A look at justice

By Evelyn C. McDonald
Arts & Culture Reporter
January 24, 2018  1:10 p.m.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer spoke to a capacity crowd at the University of North Florida Monday night and I had the privilege of hearing him. Maybe I’m not alone in having regarded our justices as cardboard figures. That night provided a way to have one of them become 3-D. That Breyer has a great sense of humor and is a born storyteller was a surprise. His manner was not flippant but he likes to answer questions with story examples. He feels, he said, that stories help us understand principles.

The evening unfolded as a dialogue between Breyer and John Delaney, UNF president. Delaney asked Breyer about the workings of the Court, citing the media’s political interpretation of the Court’s decisions. Breyer was clear that the justices take a lot of factors into consideration when they hear a case. History, impact, precedent, and the current situation in the country are among those factors. He said that the way justices rank these factors has more to do with their decisions that whether they were appointed by a Republican or a Democratic president.

He observed that the Supreme Court has the duty to make decisions but they do not have the power to compel compliance. He was asked what his favorite case was. He said that most people would assume it was Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka but it was Cooper v. Aaron. After Brown v. the Board of Education, the Little Rock school board had been trying to set up a desegregation plan but the state kept blocking it. Arkansas legislators decided to amend their state constitution to prohibit desegregation. The Little Rock school board filed suit, asking to be relieved of the requirement to desegregate and citing the state legislation. All nine members of the Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision that the states could not ignore the decisions of the Court just because they disagreed with them.

There is often a conflict between national security and individual liberty, Breyer said. His example was the Japanese internment in World War II and the Korematsu case that challenged the internment. He said that the Justice Department had no evidence that the Japanese living here were a danger and that J. Edgar Hoover had argued against the internment. Breyer noted that the decision was split 6-3 and the 6 in favor of upholding the internment were the more liberal justices such as Black, Frankfurter, and Douglas. He said Justice Black effectively walked into the judicial conference and said that someone had to lead the country in war and it couldn’t be the justices.

Breyer believes in the rule of law and the value of our founding documents. He talked about Bush v. Gore in 2000. He said more than half the country didn’t agree with the decision but there were no riots. He went on to say that some might say perhaps there should have been riots. Breyer said before you wish that, turn on your TV and see what havoc disregard for the law causes in other parts of the world. We were an experiment, he said. The founding fathers knew they were doing something different and that it might not work. He believes respect for the rule of law has been a crucial factor in our survival as a nation.

On a more personal note, Delaney asked Breyer about his relationship with Justice Scalia. Breyer related several stories about their interactions. Prodded about Scalia’s scorched earth style of writing opinions, Breyer remarked that he attributed it to good writing. He said when you’re a good writer and you find a particularly felicitous phrase, you use it all the time. It was an indicator of the nature of their relationship that whenever he talked about Nino, as Scalia was known to his colleagues, he still used the present tense.

The lecture reminded again me of the benefits of living near a large public university. I have been to lectures by Neil Degrasse Tyson, Steve Wozniak, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Steven Levitt, Peggy Noonan, and Bob Woodward among others at UNF. Each one has been free, requiring only a drive down to the campus. It has been a terrific opportunity to see and hear the notable people of our contemporary society.

Evelyn McDonald moved to Fernandina Beach from the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. in 2006. Evelyn is vice-chair on the Amelia Center for Lifelong Learning and is on the Dean’s Council for the Carpenter Library at the UNF. Ms. McDonald has MS in Technology Management from the University of Maryland’s University College and a BA in Spanish from the University of Michigan.