The scope of presidential power during wartime. The ethics surrounding end-of-life decisions. These weren’t easy issues; as much as I disagreed with Republican policies, I believed they were worthy of serious debate. No, what troubled me was the process—or lack of process—by which the White House and its congressional allies disposed of opposing views; the sense that the rules of governing no longer applied, and that there were no fixed meanings or standards to which we could appeal. It was as if those in power had decided that habeas corpus and separation of powers were niceties that only got in the way, that they complicated what was obvious (the need to stop terrorists) or impeded what was right (the sanctity of life) and could therefore be disregarded, or at least bent to strong wills.

在战争期间，总统的权力范围是否过大。结束生命的决定符不符合道德标准。这些问题可不是闹着玩的，尽管我不认同共和党的政策，但我坚信，值得和他们认真的讨论一下。不，其实使我感到烦扰的是讨论的过程（或缺少讨论过程），因为白宫和它在国会的拥护者将反对意见“蒸发”了，管理国家的章程失去了效用，我们对此没有固定的模式或标准可以采用。仿佛是当权派已经决定了，人身保护权和政权分离好是好，但是妨碍到了政府的工作，政府称这些权利将明显的事（扫除恐怖主义的必要）复杂化了，或是阻碍去做正确的事（生命的神圣），因此就可以忽视这些权利，或者至少是，在强硬的意愿之下使对方屈从。


The irony, of course, was that such disregard of the rules and the manipulation of language to achieve a particular outcome were precisely what conservatives had long accused liberals of doing. It was one of the rationales behind Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America—the notion that the Democratic barons who then controlled the House of Representatives consistently abused the legislative process for their own gain. It was the basis for the impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton, the scorn heaped on the sad phrase “it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” It was the basis of conservative broadsides against liberal academics, those high priests of political correctness, it was argued, who refused to acknowledge any eternal truths or hierarchies of knowledge and indoctrinated America’s youth with dangerous moral relativism.

当然，讽刺的是，这种忽视规章和耍手段来达到一种特定结果的方式，正好是保守派长期以来指责自由派的说辞。在纽特.金里奇（Newt Gingrich）的《美利坚契约》（Contract with America，指1994年11月大选前由367名共和党国会议员候选人联名签署提出的一项立法议程。该契约列出10项法案，共和党人发誓要在1995年1月开始的众议院会期最初100天内，就这些法案进行辩论并付表决。他们的目的达到了）成功的背后有一个基本认识——在当时，如果是民主党权贵控制了众议院，一向都会滥用立法程序来达到自己的利益。这也是发起弹劾总统克林顿的诉讼的原因，对那句糟糕的辩词“这取决于单词‘是’是什么意思。”的潮水般的嘲笑声。这也是保守派从侧面与自由派学术抗争的原因，那些在政治上正确的领袖人物（这种说法还有争议）拒绝承认任何永恒真理或知识是有层次结构的，并且向美国的年轻人灌输危险的道德相对主义。


And it was at the very heart of the conservative assault on the federal courts.

而这正是保守派言语攻击联邦法院的核心。


Gaining control of the courts generally and the Supreme Court in particular had become the holy grail for a generation of conservative activists—and not just, they insisted, because they viewed the courts as the last bastion of pro-abortion, pro-affirmative-action, pro-homosexual, pro-criminal, pro-regulation, anti-religious liberal elitism. According to these activists, liberal judges had placed themselves above the law, basing their opinions not on the Constitution but on their own whims and desired results, finding rights to abortion or sodomy that did not exist in the text, subverting the democratic process and perverting the Founding Fathers’ original intent. To return the courts to their proper role required the appointment of “strict constructionists” to the federal bench, men and women who understood the difference between interpreting and making law, men and women who would stick to the original meaning of the Founders’ words. Men and women who would follow the rules.

广泛地控制法院，特别是控制最高法院，已经变成一代保守派激进分子梦寐以求却永远无法得逞的事。他们强调，并不只是因为他们将法院视为最后的堡垒，支持堕胎合法化、支持平权措施、支持同性恋、宽容罪犯、放宽规章制度、并且反对宗教的自由主义精英优越论的防御工事。根据这些激进分子所说，倾向自由派的法官将自己凌驾于法律之上，他们的宣判并不是基于《宪法》而是自己的一时喜好和偏好的结果，他们想办法使教科书中并不存在的堕胎或男性肛交合法化，暗中破坏民主进程，歪曲开国者的原意。如果要使法院回归到它们正确和传统的角色，我们必须要指派“精确地了解美国宪法的”联邦法官，要求他们明白诠释法律和制定法律的不同，能够严格遵循制定宪法者的用词的原意，必须按规章行事。


Those on the left saw the situation quite differently. With conservative Republicans making gains in the congressional and presidential elections, many liberals viewed the courts as the only thing standing in the way of a radical effort to roll back civil rights, women’s rights, civil liberties, environmental regulation, church/state separation, and the entire legacy of the New Deal. During the Bork nomination, advocacy groups and Democratic leaders organized their opposition with a sophistication that had never been seen for a judicial confirmation. When the nomination was defeated, conservatives realized that they would have to build their own grassroots army.

保守派对这种情形有极为不同的见解。由于保守的共和党人在总统选举和议会选举中获得了利益，很多自由派将法院视为唯一阻碍激进派行动的机构，认为法院抑制了公民权利、妇女权利、公民自由、环境控制、教派与政府的分离的发展，没有很好地解决“新政”遗留下来的全部问题。在博克提名事件中（Bork，保守派，他被里根提名为最高法院法官，但在其后激进派与保守派的斗争中，提名被驳回），倡议团体和民主党领导者组织了反对活动，提出了从未在批准法官的程序中见到的诡辩。当提名被驳回后，保守派意识到，他们必须得创立自己的草根军团。


Since then, each side had claimed incremental advances (Scalia and Thomas for conservatives, Ginsburg and Breyer for liberals) and setbacks (for conservatives, the widely perceived drift toward the center by O’Connor, Kennedy, and especially Souter; for liberals, the packing of lower federal courts with Reagan and Bush I appointees). Democrats complained loudly when Republicans used control of the Judiciary Committee to block sixty-one of Clinton’s appointments to appellate and district courts, and for the brief time that they held the majority, the Democrats tried the same tactics on George W. Bush’s nominees.

从那时开始，每个政治阵营一直都声称自方渐渐取得了进步（保守派代表是斯卡利亚（Scalia）和托马斯（Thomas）法官，自由派代表是金斯伯格（Ginsburg）和布雷耶（Breyer）法官）和退步（保守派的奥康纳（O’Connor），肯尼迪（Kennedy），特别是苏特（Souter）法官渐渐走向中立路线；自由派代表是里根和老布什总统所任命的下级联邦法院法官）。当共和党运用对司法委员会的控制，来阻止克林顿总统对高等法院和联邦地方法院法官的任命时，民主党大声抱怨，并且，在民主党控制了国会的短暂时间里，他们对小布什总统的任命也开展了同样的策略。