Supreme Court tilt to right had its limits

The 2006-2007 term was dominated by notable conservative rulings.

By Warren Richey | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the July 2, 2007 edition

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Washington - The US Supreme Court is a more conservative place under Chief Justice John Roberts and associate Justice Samuel Alito.

But the shift to the right is not as deep and abrupt as it might have been had both of the new justices fulfilled President Bush's wish to populate the high court with jurists in the mold of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Instead, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito often staked out more moderate positions than Justices Scalia and Thomas, declining invitations from their conservative brethren to vote to strike down liberal precedents and declare broad new conservative doctrines in some of the high-profile cases decided in the just-ended 2006-2007 term.

The session did produce a string of conservative victories, including upholding a national ban on so-called partial-birth abortions, endorsing a narrow reading of a key section of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law, making it harder for taxpayers to sue to enforce the separation of church and state, and limiting the use of race-based enrollment policies in public schools.

But this was not Armageddon for liberal precedents. At least not yet.

The court's move to the right can be partly calibrated by the degree to which Justice Alito is more conservative than the justice he replaced last term, Sandra Day O'Connor. The other factor is the swing voter role of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is also to the right of Mrs. O'Connor's prior positions on most key issues heard this term.

"There is not that much of a change because the court had been divided 5-4 on many of these same questions," says William Van Alstyne of William and Mary Law School in Williamsburg, Va. He calls it "a sea change on the margin."

For conservatives, even marginal victories are cause for celebration. They are the fruit of an intense campaign to reshape the judiciary launched a quarter-century ago during the Reagan administration. For liberals, it is a time of high anxiety and despair over what an emboldened Roberts court might produce in years to come.

But it's not all conservative applause and liberal angst.

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