Word: connors
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...until they began leaving the court in 1937. The present high bench is "the first ever to have a majority of its members 76 or over," calculates Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe. Even the younger Justices have reached the outer edges of middle age. The youngest, Sandra Day O'Connor, celebrated her 55th birthday last week...
Ralph: Right, dearest. So doubtless we shall soon see Margaret Thatcher flogging Dr Pepper, and Queen Elizabeth in her royal quarters having an argument with Prince Philip over Mountain Dew. Maybe we can get Sandra Day O'Connor to push Gatorade. And how about Mother Teresa for Perrier? She could talk to us about choices for the poor...
...tinkering with the Miranda rule in nine months; last June a 5-4 majority said police could dispense with the warning before questioning a suspect if there was a threat to the public safety--in that case, a discarded gun in a supermarket. Conservative Justice Sandra Day O'Connor dissented from that decision, saying that it "blurs the edges" of a clear rule. But this time it was O'Connor who was picking at the edges, in the case of an 18-year-old from Salem, Ore., accused of involvement in a $150,000 burglary...
...Oregon appeals court reversed his conviction, saying that the first, illegally obtained statement tainted the second and rendered it inadmissible in court. Because the "cat was sufficiently out of the bag," the state court concluded, Elstad confessed the second time thinking his fate was sealed. Justice O'Connor, writing for the majority, found this kind of "psychological" analysis unpersuasive. There was no reason to believe Elstad's second statement was involuntary, she said. But O'Connor carefully circumscribed her reasoning, saying that a subsequent Miranda confession could be invalid if the initial admission is compelled by police coercion. Furthermore...
Liberal Justice William Brennan was not reassured. He accused the majority of delivering a "potentially crippling blow to Miranda and . . . the rights of persons accused of crime." Georgetown Law Professor William Greenhalgh sympathized with the dissenters, noting that despite O'Connor's bright-line endorsement, "exceptions like this tend to dim that line for police in the field." The practical impact may not be large, said other observers, but the new ruling is another sign that the conservative members of the court intend to keep on whittling...