The Supreme Court

"THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
is probably the most remarkable legal institution in the world," wrote TIME in 1923. All eyes are on the court now as the Senate holds confirmation hearings for Judge Samuel Alito Jr., President Bush's pick to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Some highlights from our Supreme Court coverage over the years:

The Supreme Court of the United States is probably the most remarkable legal institution in the world. It is something just a shade more than a governing body. It is a sort of super-Senate, defining the conditions under which government functions.
From A New Book
Mar. 17, 1923

Nine men assembled quietly in the old Senate Chamber of the Capitol. They had donned their long black vestments in their robing room and now quietly sat down behind a long counter and resumed their work....They seem like an institution of the ages, and in a way they are. They are appointed for life to a court as old as the Government.
From A Fresh Start
Oct. 19, 1925

Before it adjourned for the summer ..., the Supreme Court of the U. S. handed down one of its terrific five-to-four decisions....The dissenting opinions of that distinguished pair of liberal scholars, a Jew and a Yankee, Louis Dembitz Brandeis and Oliver Wendell Holmes, were as vitriolic as any ever read into the records of the Supreme Court.
From Vitriolic Dissent
Jun. 18, 1928

Vast in importance to the New Deal is the character of the new Congress elected three weeks ago. But trivial is the importance of that Congress compared to the current political importance of the U. S. Supreme Court.
From Old Men in Black
Nov. 26, 1934

Congress had often altered the number of judges on the Federal bench. In fact it had first established the Supreme Court with six members in 1789, increased it to seven in 1807, to nine in 1837, to ten in 1863, decreased it to eight in 1866, increased it to nine in 1869. Franklin Roosevelt produced a letter from his Attorney General attesting that each Federal judge now has to handle nearly half again as many cases as in 1913, that congestion and delay result. His reasoning was impeccably high-minded as he developed it for the newshawks, but as he continued he let his political purpose flicker through.
From De Senectute
Feb. 15, 1937

The Supreme Court had once more demonstrated Mr. [Chief Justice Charles Evans] Hughes's reverberating dictum: 'The Constitution is what the Judges say it is.' Last week nearly every lawyer agreed that one afternoon in the Supreme Court Chamber, the interstate commerce clause of the U. S. Constitution had been rewritten and enlarged to include many things which for 149 years past it has never held within its few brief elastic words.
From Four 5-4; One 9-0
Apr. 19, 1937

Last week, however, Franklin Roosevelt made Felix Frankfurter an offer he could not reject: to ascend to the famed 'scholar's seat' on the U. S. Supreme Court, succeeding his friend Benjamin Nathan Cardozo, who in turn had succeeded another friend, Oliver Wendell Holmes.
From A Place for Poppa
Jan. 16, 1939

The U.S. Supreme Court this week reaffirmed its faith in the Bill of Rights—which, in 1940, it had come perilously close to outlawing. In a 6-to-3 decision, the Court reversed its 1940 stand and now declared that West Virginia could not constitutionally force the children of Jehovah's Witnesses to salute the flag if their religious scruples forbade it.
From Blot Removed
Jun. 21, 1943

...The ruling was crystal clear: the U.S. Supreme Court held that racial segregation in the public schools violates the Constitution. The decision was unanimous.
From To All on Equal Terms
May 24, 1954

...After one of the busiest terms in history, the U.S. Supreme Court was under its heaviest fire in a decade. The charges: that in steering the law between rigidity and formlessness, Chief Justice Earl Warren has plotted a deliberate course to the left, with far more emphasis on ever-changing conditions than on never-changing principles.
From Truer Course
Jun. 25, 1956

Except for its decisions on school desegregation, the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren has come under no heavier fire than for its rulings in the prickly area of internal security... the court threw its weight on the side of individuals involved in security cases--to the point where many a sober-minded observer feared that the public interest was being jeopardized.
From Ends a Busy Term, Draws a Heavy Fire
Jun. 22, 1959

