Supreme Court in Action
   
(September 2006)

David Kelston, issue editor, writes:

Each September we devote Mass Dissent to a review of the Supreme Court’s past term, and in this issue we have a particularly interesting Court to look at – a Court with its first changed membership in eleven years. Chief Justice Roberts, by all reports collegial and meticulous, has been no surprise, generally following the conservative footsteps of his predecessor. New Justice Alito has, if anything, been even more conservative and, of all the justices, is least often in agreement with the Court’s most consistent liberal, Justice Stevens. Not surprisingly, with Justice O’Connor gone, Justice Kennedy has emerged as the Court’s critical swing vote – in fact, in a New York Times review of the Court’s major rulings of the 2005-2006 term, Justice Kennedy was in the majority 15 our of 16 times.

We write in this issue, of course, only about a few decisions, as space permits. Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, where the Justice Stevens majority strongly rebuked the administration’s ever-increasing efforts to expand its power in the judicial arena, may be the Court’s most memorable opinion. Student Sara Fleming writes about Hudson v. Michigan, where the exclusionary rule was further diluted by the decision that police failure to "knock and announce" is not grounds for excluding evidence (predictably, the Court pointed to supposed police fear of civil lawsuits to deter wrongful conduct). National Guild President Michael Avery writes about how, in fact, the Court is making it harder to bring civil rights claims, and Nadine Cohen authors two articles, the first on what may be the Court’s most important voting case in years, and the second on matters of importance the Court will decide in its present term.

Finally, we begin in this issue a new feature – what we hope will be regular reports on important cases litigated by our members. (See page 4.)

While the Supreme Court’s last term was, as usual, mixed, we should make no mistake – the Court is moving to the right. The two justices most often in agreement were Roberts and Alito, and Alito’s voting pattern was significantly more conservative than that of his predecessor, Justice O’Connor. One more Republican appointment may leave us all in peril.

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