Monday, March 06, 2006

FAIR Unanimous Decision

I have blogged previously about FAIR v. Rumsfeld and like nearly everyone else I’m not surprised by the outcome.

What I do find interesting is that the Roberts court has been handing out a lot of unanimous decisions – or at least that has been my perception.  It seemed that most decisions out of Rehnquist were 5-4 and I don’t think any of the Robert’s opinions have come out that way.

Does this mean that Roberts is more persuasive or is better at finding consensus or merely that the cases were cut and dried?  I find the later possibility unconvincing since there was at least one abortion case involved.   Granted the opinion was narrow and merely remanded it to a lower court (IIRC), but I think that there may be a trend.

Is justice better served by narrow, unanimous decisions or divisive broad decisions?  I think that a court that delivers consensus views gives the appearance that it is less political by nature and perhaps will ease some of the angst that is still brewing over Bush v. Gore – or I’m completely wrong and the trend will go unnoticed by the unwashed masses.  Only time will tell.

No comments:

Post a Comment