The 14th. Amendment

When Sarah Palin could not name any Supreme Court decisions I just shook my head.  I knew 20 easily. Ones that had an influence on the country and on my life are the most interesting .  Plessy v. Furguson, in 1896, that made Jim Crow the law of the land comes to mind. Brown v. Board of Education, in 1954, is another.  The second canceled out the first.  I love reading about these cases because in 1966 in Mississippi I still saw Jim Crow in practice.  Having to read about the court deciding on the possibility of getting rid of the Civil Rights act because section five does not include every state sickens me.

I always liked Mapp v. Ohio, 1964.  This case determined that Evidence that is illegally obtained by the state may not be used against a defendant in court. This case is one of my favorites and makes very interesting reading.  Of course Miranda v. Arizona, 1966, is seared in all our minds because of all the crime dramas on T.V...

Roe v. Wade, 1973, is always a good one for discussion because it was decided using the 14^th Amendment. I do not agree using this Amendment to sanction abortion.

Texas v.Johnson, 1989, had to do with flag burning as a form of free speech.

I bring some of my favorite cases up because I want to explore the one case that I find most perplexing. This case is also the one that most Americans no little or nothing about but had a huge effect on most of our lives.  That case is Bush v. Gore, 2000.

At the end of the Election Day evening, Bush was ahead of Gore in the Florida popular vote by only 2,000 ballots, close enough to trigger an automatic recount. After the recount, Bush's lead dwindled to a mere 900 votes.

Gore requested a hand-recount of votes in his four strongest counties, Broward, Miami Dade, Palm Beach, and Volusia, as allowed by Florida law. After the recount, Bush's margin dropped to 537 votes. Gore then petitioned the State courts for a recount of 70,000 contested ballots. Although the lower court rejected his request, the Florida Supreme Court reversed on appeal, and ordered the disputed ballots recounted. This created the term ,hanging chad. The Republicans tried to stall the recount so it could not be completed in the time Florida law required.  This tactic worked. The Florida courts extended the time to allow all contested ballots to be counted.

Bush and Cheney appealed the Florida Supreme Court's decision to the US Supreme Court, and were granted a stay on the Florida court's order until the US Supreme Court issued its decision. There is some dispute as to whether this stay was necessary or a political maneuver designed to defeat the State's ability to complete a recount before the "safe harbor" deadline of December 12, 2000, coincidentally, the day the Court's opinion was released.

The Court's opinion required Florida to stop counting ballots, holding that subjective decisions made by the Florida court violated the 14^thAmendment Equal Protection Clause, because a portion of the ballots were devalued by being subject to "later arbitrary  or different treatment." .

As you can see the 14^th. Amendment has been used to decide two very divisive and life altering decisions of Americans living in this modern age. I find both decisions fascinating to read and I do have a hard time seeing how the High Court could use the 14^th. Amendment to decide both cases.  

The makeup of this court scares me because of the trend of political influence affecting important cases that will change our future.  In most cases I can predict how each justice will vote. This begs the question “are there any impartial judges in our courts anymore or do they all base their rulings on political considerations”?