Tuesday, January 20, 2009

End of an Error and Era

The ceremonies around the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States contained a number of comparisons to President Abraham Lincoln, no doubt due to the fact that both came to Washington from Illinois and their historic role in changes in race relations.

However the comparisons probably don't include how both presidents brought to an end some of the worst decisions in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court. For Lincoln it was the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857 where the Court threw out established law and said that slave owners could take slaves to free states and not grant them freedom.

Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, a staunch supporter of slavery and intent on protecting southerners from northern aggression, wrote that blacks "might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit."

Eight years later with the conclusion of the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the 13th and 14th amendments, citizenship now was a possibility, although Southern states would continue to fight to limit rights.

Obama's inauguration effectively ends the courts second worst decision, Bush vs. Gore, where the Court ruled that Florida Supreme Court's method for recounting ballots in the 2000 Presidential election (where going into Florida Al Gore was ahead in both the popular vote and Electoral College) was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, although apparently the variable counting methods for counting ballots was OK.

Just as the Dred Scott Court was unwilling to accept that blacks could be citizens, the Bush Court was unwilling to accept "voter's intent" as a standard for counting votes. The Court itself realized its ruling was flawed and said it should not be used as the basis for future cases.

There should be little surprise that the cases are comparable; President Bill Clinton wrote that "Bush v. Gore will go down in history as one of the worst decisions the Supreme Court ever made, along with the Dred Scott case."

It took a civil war to start the process to overturn the Dred Scott case and, it just took two elections to overturn Bush vs. Gore. Today it is hard to imagine the beliefs that supported the Dred Scott decision. Eventually it will hard to believe the beliefs that supported Bush vs. Gore.