| ANN Special Reports |
| Chapter 1: Brown v. Board of Education |
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| Harriet Miers & the Supreme Court |
| President Bush loves her, congressional Republicans and Democrats don't know why. |
| Brown v. Board of Education In 1954 the Supreme Court made a ruling that shook up the entire country in Brown v. Board of Education. The move was to desegregate public schools. It was a ruling that cancelled out a previous courts ruling about school segregation that stated states could segregate schools as long as students of any race could access the same quality schools. This earlier ruling wasn't working since having texts for a class didn't mean having the same quality text for the same class. Brown v. Board forced desegregation. While the courts ruling was a tremendous boost for the civil rights campaign, it was also monumental for the process in which judges were appointed. This was the first major and noticable time the courts had ever written law. This was not the original direction of the court. By the 1940s, the court had began to hear more constitutional type cases, when before it was always dealing with property issues. Now it was making rulings on the laws congress and the President passed. Needless to say, congress suddenly took interest in the courts. In 1955 the United States Congress had its first ever judicial appointment hearing. While congress had the ability to have these hearings, they never felt the need to do so. Now that the court, which was led by Warren Harding, had flexed its constitutional muscles, congress was beginning to worry. What if a court which had mostly liberal judges shot down conservative legislation? Since judges get the position for life, there really was a threat to consider. Thus, the beginning of the complex appointment process. Escalation of Congressional Panic As the years have gone by, the judicial appointment process has gotten longer and longer. Currently, the United States has over 90 vacancies in the federal court system. 12% of the courts do not have a judge, and approximately 32 district courts are in a state of "judicial emergency" (the figure has changed since last year). The "judicial emergency" is a district thta has a waitlist of 18 months, and a caseload of over 600. As the politics of parties in the legislative branch heat up, the work in the courts is piling up. Saturday Night Massacre In another fiasco of the Nixon Administration, a series of somewhat confusing firings took place one Saturday night. Nixon fired the Attorney General, the Assistant Attorney General and an Independent Prosecutor who was a favorite of the congress at the time. Justice Borke, who at the time was the Deputy Assistant Attorney General was the person who fired the Independent Prosecutor, and in return, during his appointment to the courts, he was not approved. This is another issue of the judical appointment process. The Bush Years With a Republican president and a Republican legislature, Democrats were facing an uphill battle. As judicial appointments were made, the Democrats, with no power of majority, were continually filibustering This futher delayed the courts appointments. "Seuderization" of the Courts The problem of passing judicial appointees really started being counter-attacked by the first President Bush. He needed to give congress the appointee that had no dirt. It would need to be a judge that shared his beliefs and decisions, but had never presided over a court that dealt with tough issues. Congress would sit and ask the question to justice seuter, "what do you think of abortion?" Seuder, who had never presided over an abortion case, would reply that they had never given much thought to it. Congress had no choice but to appoint the judge. The problem for Bush was that his appointment backfired, and Seuder is liberal. |