I think Roe V Wade was the last very honest, non-bias'd Supreme Court Decision ever made
Think about it. Roe V. Wade, the landmark descision that gave women the right to legal abortions was decided by a 7-2 vote. IF you look at the breakout of those votes, there was no Liberal vs. Conservative votes. In fact some of the more conservative judges supported Roe V. Wade, justices appointed by Republican Presidents.
Here's a breakout of who voted on Roe V. Wade and who appointed them:
Voted FOR Roe V. Wade:
Warren E. Burger (Appointed by Nixon)
William O. Douglas (Appointed by F. Roosevelt)
William J. Brennan, Jr. (Appointed by Einsenhower) - Considered very progressive justice overall
Potter Stewart (Appointed by Einsenhower)
Thurgood Marshall (Appointed by Johnson)
Harry Blackmun (Appointed by Nixon) - Considered very progressive justice overall
Lewis F. Powell, Jr (Appointed by Nixon)
Associate Justices
Byron White (Appointed by Kennedy) - Considered moderate to conservative justice overall
William Rehnquist (Appointed by Nixon)
Look at that vote outcome. Only 3 of the justices were appointed by Democratic Presidents, Kennedy, Johnson and Roosevelt, and they voted 2-1 for a progressive cause. The 6 republicans were appointed either by Nixon (4) or Einsenhower (2) and that vote came out 5-1 in favor of a progressive cause. Nixon appointed 2 very progressive justices with Brennan and Blackum whereas Kennedy's only pick for the court turned out to be more moderate to conservative.
Back then Supreme Court justices were picked because of qualifications and experience. But I swear sometime after Roe V. Wade the republicans caught on that perhaps they could put sway into how the constitution is interpretted by putting in justices that would vote for conservative causes. Ford appointed one SCOTUS justice during his tenure, John Paul Stevens, and that was next to last time a republican president picked a progressive justice (Souter by Bush Sr was the last but I think that was a mistkae). The next appointment would come during Reagan's terms (No one retired during Carter's term as president). Although Sandra Day O'Conner sometimes was a swing vote for the most part Reagan appointed conservatives - O'Conner, Scalia and Kennedy (the latter 2 still on the bench). And every nomination to the bench since Reagan has been political ideologists meant to support the agenda of the president who appointed them. Yes even Clinton and Obama have picked their justices based on their ideologies. The only slip - when George HW Bush appointed Souter, I think he expected a conservative and ended up Souter was a progressive. Bush Jr never made that mistake by appointing Roberts and Alito.
So in the end we have a messed up Supreme Court. Justices are no longer picked on tenure and qualification but how well they will follow the ideology of the president who appointed them. And since these justices selected are in the mid-40 to early 50s, these justices are legacies left behind by the president that will last for ages. Bush Jr. lucked out with Reinquist, a Chief Justice, resigning and replaced him with John Roberts, someone who was only 50 years old at the time. Bush Jr's influence on the court will probably be felt for another decade or 2.
In the end we are no longer voting for Presidents because in the end no matter what the President and Congress pass, it can always be overturned by the Supreme Court. The majority of the people voted for Barack Obama and even re-elected him giving him a mandate that they wanted Obamacare including free birth control for women. And yet it was Reagan, Bush Sr and Bush Jr that said 'Hell No' when their Justices over turned those appointed by Clinton, Obama.
In the end the Supreme Court is broken. It is no longer fair & balanced but a tool used by both political parties to sway ultimate decisions over the rest of the country even when the majority of the people have said otherwise. I mean heck the majority of the people said they wanted Al Gore as president but the Supreme Court decided they wanted Bush instead.
I highly doubt we will ever get a Supreme Court like the one that passed Roe V. Wade. That was a generation ago when justices made decisions based on Constituion and not on who appointed them to the bench.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Hugo Black (Roosevelt appointee) was at one time a member of the KLAN in ALABAMA! He said he joined the Klan to get votes when he was a senator. And yet he was a liberal. (My father, who was an attorney, told me this.)
Eisenhower regretted nominating Earl Warren; he thought Warren was too liberal.
Four Republican-appointed justices voted that the constitutional rights to privacy and due process applied to consenting same-sex partners.
[url]http://www.pbs.org/wnet/supremecourt/future/landmark_lawrence.html[/url]
The Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, ruled that the Homosexual Conduct law was unconstitutional and overturned the conviction of Lawrence and Garner. The Court ruled that the law violated the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause because that clause protects a substantive right to personal liberty in intimate decisions. The Court argued that its decision in Bowers, which ruled that the Due Process Clause does not confer a "fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy," was misguided. At issue here was not "the right to engage in homosexual sodomy" but "the right to privacy in the home" and "the right to freely engage in consensual, adult sex." In the words of Justice Kennedy, "When sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring." That personal bond between adults, as acted upon in the home, is a liberty protected by the Due Process Clause against the states.
The Court also rejected Bowers' method of identifying rights that deserve Court protection against the state. The Court argued that "history and traditions," i.e., America's historic laws, "are the starting point but not in all cases the ending point" in identifying the existence of such rights. From Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) to Roe v. Wade (1973), fundamental rights have been construed broadly, so even activities largely banned by America's laws, such as abortions, may be constitutionally protected. And even when America's "history and traditions" are examined, it is clear that American antisodomy laws have rarely been enforced in the home and did not single out same-sex couples until the 1970s, and that more states are repealing their antisodomy laws. In fact, by 2003, only four states enforced sodomy laws against homosexuals. In her concurring opinion, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor argued that because the law prohibited homosexual sodomy and not heterosexual sodomy, it was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause. The majority did not join her extension of Equal Protection rights to gays.
Lawrence v. Texas was a paramount case in two regards. First and most obviously, the ruling established that consensual and private homosexual sex is part of a substantive right to liberty as protected by the Constitution. Second, and less obviously, Lawrence held that "fundamental rights" (i.e., "substantive due process," or activities implicitly protected by the Constitution) are really broad principles of liberty under which numerous and disparate activities may be protected. This was a stark departure from the Court's conservative methodology in the 1980s and 1990s, which found evidence of fundamental rights only in activities the laws themselves substantially protected ("history and traditions"
. In the end, therefore, Lawrence v. Texas both protected the privacy of the bedroom and renewed the Court's power to identify individual rights above and beyond those historically protected under the law.
[url]http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2002/2002_02_102#sort=vote[/url]
...you'd get one from me. 
