Word: blackmun
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That is undeniable. As was Reagan, who appointed three conservative Justices -- Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy -- Bush is in a position to pacify the restive right and propel the court more speedily on its current course. With two other Justices, Thurgood Marshall, 82, and Harry Blackmun, 81, in fragile health and rumored ready to follow Brennan into retirement, the Bush imprint on the high court could become every bit as significant as Reagan...
...First Amendment's protection of free speech, the Supreme Court last week threw out a law Congress subsequently passed to circumvent that ruling. The 5-to-4 vote was the same as before: conservative Reagan appointees Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy joined William Brennan, Thurgood Marshall and Harry Blackmun in ruling that even offensive forms of political expression -- in fact, especially those offensive forms -- were what the Constitution was designed to protect. "Punishing desecration of the flag dilutes the very freedom that makes this emblem so revered," Brennan wrote for the majority...
...still unclear how the Court will rule on the new statute, which was brought before it earlier this month. Justice Harry Blackmun, at least, has indicated that the new wording might change his vote, which would tip the five to four decision the other...
...Tung case, the university insisted that releasing the materials would encroach on academic freedom and undermine the confidentiality that is the backbone of the tenure system. The court dismissed that argument and gave the EEOC broad power to obtain tenure documents. Wrote Justice Harry Blackmun: "The costs associated with racial and sexual discrimination in institutions of higher learning are very substantial . . . Ferreting out this kind of invidious discrimination is a great if not compelling governmental interest...
...than 90% of today's abortions take place anyway), available only for certain weighty reasons in mid-pregnancy and generally unavailable for the last few weeks. But we would arrive at that sensible arrangement without all the embarrassing intellectual paraphernalia of "trimesters" and "viability" that came out of Justice Blackmun's futile effort, in the Roe decision, to derive a necessary compromise between moral absolutes from first principles. There are no first principles, constitutional or otherwise, that can settle the abortion question once and for all; only politics can do that...