Advocacy Group's Report Says High Court Increasingly Conservative, Pro-Business
U.S. Supreme Court watchers have produced more analysis of the high court’s latest term. According to People For The American Way Foundation the U.S. Supreme Court remains ideologically divided and is becoming a powerful friend of big business. The 48-page report, “Civil Rights & Civil Liberties In The Supreme Court’s 2007-08 Term,” tracks “key decisions” and finds that the Court’s sharply divided ideological rulings “reaffirm the disturbing direction of the Roberts Court.” The Court’s right-wing voting bloc, PFAWF notes, consists of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Its “moderate-to-liberal” wing is comprised, the report maintains, of Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. Justice Anthony Kennedy, the report says, has “continued to provide the deciding vote in critical cases ….”
PFAWF’s report says the term that ended earlier this summer also reflects “what appears to be a growing hostility on the Roberts Court to facial challenges, and a willingness to allow a law to be implemented and create actual harm (which could include a violation of constitutional rights)” before a substantial claim is lodged. For example, the report cites the high court’s ruling in Crawford v. Marion County, which upheld Indiana’s voter ID law. The decision, PFAWF argues quickly prompted harmful consequences, citing a situation in Indiana’s primary election in the spring where some nuns were barred from voting because they did not have drivers’ licenses. The report also maintains that “Overall, the Court has grown more conservative in recent years, increasingly becoming a friend of big business and issuing decisions that protect corporate America ….” See the entire report here.
For more discussion of the high court’s work, watch ACS’s 2008 Supreme Court Term Review hosted last month at the National Press Club and obtain other ACS material on the Supreme Court here.
Written By:Kay Sieverding On August 9, 2008 3:05 PM
If I apply to the Supreme Court to affirm my right to represent myself is a civil matter, as guaranteed by U.S.C. Title 28 section 1654, do you think they will grant it as a mandamus petition or hear it as a cert petition? What about my right not to be incarcerated by the feds without being convicted of a crime or disruption of a court hearing? Appellate courts have ruled that I do not have a right to represent myself. I have no criminal record, am an MIT graduate, and no rule 11 c.6 orders were every issued against me. I was jailed by the feds on three occasions totaling 5 months and the only reason given by the U.S. Marshals and the U.S. attorney for my imprisonment were non fraudulent first amendment activities (petitioning the court while self represented). Under The Privacy Act, the government is not even allowed to possess first amendment records without ones permission. The U.S. Marshals are not allowed to arrest without a warrant or witnessing a crime but they arrested me anyway without either and they went to a law library to look for me. I don't understand why the U.S. Marshals are acting as a private organization taking and holding people at government expense without an accusation that they broke a law. I posted on a blog at the ABA about the Supreme Court that a private prosecutor, Faegre & Benson, acted as a prosecutor in an indirect contempt action to benefit their insured, Mutual Insurance Limited of Bermuda, and used summary procedure in indirect contempt, both of which are specifically prohibited by the Supreme Court inYOUNG v. UNITED STATES EX REL. VUITTON ET FILS S. A. ET AL., 107 S. Ct. 2124, 481 U.S. 787 (U.S. 05/26/1987) and asking why the S.C. did not address my mandamus petition about this (http://www.rightscase.com)
and every time I posted the Vuitton case, the ABA censures removed it. Why would the ABA remove references to citizens being jailed without an evidentiary hearing or criminal conviction, if it is committed to
"defending liberty pursuing justice"? Maybe we are on a path to genocide.