High court gets it wrong in church-state case

There was a time in this country when most people understood what the U.S. Constitution said, even on controversial and evolving legal situations like the separation of church and state. States and municipalities did whatever they wanted, pretty much, whether constitutional or not, like they still do sometimes, but the U.S. Supreme Court always had the last and most reasonable word. Of course it wasn't always so -- there have, as we all know, been some amazing doozies over the years. But that was then, before the likes of Byron White and William Rehnquist were on the court. Now, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas in four of the panel's nine seats, the high court can no longer be relied on for sound reasoning in the face of the kind of blatant partisanship that comes from highly paid advocates. Each yearly term of the current panel reveals further examples of this, from the utterly regrettable Bush v. Gore decision in 2000 (the constitutional way to determine who won a presidential election is to stop counting the votes!) to the shockingly unrealistic Citizens United decision (Congress is constitutionally barred from placing reasonable limits on campaign contributions!) earlier this year. So, it came as little more than rueful surprise to see the court rule 5-4 Wednesday that a Christian religious cross erected on national parkland as a war memorial in California's Mojave Desert did not violate the First Amendment, as the New York Times reported. It wasn't just that the cross itself was on public land, or that the government had tried to relieve itself of responsibility by selling the tiny bit of land under the Sunrise Rock cross to a veterans' group, but that U.S. officials refused to allow representatives of other religions to place their own memorials there! The First Amendment's prohibition on laws "respecting an establishment of religion" has come to bar the United States from favoring any religions over others. It is a tribute to the soundness of this reasoning that such disputes rarely reach the high court, even with the loud and often overbearing religious leaders that populate the country. Yet favoring is clearly what the government did at Sunrise Rock. "The Constitution does not oblige government to avoid any public acknowledgment of religion's role in society," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court majority. "Here one Latin cross in the desert evokes far more than religion. It evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles, battles whose tragedies are compounded if the fallen are forgotten." But in dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens, the only war veteran on the court, said "I certainly agree that the nation should memorialize the service of those who fought and died in World War I, but it cannot lawfully do so by continued endorsement of a starkly sectarian message." The case is entitled Salazar v. Buono, No. 08-472.

Corporations are people, too

What does it mean that a doctrinaire conservative-dominated U.S. Supreme Court just eliminated the evolving theory of campaign finance reform? Well, it means a lot of things -- none of which bode particularly well for the future of elections in the United States -- but maybe it will finally force the right wing to stop labeling judges they don't like as "activist." And maybe, just maybe, it will convince U.S. citizens that who they elect to the White House really matters, since the five conservative justices who formed the 5-4 majority were nominated to the court by conservative Republican presidents. Maybe it's the term "conservative" that needs an overhaul, since the conservative majority voted to invalidate decades of jurisprudence aimed at protecting the society's interest in free elections while trying to place practical limits on campaign contributions. That's about as activist as it gets at this level! The ruling overruled two earlier Supreme Court decisions limiting the role of corporations and associations, like labor unions, in election campaigns -- a 1990 ruling upholding the constitutionality of placing limits on corporate campaign spending and the 2003 decision upholding the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, more commonly known as the McCain-Feingold law. McCain-Feingold barred corporations from paid political advertising on television and radio for or against individual candidates in the last 60 days before a general election. In the abstract, of course, the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (No. 08-205) was inarguably correct. “If the First Amendment has any force,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion, according to the New York Times, “it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech.” It's hard to argue with that, and Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas joined the decision. But as Justice John Paul Stevens pointed out in his 90-page dissent, the majority had erred by treating corporate speech as equivalent to human speech. "The conceit that corporations must be treated identically to natural persons in the political sphere is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify the Court's disposition of this case," Stevens wrote, joined by the other three members of the more-liberal wing, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor. Stevens read his dissent from the bench. In a way, the division on the court reflects the division in U.S. politics, where members of the two major parties in Congress seem almost irreconcilably at odds about the country's major challenges. Perhaps as a reflection of that divide, U.S. President Barack Obama was unusually critical of the Supreme Court in a statement after the ruling. “With its ruling today,” he said, “the Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics. It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans.” Obama called on Congress to respond 'forcefully' to the ruling, perhaps by rewriting the invalidated law in a constitutionally acceptable manner. But it's hard to see, at least at this moment, how that can possibly be accomplished.

April surprise! Bill of Rights wins one at Supreme Court

What are we to make of today's U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding limits on the ability of police (read "government) to search vehicles without a warrant? Could it be that we have finally reached the point where the nation's highest court, despite its cadre of radically conservative justices, is going to honor the promise of the Bill of Rights against the whims of the executive branch? Were the reversals of overly restrictive Bush administration-era detainment policies, which signaled that this court was taking its constitutional responsibilities seriously, just the beginning? In fact, the 5-4 ruling in Arizona v. Gant (No. 07-542) did not really break any new ground, according to the New York Times, but restored a measure of balance to warrantless searches involving motorists. "Although we have recognized that a motorist’s privacy interest in his vehicle is less substantial than in his home,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the 5-4 majority, “the former interest is nevertheless important and deserving of constitutional protection.” The ruling upheld an Arizona Supreme Court decision in a case involving drugs found in a car that was routinely searched after the driver had been arrested and physically detained. Perhaps more importantly, the ruling reversed the high court's 1981 decision in New York v. Belton, which had been seen as a controlling precedent for the past 28 years. In Belton, a case involving four defendants in a car stopped by a single police officer on the New York Thruway, the court held that a search without a warrant was legal if done soon after an arrest. But Stevens said Belton applied only when an immediate search is necessary for the safety of the officer or to preserve evidence. In an unusual split, Stevens was joined in the majority by Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, two of the court's most conservative justices, and by David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented, joined as expected by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Anthony M. Kennedy. But Stephen G. Breyer, one of the court's most liberal justices, also joined the dissent. Breyer indicated at oral argument in October that he did not want to disturb the Belton precedent after 27 years.