Who's Sorry Now

Linda Greenhouse wrote Who's Sorry Now "So now it turns out that the retired justice, just past her 83rd birthday, does have second thoughts about Bush v. Gore and, more to the point, is willing to express them. She told the editorial board of The Chicago Tribune last week that she thinks the court made a mistake by intervening in the disputed Florida election in the first place. ‘Maybe the court should have said, ‘We’re not going to take it, goodbye,’ ’ she said, as quoted by The Tribune. While Florida’s election officials had ‘kind of messed it up,’ she said, ‘probably the Supreme Court added to the problem at the end of the day.’"

She gives a nice little history of other justices who've admitted changing their mind on a decision. I didn't know about Minersville School District v. Gobitis.

"The question was whether school children with religious objections to pledging allegiance to the flag could be required to do so, on pain of expulsion from school. Jehovah’s Witnesses, for whom saluting the flag is unacceptable, challenged the requirement as a violation of the First Amendment right to free exercise of religion."

In 1940, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that kids could be expelled for not pledging allegiance. "The reaction by a country caught up in wartime patriotic fervor appalled the justices. Taking the Supreme Court’s decision as proof that Jehovah’s Witnesses were not good citizens, mobs attacked and burned the Witnesses’ places of worship. Members of the faith were fired from their jobs and some 2,000 Jehovah’s Witness children were expelled from school. When another case reached the court after only three years, three justices who had been in the earlier majority changed their votes."