O'CONNOR: a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship

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Arlene Montemarano " <mikarl

Sun, 09 Apr 2006 13:10:41 -0400

O'CONNOR: " a lot of degeneration before a country falls into

dictatorship "

 

 

 

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329432632-110878,00.html

 

 

 

 

Comment Dictatorship is the danger

 

 

 

A Reagan-appointed supreme court justice voices her fears over attacks

on US democracy

Jonathan Raban

Monday March 13, 2006

 

Guardian

Linking the words " America " and " dictatorship " is a daily staple of

leftwing blogs, which thrive on the idea that Bush administration

policies since 9/11 are taking the country ever closer to totalitarian

rule. Liberal fears that democracy is endangered by Republicans in

Congress are so widespread, so endemic to the jittery political

climate in the US, that they hardly bear repeating. It'll surprise no

one to learn that another voice was added to the chorus last Thursday,

warning that recent attacks on the American judiciary were putting the

democratic fabric in jeopardy and were the first steps down the

treacherous path to dictatorship.

 

What is surprising - more than that, electrifying - is that the voice

belonged to Sandra Day O'Connor, who retired a few weeks ago from the

supreme court. O'Connor is a Republican and a Reagan nominee. Regarded

as the " swing vote " on the court, she swung the presidential election

to George Bush in 2000.

 

Equally surprising is that O'Connor's speech to an audience of lawyers

at Georgetown University was attended by just one reporter, the

diligent legal correspondent for National Public Radio, Nina

Totenberg. No transcript or recording of the speech has been made

available, so we have only Totenberg's notes to go on. But - assuming

they are accurate - the notes are political dynamite.

 

O'Connor's voice was " dripping with sarcasm " , according to Totenberg,

as she " took aim at former House GOP [Republican] leader Tom DeLay.

She didn't name him, but she quoted his attacks on the courts at a

meeting of the conservative Christian group Justice Sunday last year

when DeLay took out after the courts for rulings on abortions, prayer

and the Terri Schiavo case.

 

" It gets worse, she said, noting that death threats against judges are

increasing. It doesn't help, she said, when a high-profile senator

suggests there may be a connection between violence against judges and

decisions that the senator disagrees with. "

 

Then she spoke the D-word. " I, said O'Connor, am against judicial

reforms driven by nakedly partisan reasoning. Pointing to the

experiences of developing countries and former communist countries

where interference with an independent judiciary has allowed

dictatorship to flourish, O'Connor said we must be ever-vigilant

against those who would strong-arm the judiciary into adopting their

preferred policies. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country

falls into dictatorship, she said, but we should avoid these ends by

avoiding these beginnings. "

 

Delivered by someone who was, until recently, one of the nine

guardians of the US constitution, these are spine-chilling opinions,

and you might have thought they'd have been all over the papers the

next day. Not so. I happened to catch Totenberg's NPR report last

Friday, and have been following up references to it. A cable TV

talkshow and a handful of blogs have mentioned Totenberg's piece:

otherwise there's been a disquieting silence, as if the former justice

had laid an unsavoury egg and had best be politely ignored.

 

Why did O'Connor choose such a closed forum to air her thoughts? Why

was Totenberg the only reporter present? The possibility that America

is sliding toward dictatorship or an unprecedented form of corporate

oligarchy ought to be a matter of world concern. And if O'Connor

believes what she is reported to have said, surely she owes it to the

world to make public the prepared text of her remarks, which so far

have the dubious character of the scores of unverifiable leaks that

have passed for news in the compulsively secretive world of the Bush

administration. It's unsurprising that, say, Colin Powell chooses to

leak rather than speak out, but when a supreme court justice prefers

to whisper her fears to a coterie audience, it's hard to avoid the

inference that the whisper itself speaks volumes about the imperilled

democracy it purports to describe.

 

Death threats to judges figured importantly in O'Connor's speech, with

good reason. Last year, an Illinois federal judge found her husband

and mother murdered, and a Georgia state judge was shot dead in his

courtroom. Within days, Senator John Cornyn of Texas mused: " I wonder

whether there may be some connection between the perception in some

quarters, on some occasions, where judges are making political

decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and

builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in

violence. " DeLay, speaking of the judges who had ruled that Schiavo be

allowed to die, said: " The time will come for the men responsible for

this to answer for their behaviour. "

 

These are peculiar times, and when Republican politicians appear to

endorse the killing of judges who make rulings of which they

disapprove, it's maybe understandable that a distinguished judge like

Sandra Day O'Connor, expressing views calculated to enrage Republican

politicians, might sensibly look to a small podium with a weak sound

system for fear of being heard too clearly by the likes of Cornyn and

DeLay.

 

· Jonathan Raban's latest book is My Holy War: dispatches from the

home front. Nina Totenberg's report is at: http://tinyurl.com/lt5ls

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006