Only weeks after legal experts questioned whether the Supreme Court's Florida recount ruling might be political, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist said he hoped the U.S. court system "will seldom, if ever" become embroiled in another presidential election.
Rehnquist's annual report to Congress on the U.S. judiciary did not mention the criticism leveled against the high court. Nor did the chief justice, who was in the majority, try to defend the 5-4 ruling that rejected a recount of Florida presidential election votes and handed the election to George W. Bush.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist told Congress that he hoped the U.S. court system "will seldom, if ever" become embroiled in another election.
(AP File Photo)
|
|
Rather, he expressed hope that the courts would never again have to decide a presidential election.
Rehnquist got to the point immediately, addressing the election in the opening paragraph of his 15th year-end report to Congress since becoming chief justice.
"Despite the seesaw aftermath of the presidential election, we are once again witnessing an orderly transition of power from one presidential administration to another," the chief justice said.
"This presidential election, however, tested our Constitutional system in ways it has never been tested before. The Florida state courts, the lower federal courts and the Supreme Court of the United States became involved in a way that one hopes will seldom, if ever, be necessary in the future."
Some observers have said the court may have hurt its credibility by splitting along ideological lines in such an important case.
The ruling followed the court's familiar lineup -- conservatives Rehnquist, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony M. Kennedy on one side, and liberals John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer on the other.
Georgetown University law professor Paul Rothstein said it was "very unusual" for the chief justice to publicly express his hope that an issue not return to the court.
"Obviously, some of the publicity about the court being partisan has filtered through to him, and I think he felt it necessary to say something in response," he said.
This was not the first time that Rehnquist defended the court against allegations that the recount ruling was political. He did so after Thomas, in a visit with high school students, denied -- the day after the decision -- that political views counted in this or any other decision.
In the appearance, televised on C-SPAN 2, Thomas said that critics of the court might think justices appointed by certain presidents "maybe hang out together. That doesn't happen. The members of the court don't pair off. There aren't these cliques."
During Thomas's appearance, Rehnquist dropped by the Supreme Court's public information office to thank staff members for their work during the high-pressure election case. Told by reporters that Thomas had just said politics did not enter into the court's overall decision-making, the chief justice responded, "Absolutely, absolutely."
