An excellent summation of the judicial career of Stevens, written by Alexander Cockburn at Counterpunch:

With the impending departure from the U.S. Supreme Court of Justice John Paul Stevens at the age of 89, we lose one of the nation’s last substantive ties to Great Depression and to the effect of that disaster on the political outlook of a couple of generations.

Stevens’ father, Ernest, owned a famous hotel in Chicago – the Stevens, with 3,000 rooms, now the Hilton. It was built in 1927, and there young John Paul met Amelia Earhart, Charles Linbergh and Babe Ruth.

But by 1934 hard times took their toll. The hotel went bankrupt. John Paul’s father, grandfather and uncle were all indicted on charges that they’d diverted money from the Illinois Life Insurance Co. (founded by the grandfather) to try and bail out the hotel. The uncle committed suicide, and Stevens’ father was convicted. The Illinois Supreme Court exonerated him two years later, stating, there’s not a scintilla of evidence of any concealment or fraud.

Thus did John Paul, still in his teens, acquire his life-long skepticism of police and prosecutors. Between the year he went on the Court (put up by Gerald Ford in 1974 on the recommendation of Ford’s attorney general, Chicagoan Edward Levi), and 2010, John Paul Stevens voted against the government in criminal justice and death penalty cases 70 per cent of the time. Only one justice – William O. Douglas, whose seat Stevens took over – served longer on the Court. When Justice Harry Blackmun retired in 1994, Stevens became the senior associate justice and, thus, able to assign opinions to the justice of his choice. Stevens played his field expertly, time and again maneuvering the swing vote – Anthony Kennedy – onto his side by assigning him the task of writing the opinion.

The most famous case of this sort was the 2003 decision Lawrence v. Texas, which became the equivalent for gay rights as Brown v. Board of Education for racial discrimination. Among other Stevens-written or Stevens-influenced landmark opinions: Atkins v. Virginia, where Stevens successfully won the necessary majority for the view that executing the mentally retarded constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

Stevens was also the Court’s most powerful opponent of the so-called doctrine of unitary executive power, which takes the view that the U.S. president and his executive wield constitutionally unchallengeable power. Stevens – again, a true conservative – opposed all such assertions and extensions of dominance by the executive. The relevant case was Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. Stevens wrote the majority opinion that Bush Jr. could not unilaterally set up military commissions to try detainees in Guantanamo.

Cockburn's piece is additionally worth reading for his evaluation of the frontrunning candidate to replace him, Elaine Kagan. Why is she the frontrunner and probable selection? The answer is obvious, because, as related by Cockburn (and others in the last week), she is an unabased proponent of the unitary executive and the powers that have been ascribed to it in order to prosecute the war on terror. And, beyond that, there is the fact that she has enthusiastically put her legal and intellectual credibility at the service of the Democratic establishment over the years.

Kagan is, if one may be so impolite to say it, a hack, willing to take on any task assigned by the party leadership. Furthermore, she is much beloved by Republicans who are delighted by the prospect that, after putting several ideologues on the Court in recent decades, the Democrats may respond by replacing one of the Court's great civil libertarians with a centrist who defers to the power of the federal government when it is asserted against individuals, but skeptical when it is directed towards corporations.

Labels: Barack Obama, Neoliberalism, Supreme Court

After my initial post this morning, hurriedly put up while getting my son ready for day care, I have some more thoughts about the Supreme Court's decision giving corporations free rein in the US political system: First, it appears that people within the Obama administration, especially Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, have no problem with the prospect of a Congress controlled by Republicans after the 2010 election, or, alternatively, a Congress controlled by Republicans in league with conservative Democrats. Through such a Congress, Obama can successfully hunt down the great white whale of US politics, the destruction of Social Security and Medicare as we know it through entitlement reform, all the while positioning himself as someone defending us against the even greater predations of the Republicans. Today's Supreme Court decision creates an opportunity to get more candidates elected who will implement an accelerated, more merciless evisceration of social welfare policies adopted between the 1930s and the 1970s.

Second, the only institutions capable of raising large sums of money to finance campaigns to compete with corporate funded candidates are labor unions. Admittedly, this has always been true, but now, the proportion of individual donations in comparison to labor contributions and corporate contributions will be graphed with individual donations near the bottom, labor union ones somewhere between the bottom and the middle and corporate ones in excess of both. As a result, corporations will not only be dominant, but the decisive voice in relation to attempts to implement progressive policies to constrain them will rest with the unions. Upset that Andy Stern of SEIU and Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO abandoned single payer and the public option during drafting of health care reform legislation? Dissatisfied that neither of them are willing to challenge US militarism and demand that the government redirect Pentagon expenditures towards the fulfillment of domestic needs? Better learn to love it, because the Supreme Court has made them the godfathers of US progressivism, such as it is.

Lastly, we can also reasonably conclude that the many of the members of the US Senate, regardless of party, are pleased with the decision, because they confirmed Bush appointees Roberts and Alito, two justices whose votes were necessary for the Court's 5-4 decision, in the face of siginificant opposition. Some of this opposition emphasized their judicial records in support of corporations and more repressive measures of social control. But a majority of the Senate, including quite a number of Democrats, had no problem with it, and why should they? Now, they can defend their incumbency against potential threats with even larger sums of corporate largesse.

