|
about too much interference with the courts by Right wing activists and politicians. But it wasn't a rejection of the Right, just a telling them to back off and not infringe on the Court's power.
I suspect he's acting as he is because he doesn't see the Bush people putting anyone in who is conservative in the way he likes. I think he sees the major Right/conservative verdicts he engineered over his tenure (his 'legacy') getting overturned one by one, and he simply can't bear to retire and sit by while Supreme Court overturns more of them while he still lives.
So far he has lost, at a minimum, two death penalty upholding verdicts (Penry and Stanford, 1989) and the verdict upholding laws against gay sex (Hardwick, 1986). There are lawsuits out there to overturn his great initial atrocity upholding laws barring punished criminals from voting, Richardson v Ramirez, 1974. He led a war to limit and subvert application of the 14th Amendment, on the extension of which all the great liberal verdicts (Brown v Board, Griswold v Connecticut, Loving v Virginia, Roe v Wade) of our political era have relied.
But doing what he and his side did to the 14th Amendment in Bush v Gore, that utter pinnacle of historical irony and abuse of the 14th, was a bridge too far and finally far enough out of step with The People that the Court had to turn. He denies this, of course, but he can't give up the fight. And that's why he hangs on.
|