Word: courtly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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They showed their colors last term. From civil rights to criminal procedures to privacy protections, the Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court took a series of dramatic rightward steps that made them the most conservative high bench in a generation. This week, as the Justices open a new session, the question is not whether the court will continue along that path but how far and how fast it will go. Says University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein: "Some decisions that people on the left saw as benchmarks are contestable again...
That is a chilling thought for civil libertarians -- and a comforting one for conservatives. With abortion, race discrimination, religion and obscenity again crowding the docket, the court is now in a position to press on with much of Ronald Reagan's unfinished social agenda...
Though few observers expect wholesale reversals of established precedents, most would agree with Harvard University law professor Laurence Tribe that the court is likely to "tune them down." Says Tribe: "Americans have been accustomed to the idea that the Supreme Court is a refuge for the disadvantaged, the dispossessed and the dissident. We are entering an era in which increasingly the court will be less a court of last resort." One result is that many would-be federal lawsuits will be filed in more liberal state courts; another is that legal disputes may be translated into political battles...
Legal scholars trace the origins of the court's rightward swing to Richard Nixon's four appointments to the high bench. Reagan gave the right a working majority by naming his new Justices -- Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy -- on the basis of conservative ideology. The three appear to have forged an alliance with Byron White and William Rehnquist, whom Reagan elevated to Chief Justice in 1986. Together, says Geoffrey Stone, dean of the University of Chicago Law School, they form a "gang of five that increasingly operates without taking into consideration the views of the other...
...that narrow opening may be lost if George Bush gets to fill a seat. With three of the liberal Justices over 80, it is possible that one or more places will become vacant in the next four years. And Bush "has shown nothing to indicate the move of the court is wrong," says Columbia University law professor Vivian Berger. Herewith a look at some of this term's key issues...