O'Connor and Rehnquist

Does it strike anyone else as strange that Sandra D's retirement announcement from SCOTUS was characterized by the media as some detached historical affair, devoid of any real humanity. TAP argues that the influence of Justice O'Connor was borne from her deeply personal relationship with the cases that came before the court. Justice Scalia's postion is either a foregone conclusion, or at least highly predictable, due to his commitment to a grand unifying theory of law; however, O'Connor's devotion to the particularities of each case is more humane in a way. Her decision process seems to mirror the stuggles that the proletariat face each day, where the luxury of theory gives way to the reality of actualization. How fitting that the decisive vote for so many cases of late would be from a woman for whom the academic elitism of the left and right held little sway. The way she frustrated the opposing poles of our political world was fascinating to watch, since she was neither to the right nor to the left. However, the main frustration for commentators and the pundits was that she was also not a centrist or a moderate. O'Connor was unbound by the imaginary code that demands allegiance to either loose or strict constructionism, but she did not try to split the difference either. The worst thing for the court is the presence of moderates - they are destructive to the process since they hold forth opinions that always favor the tyrannical majority. Why was the deeply individualistic and personal voting of O'Connor obfuscated in favor of an incorrect characterization of her as a moderate? Either it is simply because most people are too ignorant to understand, or because the media craves a two-front war of ideology over the future of America, where you ar either with us or against us. The American Polis in unsure.

On the breaking news front, The American Polis sees strong indications that Chief Justice Rehnquist will announce his retirement late Tuesday afternoon, or early Wednesday morning this week. So if you like common wisdom before it becomes common, then if TAP is right, you heard it here first. If TAP is wrong, then you heard this somewhere else.