Word: rightness
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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...
...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 the opinion to Blackmun, a Justice who had voted so often with Burger...
...primus inter pares-first among equals. At conference, the Chief begins the discussion of each case by describing the issues as well as his own views. Warren was known for declaring his opinions clearly and strongly at the outset, cutting through legalisms to ask persistently, ''Is it right? Is it fair?'' Burger is more tentative. Some of his colleagues wonder whether he is always adequately prepared for conference; when he states the issues, he sometimes seems to be reading them for the first time from a memo written by his clerks...
...does not have a broad vision of the court as an instrument for social reform. Nor is he particularly concerned with "judicial restraint" or the limits of the court's power. Rather, observes Georgetown University Law Professor Dennis J. Hutchinson, "Burger votes the way he thinks a right-thinking person would vote. He applies middle-class values and his own common sense." The Chiefs opinion in Wisconsin vs. Yoder, which ruled that the state could not force Amish parents to send their children to school, is an example. It had "less to do with the First Amendment freedom...
...could exhaust superlatives on individual numbers. When Sylvia ("Kuum-ba") Williams, a lady of formidable amplitude, undulates into Kitchen Man and The Right Key but the Wrong Keyhole, sex becomes an active verb. Thais Clark is an infectious comedian who can subtly saturate a blues like Muddy Water with haunting plaintiveness. By birth, Topsy Chapman was a 16th child. Here she's a No. 1 joymaker. Snake-hipped Vernel Bagneris keeps the company jumping at a blistering pace...