While the Southerners kept the Senate stalled on civil rights, the Supreme Court last week pressed forward the cause of Negro voting rights in the South.
From "A Firm Foundation"
Mar. 14, 1960

At 78, Hugo Black has served on the Court for 27 years under five Presidents, been Senior Justice for no less than 19 years... no other Justice in the Court's entire history has lived to see more of his dissents turned into doctrine."
From The Limits That Create Liberty & The Liberty That Creates Limits
Oct. 9, 1964

In that famous decision (New York Times Co. v. Sullivan), the court ruled that a public official cannot collect libel damages even for false criticism of his official conduct unless he proves 'actual malice.' But who is a public official? The court did not say.
From Who Is a Public Official?
Nov. 26, 1965

Like most Americans, Justice Potter Stewart heartily endorsed the Supreme Court's famous decision in Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), which ordered all American courts to provide lawyers for indigent defendants -- at least in the trial of felony cases.
From Where To After Gideon?
Dec. 16, 1966

For the past 15 years, the extraordinary 'Warren court,' spanning all but a few months of the terms of three Presidents, has had no less an impact on American life than the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations combined.
From Warren: Out of the Storm Center
Jun. 28, 1968

Until the very last, the court that Warren led demonstrated its overriding concern with the rights of the individual—even though many critics complained that in some instances it had already gone too far.
From The Legacy of the Warren Court
Jul. 4, 1969

By a surprising majority of 7 to 2, the court ruled that Roe and Doe had won one of the nation's most fiercely fought legal battles. Thanks to the Texas waitress and the poverty-stricken Georgia housewife, every woman in the U.S. now has the same right to an abortion during the first six months of pregnancy as she has to any other minor surgery.
From A Stunning Approval for Abortion
Feb. 5, 1973

The nation had moved far in 25 years, but the goal of equality had remained elusive, and the question now before the Supreme Court in the case of Regents of the University of California vs. Bakke seemed infinitely perplexing: Is it fair to give some preference to blacks over whites in order to remedy the evils of past discrimination?
From Bakke Wins, Quotas Lose
Jul. 10, 1978

The Burger Court of the 1970s has proved less liberal, but it is hardly a model of judicial restraint.
From Have the Judges Done Too Much?
By Evan Thomas
Jan. 22, 1979

The Justices are left alone to argue the law, their principles, their consciences. Theirs is not an abstract debate: comfortably hazy concepts like 'liberty' and 'equality' must be applied to urgent social and moral dilemmas--abortion, the death penalty, obscenity, busing, reverse discrimination.
From Inside the High Court
By Evan Thomas
Nov. 5, 1979

One of the most powerful forces holding back the conservative tide has been a small, slightly rumpled, elderly gentleman with a ready smile and a legendary gift for gab, William J. Brennan Jr. Court observers agree that the liberal Justice, even in the supposed exile of dissent, has emerged as the master strategist of the Burger court.
From The Power of William Brennan
By Michael S. Serrill
Jul. 22, 1985

When William Rehnquist was appointed to the Supreme Court by Richard Nixon in 1971, he believed that the court was 'heeling' to the left and felt obliged, as he later put it, 'to lean the other way.'
From Reagan's Mr. Right
By Evan Thomas
Jun. 30, 1986

Thurgood Marshall was the only member of the Supreme Court who knew how it felt to be called a nigger.
From Marshall's Legacy: A Lawyer Who Changed America
By Richard Lacayo
Jul. 8, 1991

At issue is the meaning of the basic principle enshrined in the First Amendment: that Congress, and by later extension the states, "shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The modern Supreme Court has taken that to mean that government cannot do anything that promotes either a particular faith or religion in general.
From Marshall's Legacy: A Lawyer Who Changed America
By Richard Lacayo
Dec. 9, 1991

The U.S. Supreme Court begins its new term facing questions of women's rights and gender discrimination -- the very realm in which new Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made her mark.
From Supreme Courtship
Oct. 4, 1993

