Public trusts high court
Somewhere in the dusty, yellowing pages of early U.S.
history, the fledgling nation struggling for permanence encountered painful and
acrimonious political conflicts, the worst being the Civil War.
But not in more than 100 years has the nation faced the uncertainties that
have left Americans wondering who, indeed, is their new president.
To the credit of Americans and to the system to which they’ve paid
faithful allegiance, even such uncertainty hasn’t left the nation unstable or erupted
into rebellion as might occur in other nations in this hemisphere.
However, there has been acrimony, contempt, staged political protests
– and this atmosphere has left the country painfully divided and unwilling to accept
the proclamations of victory either of Vice President Al Gore or Texas Gov. George W. Bush
and their courtiers.
The ultimate decision now seems destined to be made in a court, and as
courts go, only one can ensure the confidence of the public and the contentious political
parties -- the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Bush camp has shown an unfortunate disdain for courts, not only in the
election campaign when it targeted judges for "making law" instead of
interpreting the Constitution, and in the current impasse, when Bush strategist James
Baker sneered at the Florida Supreme Court and demanded the Gore forces stop turning to
the judiciary for help.
But given a choice, most Americans would rather have differences affecting
the national interest decided by courts, not by politicians. The Bush camp’s
inflammatory belittling of the judiciary hints that a Bush presidency would appoint judges
with no intellectual or judicial independence, but only slavishly obedience to the
dictates of George Bush.
Republicans toss around the glib phrase "strict constructionist"
in describing ideal judges -- those whom they say "follow" the Constitution.
But what does that mean exactly? The role of judges and Supreme Court
justices is to interpret the Constitution’s meaning in the context of today’s
society, more than 200 years after the Constitution was written, and not merely parrot
rulings down through the ages.
Even the hundreds of federal district judges and appeals court judges as
well as the nine justices of the high court never uniformly agree on what the Constitution
means on specific issues.
And so it is that the Byzantine legal arguments now being raised --
whether all Florida votes have been fully counted and fairly counted -- will be settled by
the highest court in the land.
No matter how disappointing to the loser and his followers, it will be a
decision accepted gracefully in the true American tradition.
