Word: connors
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...suggests that a majority of the court, while not deciding the issues presented, believe that the petitioner has a substantial probability of success." That would be George W. Bush. For Gore to prevail, one of two swing votes among the nine Justices--either Anthony Kennedy or Sandra Day O'Connor--would have to peel from the majority that granted the stay, deciding that the Florida Supreme Court had not changed the rules after the election or otherwise violated the Constitution, which confers power over elections to the legislatures. It could happen. If it doesn't, Gore is out of options...
...will actually decide to do that. Unlike the high court's first ruling in the case, which was carefully if precariously unanimous, the latest one broke down in just the ideological way everyone had hoped to avoid. The five conservatives--Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas--voted to issue the stay. The four liberals--Justices John Paul Stevens, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter--voted to let the counts...
...Whomever Bush chooses to take over the empty seat, he or she is unlikely to be an Antonin Scalia or a Clarence Thomas or even a William Rehnquist. Instead, the chosen one will fit neatly into the Kennedy-O'Connor mold: Centrist, clear-headed consensus-builders who are more or less immune to politicization of issues. As Pepperdine University constitutional scholar Douglas Kmiec told the Associated Press, "They end up being the glue of the opinion," moderating the conservative camp and mollifying the moderate-to-liberal camp...
...Connor, in particular, who could also retire during a Bush administration, is noted for her ability to side with the liberal-leaning Souter, Breyer, Ginsburg and Stevens on highly controversial issues like abortion while simultaneously maintaining one foot in the conservative camp, urging the right-of-center Justices to see their way to a compromise. And that's exactly the kind of presence GWB wants to perpetuate in the case of a vacancy...
...This year the safe harbor ended Tuesday, and it was all the justification Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, O'Connor and Kennedy needed to pull the plug on Al Gore. The decision has already come under fire from liberals for being thinly disguised interventionism, and they have a point. But what Rehnquist did can in fact be thought of as exquisitely federalist. He left it up to Florida. But he let the legislature, not the court, control the clock...