The high court's dramatic order set the stage for what may be the greatest clash of courts in American history... How the U.S. Supreme Court rules could, of course, determine the next President of the United States. But something even larger is hanging in the balance: whether Americans will continue to have faith in the courts, the rule of law and the integrity of the democratic process.
From Supreme Contest
By Adam Cohen
Dec. 18, 2000

On the most important issue in this case, the Court ruled 5-4, in Grutter v. Bollinger, that colleges and universities can continue to use race as long as they find less explicit ways to do so than the University of Michigan's undergraduate program.
From And the Winner Is . . . Affirmative Action
By Perry Bacon Jr.
Jun. 23, 2003

By being the practical-minded swing vote on the court, she [Sandra Day O'Connor] has quietly become one of the most influential people in the U.S. and, at age 74, has let friends know that she has no plans to relinquish that role.
From TIME 100: Sandra Day O'Connor
By Walter Isaacson
Apr. 26, 2004

Bush's eventual choice of a successor-- his first appointment to the high court--is sure to be one of the most closely watched decisions of his presidency, especially by conservatives and Christian groups determined to make sure he does not offer up another Republican nominee--like David Souter, Anthony Kennedy or for that matter O'Connor--whose votes are not consistently conservative.
From The Tipping Point?
By Richard Lacayo
Jul. 11, 2005
Photos and Graphics

Outside law schools, the Rehnquist court will be remembered for its bitterly split 5-to-4 decision in 2000 in Bush v. Gore, which many Democrats saw as sneaky Republican prestidigitation to give George W. Bush the White House. It was one of the few decisions in which Rehnquist supported the use of federal power to restrict a state, one whose supreme court had ordered a manual recount of the ballots in the presidential race.
From Who Will Be the Next Rehnquist?
By Michael Duffy
Sep. 12, 2005

As the first nominee of the Internet age, Roberts will now be strip-searched by uncountable bloggers and interest groups even before the Senate starts confirmation hearings, probably in September. Between now and then, the great inquisitors, amateur and professional, will look at every person he has known, every penny he has spent, every word he has written and every clue he has dropped about where his interests lie.
From Judging Mr. Right
By Nancy Gibbs
Aug. 1, 2005

While few people expect Roberts to stumble much on his road to confirmation, the Senators posing these questions and the pro-and-con activists packing the bleachers know the show is not just about him. This is probably only the first of several Bush Supreme Court nominations. Since the betting is that this one will be confirmed, the main question is how the sides are positioning themselves for the ones to come.
From 5 Things You Need to Know About Roberts
By Nancy Gibbs
Sep. 5, 2005

As Alito's confirmation hearings kick off on national television this week, Senators and viewers will be asking, Is this the man of the memos, whose paper trail includes provocative passages against abortion and in favor of Executive power that have given Democrats and liberal interest groups the ammunition to portray him as a dangerous activist?
From The Cool Fervor of Judge Alito
By Perry Bacon Jr. and Mike Allen
Jan. 16, 2006

The Supreme Court's ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld totals 185 pages and can be summarized in two words: Start over. If the Bush Administration wants to try terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay in special military tribunals, it can't just declare them legal -- it needs to work with the other branches of government to make them so.
From How to Fix Guantanamo
By Nathan Thornburgh
Jul. 02, 2006

... the price of unanimity is the loss of concurrence and dissent, the expression of views that can strengthen the law by showing us how it came to be, where it should develop and why the most important rulings are never easy. Sometimes the doubters are right, and if their voices disappear, so might the prospect of not-yet-recognized freedoms or protections for many Americans.
From In Defense of a Divided Court
By Reynolds Holding
Feb. 15, 2007

Contrary to everything we think we know about Justices, they're ideological drifters, according to a surprising study scheduled for publication this summer in the Northwestern University Law Review. They apparently move from right to left, left to right and sometimes back again.
From The Drifters
By Reynolds Holding
Apr. 05, 2007


For more about the Supreme Court see the TIME Archive William Rehnquist Collection