Word: blackmun
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...conservative dissent, which would have allowed the creche, was written by Kennedy, 52, the court's newest member. Kennedy contended that the majority ruling by Harry Blackmun, and in effect a whole train of Supreme Court decisions, "reflects an unjustified hostility toward religion." In his opinion, Kennedy proposed that the court apply two new tests to determine the constitutionality of links between the government and religion. First, Kennedy wrote, "government may not coerce anyone to support or participate in any religion or its exercise." Second, the court should outlaw only those "direct benefits" that tend to create a state religion...
...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...
Even the Justices found it impossible to discuss abortion with their usual comity. Justice Harry A. Blackmun, author of the Roe opinion, attacked the majority in Webster for cowardice, deception, disingenuousness and brute force. The ruling, he bristled, invites the states to pass restrictive laws % and "is filled with winks, and nods, and knowing glances to those who would do away with Roe explicitly." No less angry, Justice Scalia wrote that Justice O'Connor's reasons for refusing to reconsider Roe "cannot be taken seriously...
...than 90% of today's abortions take place anyway), available only for certain weighty reasons in mid-pregnancy and generally unavailable for the last few weeks. But we would arrive at that sensible arrangement without all the embarrassing intellectual paraphernalia of "trimesters" and "viability" that came out of Justice Blackmun's futile effort, in the Roe decision, to derive a necessary compromise between moral absolutes from first principles. There are no first principles, constitutional or otherwise, that can settle the abortion question once and for all; only politics can do that...
...fear for the liberty and equality of the millions of women who have lived and come of age in the 16 years since Roe was decided," Justice Harry Blackmun proclaimed in his dissent. "For today, the women of this nation will retain the liberty to control their destinies. But the signs are evident and very ominous, and a chill wind blows...