Tag Archives: o’connor

Justice Stevens

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Imagining America if George Bush Chose the Supreme Court

I’d guess that the justices most likely to retire in the next four years would be Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice O’Connor, and perhaps Justice Stevens.

Here are the general leanings of the current court members:

conservative — Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas

swing voters — O’Connor, Kennedy

liberal — Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer

Clearly, the biggest blow to social liberals would be the loss of Justice Stevens. A Rehnquist retirement wouldn’t change the court that much; an O’Connor retirement would. But the loss of Justice Stevens would be the biggest deal. You don’t hear much about him. He’s currently the oldest justice, at age 84 (he was appointed by Ford in 1975). However, I’ve read that he’s as mentally sharp as ever, and as one of the most liberal of the liberals, I’m sure he wouldn’t want Bush to name his replacement. He’d die on the bench first. (Which I sure hope doesn’t happen.)

If Bush wins, I fervently hope that the Democrats retake the Senate in 2006, if they don’t do so this year.

Limon v. Kansas II

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Last week a three-judge panel of the Kansas Court of Appeals upheld a 17-year jail sentence given to an 18-year-old guy who gave a blowjob to a 14-year-old guy. (Here are the majority, concurring and dissenting opinions.) This was his third “offense.” Seventeen years in jail for a gay blowjob! If one of them had been female, the sentence would have been, at most, 15 months.

I blogged about this in June. The Kansas Court of Appeals had previously ruled the same way; the Kansas Supreme Court had declined to review the case and it went up to the U.S. Supreme Court. Two days after Lawrence, the Supreme Court vacated the judgment:

The judgment is vacated and the case is remanded to the Court of Appeals of Kansas for further consideration in light of Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. ___ (2003).

The U.S. Supreme Court was basically telegraphing to the Kansas Appeals Court that the original Kansas decision was unconstitutional. “The court’s directive… that the Kansas courts reconsider the Limon case with Lawrence v. Texas in mind was tantamount to an instruction to set aside the prison term imposed on Mr. Limon,” the New York Times said in June. But apparently the justices should have been more explicit, because the judges of the Kansas Appeals Court (two of them, anyway) chose to ignore this directive. I don’t see why the justices didn’t just reverse the ruling instead of sending it back to Kansas for reconsideration. Judge Green is correct that Limon v. Kansas involved a minor and the Equal Protection Clause, while the Lawrence decision involved adults and was based on the Due Process Clause. (Justice O’Connor’s concurrence was based the Equal Protection Clause.) But this still stinks. I hope this case goes back to the U.S. Supreme Court and the justices reverse.

So, yeah. Homosexual sex in Kansas with someone who’s 14 or 15 can get you 17 years in jail. That’s right. If a high school senior and a high school freshman in Kansas have gay sex, the senior can go to prison for SEVENTEEN YEARS.

Sure, let’s send him to prison. No chance for gay sex there.

This is outrageous.

Interior Designers Breathe Easy

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One sentence in O’Connor’s concurrence in Lawrence is particularly interesting:

“As the Court notes… petitioners’ convictions, if upheld, would disqualify them from or restrict their ability to engage in a variety of professions, including medicine, athletic training, and interior design. See, e.g., Tex. Occ. Code Ann. §164.051(a)(2)(B) (2003 Pamphlet) (physician); §451.251 (a)(1) (athletic trainer); §1053.252(2) (interior designer).”

Do you see that? Before Thursday’s decision, gay people in Texas were technically not allowed to be interior designers.

If for no other reason than this, Lawrence was an excellent decision.