Posted on 10/31/2003 9:32:28 AM PST by stop_fascism
American courts need to pay more attention to international legal decisions to help create a more favorable impression abroad, said U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor at an awards dinner in Atlanta.
Sandra Day O'Connor
"The impressions we create in this world are important, and they can leave their mark," O'Connor said, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The 73-year-old justice and some of her high court colleagues have made similar appeals to foreign law, not only in speeches and interviews, but in some of their legal opinions. Her most recent public remarks came at a dinner Tuesday sponsored by the Atlanta-based Southern Center for International Studies.
The occasion was the center's presentation to her of its World Justice Award.
O'Connor told the audience, according to the Atlanta paper, the U.S. judicial system generally gives a favorable impression worldwide, "but when it comes to the impression created by the treatment of foreign and international law and the United States court, the jury is still out."
She cited two recent Supreme Court cases that illustrate the increased willingness of U.S. courts to take international law into account in its decisions.
In 2002, she said, the high court regarded world opinion when it ruled executing the mentally retarded to be unconstitutional.
American diplomats, O'Connor added, filed a court brief in that case about the difficulties their foreign missions faced because of U.S. death penalty practices.
More recently, the Supreme Court relied partly on European Court decisions in its decision to overturn the Texas anti-sodomy law.
"I suspect," O'Connor said, according to the Atlanta daily, "that over time we will rely increasingly, or take notice at least increasingly, on international and foreign courts in examining domestic issues."
Doing so, she added, "may not only enrich our own country's decisions, I think it may create that all important good impression."
In July, O'Connor made a rare television news show appearance with Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer in which they were asked whether the U.S. Constitution, the oldest governing document in use in the world today, will continue to be relevant in an age of globalism.
Speaking with ABC News' "This Week" host George Stephanopoulos, Breyer took issue with Justice Antonin Scalia, who, in a dissent in the Texas sodomy ruling, contended the views of foreign jurists are irrelevant under the U.S. Constitution.
Breyer had held that a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that homosexuals had a fundamental right to privacy in their sexual behavior showed the Supreme Court's earlier decision to the contrary was unfounded in the Western tradition.
"We see all the time, Justice O'Connor and I, and the others, how the world really – it's trite but it's true – is growing together," Breyer said. "Through commerce, through globalization, through the spread of democratic institutions, through immigration to America, it's becoming more and more one world of many different kinds of people. And how they're going to live together across the world will be the challenge, and whether our Constitution and how it fits into the governing documents of other nations, I think will be a challenge for the next generations."
In his dissent in the Texas case, Scalia said: "The court's discussion of these foreign views (ignoring, of course, the many countries that have retained criminal prohibitions on sodomy) is ... meaningless dicta. Dangerous dicta, however, since this court ... should not impose foreign moods, fads, or fashions on Americans," he said quoting the 2002 Foster v. Florida case.
Scalia's scathing critique of the 6-3 sodomy ruling was unusual in its bluntness.
"Today's opinion is the product of a court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct," he wrote. Later he concluded: "This court has taken sides in the culture war."
The current court is split between Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Clarence Thomas and Scalia, who tend to hold the traditional constitutionalist approach to rulings, and the majority of O'Connor, Breyer, Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginzburg, David H. Souter and John Paul Stevens, who tend to believe in the concept of a "living Constitution" subject to changes in public opinion and interpretation.
The U.S. judiciary should pay more attention to international court decisions to help enrich our nation's standing abroad, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said Tuesday."The impressions we create in this world are important and they can leave their mark," O'Connor said.
On the whole, the U.S. judicial system leaves a favorable impression around the world, she said "but when it comes to the impression created by the treatment of foreign and international law and the United States court, the jury is still out."
The 73-year-old justice, considered by many to be the most influential member of the nation's highest court, made her remarks to a dinner sponsored by the Southern Center for International Studies.
O'Connor received the Atlanta center's World Justice Award at the dinner at the Marriott hotel in Buckhead.
Former Georgia Court of Appeals Judge Dorothy Toth Beasley presented O'Connor with the award.
For decades, O'Connor said, U.S. courts declined to consider international law when reaching important decisions.
But in recent years, she said, the U.S. Supreme Court began acknowledging the thoughts of the global community.
The first such case was decided in 2002 when the Supreme Court found it unconstitutional to execute the mentally retarded, she said. In arriving at that decision, O'Connor said, the high court noted that the world community overwhelmingly disapproved of the practice.
Also influential was a court brief filed by American diplomats who discussed the difficulties confronted in their foreign missions because of U.S. death penalty practices, she said.
The second ruling cited by O'Connor was, as she called it, "the famous or perhaps infamous case," in which the Supreme Court overturned the Texas anti-sodomy law.
In that decision, the Supreme Court majority relied partly on a series of decisions by European courts on the same issue, O'Connor said.
"I suspect," O'Connor said, "that over time we will rely increasingly, or take notice at least increasingly, on international and foreign courts in examining domestic issues."
Doing so, she added, "may not only enrich our own country's decisions, I think it may create that all important good impression."
Hmm. And here I thought the Supreme Court was supposed to follow the U.S. Constitution. Silly me. Next, she'll start making decisions based on the U.N. Charter.
--Boris
I agree
And I am hoping it is a lot different what I just read
Is there a world constitution? The only bearing world opinion has on our laws is through our values as a society. These can make it into law through our elected representatives. Yo! O'Connor! That's how it's done constitutionally!
How in the world do you rule something unconstitutional based on something extraconstitutional and keep a straight face?
Impeach... NOW!
Decided, reported and edited by whom?
The Martha Stewart of the Supreme Court?
She's gotta go... soon!
I would really hope so.!
This statement is beyond the pale, if not taken out of context. It is really imperative that President Bush, and the Senate Republicans, get down in the trenches with the rat obstructionists, and win the battle over President Bush's nominee's!!
I agree
And we need to impeach a gaggle of NWO SCOTUS "justices!"
Listening to the views of others and gaining a perspective on both sides of an argument is what a good judge should do. Interested parties of all stripes, from the John Birchers to the ACLU, can file an amicus brief with the court. No one seems to have a problem with that.
I think there are a lot of people here reading WAY too much into this. The Supreme Court is well within its right to take into consideration any perspectives and opinions it might deem appropriate. In fact, it's quite prudent of them to do so.
You say this as if our constitution isn't subject to any interpretation whatsoever. If that's the case, then what's the purpose of amicus briefs? Why are there two differing opinions presented in the court? Why is there a Supreme Court at all? If everything is so settled, so cut and dry, there should be no dispute and no use for a court.
Of course, that's silly and disingenuous. But no more so than the rhetoric of those inferring that O'Connor is subjugating the U.S. Constitution to European courts.
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