Word: legalism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Alain Briancon cannot find the time to paint the inside of his house in Fairfax County because he has to keep answering phone calls from volunteers who want to work with his wife Maria in the Virginia Organization to Keep Abortion Legal. But pro-choice sentiment is frustrated as far as Virginia's gubernatorial race is concerned. The Republican candidate, former state attorney general Marshall Coleman, is a strict antiabortionist who says that if he wins, he will appoint only pro-lifers to health and children's services positions. His Democratic opponent, Lieutenant Governor Douglas Wilder, is seeking to become...
Blackmun's creche ban was based on more sweeping standards, in accordance with legal precedents, that said the government could neither endorse nor support any religion. Kennedy's position and his vehemence troubled liberal court observers. If his view prevails, says Lee Boothby, counsel to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, "we would be litigating hundreds of cases we thought we had settled." One more vote -- perhaps a Bush appointment to the court -- would give these Justices the clout to undo 40 years of church-state law on everything from school prayer to public aid for church agencies...
Although Kennedy and company appear to defend religion, many legal scholars continue to maintain that faith is better protected by separation, since doing otherwise forces government to emphasize the secular. It would be better, contends law professor Douglas Laycock of the University of Texas, for the court to simply rule that "the government shouldn't celebrate religious holidays...
Political debate, in the end, could force both sides to move in from the extremes. As they vie for support from those with more ambivalent views, pro- choice advocates who felt they had little to gain by discussing abortion after Roe made it legal may now be forced to consider under what circumstances it might be immoral, and to show tolerance for the thinking of the other side. The same process might persuade pro-lifers to acknowledge that a fetus does not develop in a vacuum but entwined in the flesh of another human being with rights and a life...
...Tuesday, the Senate passed 97-0 an amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act, sponsored by Mitchell and Senate Minority Leader Robert J. Dole (R-Kansas), which would waive the two-year residency requirement and allow students to remain as legal nonimmigrants in the U.S. until June, 1992. A similar measure, sponsored by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is currently before the House...