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WEBMASTER E-MAIL: gpoaccess@gpo.gov
(there is no e-mail for Madam Injustice, the cowardess…)
SNAIL-MAIL ADDRESS:
Sandra Day O'Connor
c/o Public Information Officer
The Supreme Court of the United States
One First Street Northeast
Washington, DC 20543
Madam Justice,
It is with extreme reluctance and deep feeling that I write this letter. I had to wait until now, some three months after the fact; to be able to address what you and your compatriots did last December in choosing to bow to expediency rather than fairness regarding your decision in Bush v. Gore.
I will not address the legal aspects of this case. That has been most ably done by Mr. Vincent Bugliosi in his article: "None Dare Call it Treason" (The Nation 5 Feb. 2001). And with the protest advertisement of over 400 legal scholars and professors in the New York Times. Rather I will seek to observe what the historical perspective of your decision has done and will continue to do to the stature of the U. S. Supreme Court.
Mr. Bush sought to prevent the counting of ballots and Justice Scalia agreed based on the fact that Mr. Bush would suffer "irreparable harm if the counting of ballots were to proceed". The only way such harm could accrue in the view of most people of sense is if the counting of ballots showed Mr. Bush to be losing. Such appears to be the case at this date in light of the news media's independent tally that is going forward in Florida.
I submit Madam Justice that your decision will go down in history as one of the most ignominious and arbitrary judicial rulings. The fact that the decision was unsigned and issued per curiam will only serve to reinforce the view that this court lacked the legal reasoning or basis to issue such a decision.
The jurists of whom history speaks most highly are those who took a stand protecting the rights of the common people. Justices Wm. O. Douglas, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Brandeis, Thurgood Marshall and John Marshall Harlan serve as shining examples of what a Supreme Court Justice should be. They were people who were ruled by a love of the law and saw it as protection for the weak and powerless against the powerful moneyed interests of their time. This court, I am afraid will be seen by historians as one that was ruled instead by partisan passions and became merely an arm of a particular political party.
I had such hopes for you and what your decisions might leave for posterity. As the first woman justice to sit on the highest bench of the land, you could have served as a shining beacon of what our sex could attain. Instead, in your rush to protect your seat from being given to an appointment by a Democratic President, you have allowed political ideology to overrule your perspective. It feels and looks very much, to those of us in the rest of the country, as though we are being driven back into the nineteenth century and the "law" of the robber barons.
I grieve for this court and its legacy, and I remain,
your humble servant,
Carrie C.
NEXT: ACTION ALERT: SPENDING THE TAX CUT
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