Inside The Mind Of The Supreme Court

The Supreme Court, as it wound up this term, showed that it still has a conservative majority but it retains the capability to surprise -- as it did just this week in reaffirming the constitutional dimension of Miranda warnings for those about to be questioned by police. The court remains unwilling in most cases to tread upon what it considers to be the legislative authority of Congress or state legislatures-- but it continues to be willing to stand up for certain constitutional guarantees which contradict the majority's will.

The court's members still basically fall into three camps of judicial philosophies.

There is a generally liberal wing of the court, which consists of Justices Ginsburg, Breyer and Stephens; there is a generally conservative wing of the court, which consists of Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Scalia and Thomas; and a wing of judicially "moderate" Justices -- O'Connor, Souter and Kennedy. As it has in terms past, the moderate wing of court often made the difference in the many 5-4 court decisions the justices issued during the term, including the decisions announced Wednesday in the field of abortion rights and abortion protest.

There were no new alliances among Supreme Court justices this term-- no discernible trace of any subterranean shifts in the legal philosophies of any of the court's members suggesting that a sea-change in legal thinking occurred or is likely to occur in the next few terms.

For the moment, it's safe to say, the court's center is holding. But how long the center will hold may depend significantly upon the winner of the next presidential election. The next president likely will have the opportunity to name several new justices to the court, as several of the current justices reach the age where retirement is possible, even likely. If the next President is Al Gore, the court may turn a bit to the legal left; if the next president is George Bush, the court is likely to take a turn to the judicial right. And the court's direction next term and into the future likely will be a key issue in the upcoming election campaign.

If there is one trend that somehow can be identified from the decisions issued by the Supreme Court during its 1999-2000 term, it's a trend which saw a majority of justices continue to believe in -- and vote for -- the pre-eminence of states' rights, powers, and protections even at the expense of federal interests and concerns. Sometimes the justices used federal laws to buttress state interests. And sometimes the justices ruled that federal laws could not infringe upon states' rights.

For example, the court this term threw out portions of a federal law that allowed rape victims to sue their attackers in federal court, holding that Congress had inappropriate interfered in an area traditionally left to the states. The court also shielded states from federal age-bias lawsuits and whistleblower laws and ruled that patients cannot sue health aintenance organizations under federal law while leaving open the possibility that such suits were possible under state law.

Apart from that trend, the court's term again was marked by decisions on several hot-button, emotional issues. Among them, the court ruled: