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By Washington Correspondent Pascal Riche

July 8, 2005

Liberation - Original Article (French)    

From the moment Sandra O' Connor, a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, announced that she wished to retire, the city of Washington has vibrated like an anthill poked with a stick. George W. Bush must name a replacement this summer, a choice that will influence the destiny of the nation as much as it will one of the country’s most powerful institutions. Democrats are preparing to mount a great battle in the Senate, which must confirm the president’s choice. The religious lobbies have already embarked on a crusade against those whom, among the possible substitutes, have fuzzy opinions on abortion. Organizations on the left have bombarded the entire country with e-mails inviting citizens to mobilize themselves to bar the nomination of an “ideologue." According to one estimate, over $100 million has already been spent mobilizing these campaigns, and the U.S. press contemplates, "the biggest decision Bush has made since the war in Iraq."

FREEDOMS

In the United States, the appointment (for life) of a judge of the Supreme Court is an enormous affair. The president’s choice can have a long-term impact on the life of society in general, and on public freedoms in particular. The justices of the Court, known as the nine "sages," every year, with their judgments, decide the law. The U.S. Supreme Court holds, at the same time, the power of [France’s] Supreme Court of Appeal, the Council of State and the French Constitutional Council. At the very heart of American political life, the Court is the final arbiter of all the great issues of U.S. society: it was the Supreme Court that initiated race desegregation in schools (Brown v. Board of Education, 1954) and authorized abortion (Roe v. Wade, 1973).

In the past few years, the Court put an end to the process of recounting votes at the time of the 2000 presidential election (delivering victory to George W. Bush), it declared laws against homosexuals in some southern and Western states unconstitutional, put an end to the execution of minors and the mentally retarded charged with crimes, and has prohibited the display of the Ten Commands in courtrooms.

A BALANCER

Named by [President Ronald] Reagan, Sandra Day O' Connor played the role of a balancer within the Court. Sometimes she voted with her four conservative colleagues, and at other times with the four progressives. She thus contributed to the cementing of abortion rights, the most discussed subject of all at the Court.

The choice that Bush is to make is thus crucial. The President has declared himself "pro life," and has campaigned across the country on the topic of returning the United States to a "culture of life,” and so his electoral awaits a turning point. But Bush never preached a reversal of "Roe v. Wade," an eventuality that would tear the country apart. Christian organizations are therefore wary. They have, without waiting, launched a fierce campaign against Attorney General (minister of Justice) Alberto Gonzales, the favorite and a close friend of President Bush. Gonzales is no leftist, as it was he that inspired the legal finding justifying acts of torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq­, but he is regarded as too soft by the religious right on the issue of abortion. "Conservatives would be shocked and demoralized by a Gonzales nomination," pronounced the right-wing magazine The National Review. From Denmark, Bush condemned this campaign: "I don’t like any of it," he declared Wednesday.

In the years to come, the Supreme Court will have to decide on many legal questions involving abortion, like the issue of late-term interruptions of pregnancy (there exists as yet no legal deadline, as we have in France) or the question of the parental authorization.

Also in the periscope of the sages is the issue of assisted suicide, public financing for religious groups, homosexual marriage, limits to affirmative action at universities ... all of the many questions which are at the heart of the ideological battle now in progress. Whereas Democrats and Republicans are already thinking of the mid-term legislative elections  (next year), the debate begun by the departure of Sandra Day O' Connor resemble a warm-up for their next electoral confrontation.