Word: brennan
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Senators on both sides of the abortion issue have promised to raise the subject during Souter's September confirmation hearings. Souter is due back in Washington today for more meetings with senators who will consider his nomination to succeed retired Justice William J. Brennan, a strong supporter of abortion rights...
...Brennan's broad interpretation of the right to free speech led him to what is generally considered his most famous decision: New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, which requires public officials to prove "actual malice" in filing libel suits against publishers and broadcasters. Last year Brennan crafted the majority opinion for a 5-to-4 court decision that upheld the constitutional right to burn the American flag as a form of political protest...
...Brennan admits that he stumbled in his effort to define obscenity. One of his earliest opinions, in 1957, said an expression was not protected by the First Amendment if "to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest." But in 1973 he conceded that all such vague wording led only to "hopeless confusion." He recently told New Yorker writer Nat Hentoff, "I finally gave up. If you can't define it, you can't prosecute people...
...Brennan never gave up, however, in fighting the death penalty, advocating affirmative action to correct racial wrongs and defending the one-man, one- vote principle to define state and local election districts. Yale Kamisar, a University of Michigan law professor, calls Brennan "one of the most effective Justices of all time. He could write with power and style, and he had enormous influence." Says Columbia law professor Vincent Blasi: "There have been great dissenters, such as Oliver Wendell Holmes, and great leaders of court majorities, such as John Marshall. But Brennan was the only Justice in the court's history...
...NATION: Brennan's sudden resignation creates a vacancy on the Supreme Court...