How Democrats and Frenchmen Think
This is how the French news paper Liberation described the upcoming Supreme Court battle here in the U.S.:
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).
That wasn't, of course, the role envisioned for the Court by the Founders, but it certainly is the one favored by contemporary liberals, so it isn't hard to see why Supreme Court appointments are awaited with such interest. It's hard to remember the good old days when President Kennedy nominated "Whizzer" White because he was a football star.
Nowadays, of course, calling a football player "Whizzer" would have an entirely different connotation.
UPDATE: Reader Jim Rhoads sent a link to this appreciation of Justice White by his former next-door neighbor, NFL place-kicker Nick Lowery. I'd forgotten, if I ever knew, that White led the NFL in rushing the same year he graduated first in his class from Yale Law School. Not bad.
