I've been listening with great interest to the coverage of Harry Blackmun's papers over the past week. Actually, "listening with great interest" is actually probably a bit weak. "Fucking riveted" is probably a bit closer to the truth.
NPR : Justice Blackmun's Papers
There's actually so much here, I don't know what to write about. First, Nina Totenberg's delivery is impossibly elegant and refined. Her delivery alone brings what would otherwise be the driest of text to life in such a rich way that the justices are practically speaking through her velvet voice as though she were their personal medium. Though I'm obviously an outsider to the subtleties of the case, in each subject she brings such life and attention to the most basic details. Without such a beautiful interpretation, I wonder if I'd even be able to pick it up at all.
Second, I’ve always wondered if people in power actually were aware of how many people they affect. For example, in my fairly large company, I know that people think about the customer all the time, but they absolutely underestimate how many people out there use the products that they make. I've also known that those with their finger on the proverbial button knew how many lives they held in their hand. Could people who merely write these opinions understand that they have such amazing power as well? Time and again in these documents, the justices are supremely (pardon the pun) aware of the weight that each of their words carry both for the case at hand and for history. Extensive discussion is made of the interpretations and methods people will use to get around the decisions, and whether or not to close loopholes. It’s as though the Heisenberg principle was at work, but the particle actually KNEW someone was watching it and wanted to put on a special show for the people who bothered to look.
Third, in some relation to the point above, not only did the justices know that they were being watched, but that they were actually writing the way that law would be interpreted for hundreds of years. The scope of that responsibility just boggles my mind. It’s like you decided to get a tattoo that would color the country’s backside for two hundred years, long after you were dead and the rest of the country was old and wrinkly. But the below text, which mostly came from the opinion itself (!), struck me dumb:
Courtesy of GoldsteinHowe.com and Nina Totenberg
I actually have goose bumps, just from typing it. I don’t know whether to just stand their awe-struck, or applaud or both. That people in such power would actually understand the affect of their power, and act in such a selfless way gives me new hope for humanity. Sorry, when I read this kind of purity of spirit, I get all gushy. Please go and listen to all of them and gain new faith in the human race. D
- Kennedy made minor changes to respond, and added some more language, declaring that "the timeless lesson of the first amendment is that if citizens are subjected to State sponsored religious exercises, the State disavows its duty" to leave that sphere of life to the individual. Leaving religion to individual conscience, wrote Kennedy, is "the mark of a free people."
Courtesy of GoldsteinHowe.com and Nina Totenberg
I actually have goose bumps, just from typing it. I don’t know whether to just stand their awe-struck, or applaud or both. That people in such power would actually understand the affect of their power, and act in such a selfless way gives me new hope for humanity. Sorry, when I read this kind of purity of spirit, I get all gushy. Please go and listen to all of them and gain new faith in the human race. D