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Former Justice O'Connor: Don't 'Strong-Arm' Judiciary
Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has warned that the U.S. is in danger of moving toward "dictatorship” if Republican leaders continue to attack the judiciary for liberal bias. In an address to corporate lawyers at Georgetown University, O’Connor declared: "We must be ever-vigilant against those who would strong-arm the judiciary.” She pointed to dictatorships around the world as examples of where political interference with the judiciary might lead, according to the Guardian’s report on the speech. "It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.”
Story Continues Below O’Connor pointed to a warning to the judiciary issued last year by Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader, following a court’s decision to order that brain-dead Terri Schiavo be removed from life support. DeLay said: "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.” He also castigated "an arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at Congress and the president.”
Such statements "pose a direct threat to our constitutional freedom,” said O’Connor, who was appointed by Ronald Reagan and served 24 years on the Court.
"I want you to tune your ears to these attacks,” she told the gathering of attorneys. "You have an obligation to speak up.” She also noted that Sen. John Cornyn, R-Tex., last year suggested there could be a connection between several acts of violence against judges and the decisions they made. O’Connor added that judges would not be doing their jobs if they did not occasionally make politicians angry, and said the courts’ effectiveness "is premised on the notion that we won’t be subject to retaliation for our judicial acts.”
© 2006 Associated Press.
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