Word: connors
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...rights organizations. It is demeaning and condescending to try to lump the diverse members of an entire community into one orthodoxy and deem only one view authentic. No one would suggest that Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer must reflect "Jewish views," or that Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy must represent "Irish opinions." Moreover, the Supreme Court is not a representative body; its members are appointed for life so that they may act as neutral, dispassionate umpires in the constitutional disputes of our day. That is precisely how Justice Thomas is carrying out his duties...
Freedom, as Flannery O'Connor wrote, cannot be conceived simply. Few could understand this better than Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's chief dissident and winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize. Placed under house arrest by a military junta in 1989, Suu Kyi spent six years confined to her family's deteriorating lakeside bungalow in Rangoon. At any time, she was free to join her husband and two children in London -- knowing that the generals would never allow her back. That was a definition of freedom she refused to accept. When the junta abruptly announced last week that...
Showing they might still constitute a force to be reckoned with, the liberals brought Kennedy and O'Connor over to their side for a 6-to-3 ruling last week. In a setback for the timber interests that brought the suit, the court ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had not exceeded the intent of the Endangered Species Act of 1973 when it forbade modification or destruction of wildlife habitats on private land. With Congress in the process of rewriting the Endangered Species Act, even that could be a short-lived victory...
Though the conservatives prevailed this term largely because of O'Connor and Kennedy, both Justices still drift from time to time to the other side. It was Kennedy who provided the majority in the term-limits case, in which the court decided that states could not limit the terms of members of Congress because the framers of the Constitution established the exclusive qualifications. And O'Connor wrote the strong dissent when the court ruled that public high schools can require drug tests for student athletes without prior suspicion of drug use. Moreover, Kennedy and O'Connor often wrote separate opinions...
...court. In the term-limits case, his separate opinion reflected the conservative fascination with the 10th Amendment, which reserves to the states all power not specifically delegated to the Federal Government. Accordingly, Thomas suggested that the U.S. government exists only to the extent the states permit it. Rehnquist, O'Connor and Scalia signed on. How much further will the conservatives go? Their rulings on race, the commerce clause and church-state separation are open invitations to more litigation--and more struggles for that fifth vote. As chief guidance officer of the liberal wing, William Brennan had a famous dictum: "Five...