For Liberals, High Stakes at High Court

In many ways, the string of conservative victories illuminates -- and, some believe, accelerates -- the diminishing power of liberal advocacy groups.

A little more than three decades ago, Washington's liberal kingpins -- George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO, and Clarence Mitchell Jr., Washington director of the NAACP -- helped set national policy, meeting regularly with presidents and Cabinet secretaries, helping pick presidential nominees and helping steer the legislative agenda when Democrats controlled Congress. Mitchell was dubbed the nation's "101st senator." In the 1980s, Democratic control of at least one branch of Congress served as a brake on conservatism, just as Bill Clinton's presidency gave liberals veto power over Republican control of the House and Senate starting in 1995.

After losing control of the White House when Bush took office in 2001, Democrats and liberals have largely turned to the courts as a last resort. In recent years, O'Connor -- an appointee of President Ronald Reagan and a conservative by temperament and ideology on many issues -- also cast crucial votes in support of liberal positions on abortion, the role of religion in public life and affirmative action.

"The court is their last bastion," said James Bopp Jr., general counsel to the James Madison Center for Free Speech and the attorney for conservative groups in many high-visibility cases. "That's why the left is so frantic. They can't win democratic elections, they cannot get their agenda through democratic means, so what they are left with is judicial tyranny as a means to get their agenda, and they have been pretty successful."

Despite its recent setbacks, the liberal coalition has some advantages as it spoils for the coming fight, Neas said. One of them is the long years its leaders have spent together in the trenches of judicial and civil rights battles. Neas, Henderson and Aron have been fighting on the same side for the past decades -- with their biggest victory as leaders in the "Block Bork" coalition that successfully pressured the Senate to reject Reagan's nomination of Robert H. Bork for the Supreme Court in 1987.

Neas, Henderson and Aron have common roots. Henderson and Aron worked as staff lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union. Neas served as executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights from 1981 to 1995, the post Henderson now holds.

Through the 1980s and 1990s, the trio led liberal opposition to efforts to weaken affirmative action law and won provisions strengthening key civil rights legislation.

With a litigation docket that includes many cases that end up before the high court, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund historically has been reluctant to take highly public positions in opposition to Supreme Court nominees.

But the group can hardly afford to sit out this battle, said Theodore M. Shaw, its director-counsel. "I know who the president is. I know who controls the Senate. I can count," said Shaw, whose group has been vocal in calling on Bush to appoint a moderate to replace O'Connor. "We know whoever is appointed is going to be a conservative. But the question is: What kind of conservative is it going to be?"

In the past, the group has opposed nominees it considered extreme, including Bork and Clarence Thomas. "If all three branches of government are dominated by hard, mission-driven ideologues, no matter what their stripe, I don't think it serves the nation well," Shaw said.

In recent years, the court has upheld the legality of affirmative action in colleges and universities, expanded the reach of a law banning gender discrimination in education, and upheld the constitutionality of a federal law requiring states to make courtrooms accessible to the disabled. Most of those decisions were supported by many liberals and opposed by conservatives -- and they were all decided by one-vote margins.

Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, which supports abortion rights, said this has made the Supreme Court the front line in the social values debates her group and allies care about most. "The other side sees the Supreme Court as an instrument to impose their social agenda. It is their holy grail," she said. "We see it as a guardian protecting our freedom and our privacy."

Keenan's group, which has more than two dozen affiliates nationwide and an e-mail bank with 800,000 names, said she and other members of her coalition are counting on public opinion to prevent Bush from nominating a justice they regard as too conservative.

"The public is pro-choice," she said. "The public wants the president to exert leadership and consult, rather than confront."

Debra L. Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women and Families, said members of the coalition ready to fight Bush's eventual nominee are unified in the belief that the issues that motivate their constituencies could easily pivot on one or two votes on the high court.

"The stakes are so high -- this appointment is important to all of us," Ness said. "This appointment can shape not just the direction of the court, but also the direction of the country."