SUPREME COURT JUSTICE SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR - HOW SIGNIFICANT WERE HER DECISIONS?

In his March 2006 letter, Dr. James Dobson offers a partial list of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's swing decisions.  Wow.   Do take a look at the list below.   As Dobson put it:  "She helped hand down some of the worst decisions in the nation's history."

Here is a portion of the record Justice O'Connor leaves:

1. O'Connor voted to strike down prayer at graduation ceremonies in Lee v. Weisman.   The decision was 5-4.2
2. O'Connor voted to strike down Nebraska's law criminalizing partial-birth abortion (Stenberg v. Carhart).  That terrible procedure — by which brains were sucked out of un-anesthetized and often healthy, late-term infants — continues across the country today.   The blood of thousands of these dismembered babies will forever be on the hands of five justices, with O'Connor providing the swing vote, 5-4.3   She will live with the consequences of that ruling until she, and all of us, have to give an account to the God of the universe whose Word states: "They shed innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters . . . Therefore the LORD was angry with his people and abhorred his inheritance" (Psalm 106:38, 40, NIV).
3. O'Connor also voted against unborn babies by upholding the basic premise of Roe v. Wade in the landmark case of Casey v. Planned Parenthood.   Again, the decision was 5-4.4   One more vote for life could have saved millions.
4. This past June, O'Connor voted to prohibit the public display of the Ten Commandments in two separate cases.5  Both decisions were 5-4, with O'Connor serving as the swing vote.   In the first case, she voted to prohibit the display of the Commandments in a Kentucky courthouse; and in the second, she even opposed the display of the Ten Commandments when there was no intended religious significance implied by the monuments.
5. O'Connor decided against the people of Colorado, who had voted for a referendum to abolish special rights for homosexuals in their state constitution.   Their wishes were summarily overturned by a 5-4 decision in Romer v. Evans.6 Coloradoans were chastised as bigots by the Supreme Court in that ruling.

We can hope that her replacement, Justice Samuel Alito, will help move the court away from the "judicial tyranny" whereby, as Dr. James Dobson puts it, "unelected and unaccountable justices and judges have grabbed enormous power not authorized by the Constitution."