joined together to embrace a particularly aggressive reading of Equal Protection — at least so long as it could put George W. Bush in the White House.
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