Sandra Day O’Connor, a Republican-appointed judge who retired last month after 24 years on the supreme court, has said the US is in danger of edging towards dictatorship if the party’s rightwingers continue to attack the judiciary.
In a strongly worded speech at Georgetown University, reported by National Public Radio and the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, Ms O’Connor took aim at Republican leaders whose repeated denunciations of the courts for alleged liberal bias could, she said, be contributing to a climate of violence against judges.
Ms O’Connor, nominated by Ronald Reagan as the first woman supreme court justice, declared: “We must be ever-vigilant against those who would strong-arm the judiciary.”
She pointed to autocracies in the developing world and former Communist countries as lessons on where interference with the judiciary might lead. “It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.”

So goes Sandra Day O’Connor, using the word “dictator” in a way that I thought was reserved for events like… well, this weekend’s Anti-War March in Downtown Portland. (I think that’s this weekend. I may or may not wander through it, which is my want.)

She said the court’s marshal, Pamela Talkin, alerted her and O’Connor to a February 28, 2005, Internet chat posting by an unidentified person to his fellow “commandoes” urging a “patriotic assignment.”

According to Ginsburg, the Web author criticized the justices’ prior reference of international laws, saying, “This is a huge threat to our Republic and Constitutional freedom. … If you are what you say you are, and NOT armchair patriots, then those two justices will not live another week.”

I’m pondering the lessons of Roosevelt’s 1937 Supreme Court packing scheme. It’s always been uneasy, particularly since my understanding of the events has always deviated from the official History Textbook explanation. I note for the record a quick look at 1937 New York Times articles on the subject shows early on in the controversy Roosevelt repeatedly prefaced any discussion on the matter with:

“What is really needed is not an alteration of our fundamental law but an increasingly Enlightened View by the Supreme Court reagarding the Constitution.”

Which is to say “Hey! I won every state but Maine and Vermont! Enact my Programs!” At any rate, two of the Justices switched sides practically overnight and thus a 6-3 anti New-Deal Court became a 5-4 pro-New Deal Supreme Court.

Is the FDR Precedent covered under Sandra Day O’Connor’s speech? I leave you with the uneasy feeling that comes with the understanding of the Supreme Court as yet another political unit.

So, the Courts sway with political pressure. Whether vaguely threatening words by elected politicians and overtly threatening words by anonymous in cyber-Message Boards work in that box, I do not know. Try and see! No, don’t.

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