There was only one bright spot in this dismal panorama. John Paul Stevens’s dignified, clearheaded, and insistent eloquence honored the Court. Alone among the justices, Stevens was consistent and logical and constitutionally sound in his thinking. From his home in Fort Lauderdale, he composed a peroration that serves as the best epitaph for this sorry chapter in the Court’s history: “The [per curiam opinion] by the majority of this Court can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land. It is confidence in the men and women who administer the judicial system that is the true backbone of the rule of law. Time will one day heal the wound to that confidence that will be inflicted by today’s decision. One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s Presidential election, the identity of the loser is pellucidly clear. It is the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.”

“We granted certiorari to consider the constitutional claims presented, including the question whether Bowers v. Hardwick should be overruled,” he said, then quoted a line from that opinion: “The issue as presented is whether the federal Constitution confers a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy.” But that framing of the question, Kennedy said, “demeans the claim put forward, just as it would demean a married couple if it were said marriage is simply about the right to have sexual intercourse. The laws involved in Bowers and here are, to be sure, statutes that do prohibit a particular sexual act. Their penalties and purposes, though, have more farreaching consequences, touching upon the most private human conduct, sexual behavior, and in the most private of places, the home. The statutes seek to control a personal relationship that is within the liberty of persons to choose without being punished as criminals.” The nation, he went on, “has been shaped by religious beliefs, conceptions of right and acceptable behavior, and respect for the traditional 190 Jeffrey Toobin family. For many persons these are not trivial concerns but profound and deep convictions accepted as ethical and moral principles to which they aspire and which thus determine the course of their lives.” This was autobiography, for Kennedy’s own life had been shaped by those beliefs—but then he said those rules cannot prescribe what the Constitution commands for all.

书的简介就看豆瓣链接吧.

<九人>

我这种法律小白也还能看的稍微有点味道. 以前一直以为民主党和共和党没啥区别, 现在真的是能分清楚了.

有点意思的几句话. 摘了原文分享下.

Justice Robert H. Jackson’s opinion for the majority in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, one of the most eloquent in the Court’s history, set down principles that would become lodestars of the American creed. “To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds,” he wrote, before concluding with one of the most famous passages in the annals of the Court: ” If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.“

是关于爱国的一段东西. 很有意味.

His favorite quote from his idol Frederick Douglass summed up his view: “The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us. . . . I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! . . . I f the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall.“

所谓的黑人也不需要怜悯和同情般的优待. 追求真正的平等.