All eyes on Kennedy
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has been emerging as the key swing vote on the bench as the first term of the Roberts court. An article today in the Christian Science Monitor, specifically addressing the constitutionality of the partial-birth abortion ban, had this to say:
With the possibility of the court divided 4-4 on the issue, Kennedy may wield the decisive vote. If he sticks to the analysis in his dissent in the Nebraska case, court watchers say the law will be upheld. If he adheres to his strongly held belief in stare decisis - affirming precedent even when a justice disagrees with it - the federal law will be struck down.
Kennedy wields extreme, unimaginable power in this court’s composition. Will over 30 years of women’s rights and progressive ideology be nothing more than a numb memory? How about the past century of civil rights and racial equality? Or the few federal protections afforded to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered persons?
With the religious right and conservatives set out to quite effectively unravel the progress that has been made in this country, I can only hope Kennedy continues to walk that line of stare decisis and uphold legal precedent. The bench ought to be apolitical: equal justice under law. Sometimes, I wonder if English civil law had it right all along — after all, if all one has is precedent, it’s awfully difficult to make sweeping, dramatic changes.