"It is but proper and fitting that this Court commend the unfaltering and very able assistance rendered to the accused, seen from the excellent presentation made of his case, particularly by his defense counsel, Atty. Abelardo L. Aportadera, Jr., of Davao City, who unstintedly and magnanimously contributed his legal talents and efforts in the hope that justice may ultimately prevail." X X X
Supreme Court Decision in 'People of the Philippines - versus- Lucio Lumayok' G.R. No. L-54016
By MARK SHERMAN,
Associated Press Writer –
Thursday's
decision to strike down restrictions on corporate campaign spending more than
60 years old was the third time in nine days that the court divided 5-4, with
liberals on one side and conservatives on the other. The other cases involved
an appeal from a death row inmate in
As in
dozens of earlier cases, Kennedy was in the majority each time. He was the
author of the campaign finance decision.
The
rulings demonstrate the extent to which ideology — not fidelity to precedent or
a particular interpretation of the Constitution —
is the driving force on the court.
The
addition of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, replacing Justice David
Souter, seems to have changed nothing in this regard. Indeed, it would
have been shocking if President Barack Obama's first high court nominee immediately began to line up with the
court's conservatives.
The Bush
administration officials who
helped in the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito would
have been equally dismayed if President George W. Bush's two selections had not
become reliable voting allies of conservative justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
The
campaign finance case was different only in that Kennedy's vote was not seen as
being up for grabs. His views had been known for some time, expressed in two
dissents from earlier opinions that were overruled Thursday.
Roberts
and particularly Alito provided the crucial votes. Alito took the place of Justice Sandra
Day O'Connor, who had voted to uphold the rules that the court
jettisoned Thursday.
Because
Kennedy was a near-certain vote to overturn one opinion in its entirety and a
portion of the other, critics of the ruling focused on Roberts as the leader of
the court and an advocate for a restrained approach to changing the law.
As soon
as the opinion was released Thursday — indeed, even within Justice John Paul
Stevens' lengthy dissent itself — predictable cries of "judicial activism" arose from its critics.
The court
could have taken smaller steps rather than reverse Congress' 100-year trend to
separate corporate money and politics, Stevens said.
"There
were principled, narrower paths that a court that was serious about judicial
restraint could have
taken," Stevens said in an opinion that Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader
Ginsburg and Sotomayor
joined.
But how
can it be activist, the majority asked, to stand up for First Amendment
rights?
Roberts
also had a ready response in his concurring opinion to
the charge that he had abandoned his minimalist approach. "There is a
difference between judicial restraint and judicial abdication," he said.
Both
sides agree, he said, that some high court decisions turn
out to be so wrong that they deserve to be overruled. He gave three examples
that he could confidently predict his critics would embrace.
If the
court could not revisit earlier rulings, Roberts said, "segregation would
be legal, minimum wage laws would be unconstitutional and the government could
wiretap ordinary criminal suspects without first obtaining warrants."
In
earlier times, the chief justice might have worked hard for unanimity in a
ruling as potentially transformative as the campaign spending decision appears
to be. Chief
Justice Earl Warren assiduously
courted Justice
Stanley Reed of Kentucky
to ensure that there would be no dissent — much less from a Southerner — to the
Brown v. Board of Education decision that outlawed segregation in public
schools.
Such
unanimity is unthinkable on the big issues of the day on the current court, but
ideology was not then the order of the day in selecting justices.
Even at
the time of Roe v. Wade in
1973, decided 37 years minus one day before the campaign finance case, seven
justices formed the majority that declared a woman has a constitutional right
to an abortion. Of those seven, five were appointed by Republican presidents,
including three by Richard Nixon.
The two
dissenters were Justices Byron White, named to the bench by John F. Kennedy,
and William
Rehnquist, another Nixon appointee.
Roe v.
Wade is the prime example put forward by conservatives of a judicial power
grab, taking away from the states the power to decide for themselves what limits
to put on abortion.
But the
reaction to Roe and the liberal outcry that followed Thursday's decision show
that there is one salient feature of accusations of judicial
activism. They come from the losing side.