A good term for the Supreme Court
July 12, 2007| By DeEtte Chatterton
How good was the recently-concluded Supreme Court term for conservatives? “This was a term for conservatives to go dancing in the streets” a former Dean of Stanford Law School said yesterday at The Heritage Foundation.
Kathryn Sullivan’s fellow expert panelists largely echoed her belief that the 2006-2007 term was a victory for conservative thought on the nation’s highest court.
In their review of the court’s decisions, the panel identified several important cases. The justices upheld the conservative principles of free speech against campaign finance “reform,” preserved the rule of law in criminal trials, and struck down race-based social engineering in schools.
Conservatives and liberals alike watched the decisions of this Court carefully as two new justices—Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito—took the bench for their first full term. While liberals hoped they would abandon their conservative principles, Roberts and Alito stood on the side of freedom and the rule of law throughout the term, the panelists said.
“President Bush succeeded in nominating two reliably conservative judges,” ABC News Supreme Court correspondent Jan Crawford Greenberg said, creating a “dramatic change on the Supreme Court” and “a clear turn to the right.”
Some on the panel did not see the conservative successes as quite as strong, though. Former civil litigator Mike Carvin called this term “predictable and not…a serious return to the rule of law.” But Carvin nevertheless agreed with his colleagues that the court handed down significant rulings to uphold conservative principles.
DeEtte Chatterton is an intern at The Heritage Foundation.