Labels: American Empire, Elections, Neoliberalism, SEIU, Supreme Court, Unions, Vote or Die

Sweeping aside a century-old understanding and overruling two important precedents, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.

The ruling was a vindication, the majority said, of the First Amendment’s most basic free speech principle — that the government has no business regulating political speech. The dissenters said allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace will corrupt democracy.

You are now free to vote for choices put forward by corporations, and exercise your democratic rights. Of course, this has always been true to a significant extent, but any pretense to the contrary has been stripped away. Just as the First Amendment gives you the right to buy your own printing press, and compete with the consolidated, transnational media, it also gives you the right to campaign, or support like minded candidates, against those financed by enormous sums of corporate capital. There's a reason why the David versus Goliath story is so compelling: the giants usually prevail.

Labels: Activism, American Empire, Elections, Neoliberalism, Postmodernism, Supreme Court, Vote or Die

Some background context as to why the Supreme Court decision, discussed here earlier today, is important:

A Bahraini detainee at Guantanamo Bay can barely stand or exercise after being subjected to painful force-feeding in an effort to make him abandon his hunger strike, his lawyers claimed yesterday. Isa Al Murbati revealed the problems during a meeting with his lawyers at the maximum-security facility in January, but notes taken by his representatives have only just been declassified.

They say other than being offered the drug Motrin, which was tried and did not work, the 42-year-old prisoner has not received any treatment for his injuries.

"During our earlier visit in January, Isa had described being subjected to painful forced feeding in a successful effort to make him abandon his hunger strike," said legal team head Joshua Colangelo-Bryan.

"Isa has been held in Camp One since the time that he was forced from the hunger strike.

"Isa has experienced pain in his knees and shoulders as a result of the rough treatment he received from an Immediate Response Force during the forced feeding.

"Also, his legs are swollen, making it difficult to bend, stand or exercise. Isa is allowed to exercise two times per week. The lawyer said his client became emotional when given information about his family.

"Isa was very interested in hearing news about our trip to Bahrain and our visit with his family," he said.

"I told Isa that we had met with his three sons and that one of his sons had promised him a cake when he returns home.

"I told Isa that one of his sons had asked him to call home, which of course is not possible.

"Isa began to cry when I shared this news with him.

"I told him that many people in Bahrain are working to bring him home, but I do wish that I could have had told him something more concrete in order to comfort him."

Mr Al Murbati is one of three Bahrainis currently being held in Guantanamo Bay along with Salah Abdulrasool Al Blooshi, 24, and Juma Al Dossary, 32, who has attempted suicide 13 times since his incarceration. They are approaching their fifth year of detention at the facility without a trial.

Presumably, the application of the Geneva Convention to Isa Al Murbati, Salah Abdulrasool Al Blooshi and Juma Al Dossary, if enforced, would require that they receive more humane housing and medical treatment, as well as being allowed to communicate with their families.

Labels: "War on Terror", American Empire, Guantanamo, Imperial Presidency, Sadomasochism, Supreme Court

The Supreme Court has ruled that the use of military tribunals to try terror suspects at Guantanamo is unconstitutional, potentially taking the US political system into uncharted territory:

The Supreme Court today delivered a sweeping rebuke to the Bush administration, ruling that the military tribunals it created to try terror suspects violate both American military law and the Geneva Convention.

In a 5-to-3 ruling, the justices also rejected an effort by Congress to strip the court of jurisdiction over habeas corpus appeals by detainees at the prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

And the court found that the plaintiff in the case, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, could not be tried on the conspiracy charge lodged against him because international military law requires that prosecutions focus on specific acts, not broad conspiracy charges.

Clearly, the Supreme Court is expressing its exasperation with the indefinite detention of people outside the jurisdiction of American and international law, most strongly in its refusal to accept congressional action stripping it of the authority to hear habeas corpus petitions filed by Guantanamo detainees. The Court is sending an unequivocal message to the federal court system to stop evading the issuance of decisions on the merits through procedural subterfuges.

Much of the media coverage today suggests that the Bush Administration will seize upon the decision as an opportunity to extricate itself from the criticism associated with Guantanamo and move towards closing it. Perhaps. If so, it would constitute a radical departure from the administration's effort to concentrate all power in the executive, and thus, I remain dubious. Furthermore, the right has a history of running against the Supreme Court, with the so-called "pro-life" movement being the most obvious, but not the only, instance.

No doubt Karl Rove is familiar with this history. The temptation to step into the shoes of Andrew Jackson and George Wallace must be great. If Bush obstructs compliance with the ruling of the Court, what happens next? Will the federal judiciary issue orders requiring it? If Bush stalls, will the judiciary demand immediate action on behalf of the rights of the detainees, now much more comprehensive in light of the application of the Geneva Convention? And, if the judiciary does so, how will such orders be enforced against a President who declares that he remains free to disregard bills that he signs into law? What is to prevent him from treating the judiciary in a similar fashion?

Labels: "War on Terror", American Empire, Guantanamo, Imperial Presidency, Supreme Court