Word: courtly
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Over the years, Burger's tendency to flip-flop has given rise to conspiracy theories about his motives, notes TIME Correspondent Douglas Brew. When 'the Chief votes with the majority, he has the right to decide who should write the opinion of the court and provide the reasoning behind the decision. If he is in the minority, the most senior member of the majority assigns the task. According to former Supreme Court law clerks, Burger has, at times, held back or switched his vote to keep control of the opinion assignment, a practice the clerks call "phony voting...
...case in point is Roe vs. Wade, the controversial 1973 decision striking down state laws that prohibited abortion. According to clerks on the court at the time, Burger joined the majority to keep the opinion away from the then senior Justice, William O. Douglas. The most liberal member of the court, Douglas wanted to base the decision on a broad constitutional right to privacy. Burger preferred a more narrowly drawn opinion, one that would invite the states to replace rigid with less restrictive abortion laws. As a furious Douglas accused Burger of abusing the assigning power, the Chief gave...
...emerged, he wrote a broad opinion declaring that abortion, at least in the first trimester, was a matter for a woman and her doctor, not the state, to decide. That was hardly the reasoning Burger had hoped for. The Chief eventually added a cryptic concurring opinion arguing that the court's decision did not sanction ''abortion on demand''-though that was precisely what Blackmun meant...
Stewart, 64, a liberal Republican, comes as close as any in the group to being an artful politician, but has not emerged as a leader. Stevens, 59, the newest Justice, is a probing questioner and an unpredictable vote; he is frequently called the court's ''wild card.'' He believes his role to be purely intellectual, not political...
Burger has played a much more visible leadership role off the bench. He likes to point out that his title is not Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, it is Chief Justice of the U.S. More than any Chief since William Howard Taft, who served 50 years ago, Burger has been concerned with the administration of justice in the U.S. In speeches, interviews and articles, he is constantly proposing ways to help courts cope with their huge backlogs...