A Hearing Without Being Heard
Robert Barnes
Washington Post
Feb 20, 2007
The point of the law is to satisfy a human desire for justice," Breyer explained, but he added: "You don't necessarily get to that end by simply trying to look for what is the intuitively nicer result in each case."
Scalia was blunter. "By the time you get up to an appellate court -- and lawyers ought to learn this -- I don't much care about your particular case," he said. "I am not about to produce a better result in your case at the expense of creating terrible results in a hundred other cases."
A specific Supreme Court decision may contain obvious benefits for the winner -- see George W. Bush, circa 2000. But it can often be an inconclusive way station for the plaintiff, sometimes leading only to additional years of litigation.
Jose Antonio Lopez, for instance, has already won his case at the Supreme Court this term. The justices ruled 8 to 1 that the Bush administration cannot automatically deport legal immigrants convicted of minor drug crimes.
But the decision came a little late for Lopez, who had returned to Mexico rather than remain in jail to see if the Supreme Court would take his case. His lawyer is trying to get him a new hearing in this country. But the more lasting impact of Lopez v. Gonzales is that thousands of immigrants may now contest the government's deportation plans.
Supreme Court cases outlive the individuals who give them a name, and give rise to legal precedents beyond the specific cases. That explains why Ledbetter finds herself supported by a large contingent of women's groups and civil rights organizations that she had never given much thought to -- "The ACLU is supporting me; I don't know how we picked them up" -- and opposed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Bush administration.
