(2 of 4)
Rigorous attention to the limits of this Court's authority is ((required)) because of the natural desire that beguiles judges along with other human beings into imposing their own views of goodness, truth, and justice upon others. Judges differ only in that they have the power, if not the authority, to enforce their desires . . . The most expansive reading of the leading constitutional cases does not remotely suggest that this Court has been granted a roving commission, either by the Founding Fathers or by the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, to strike down laws that are based upon notions of policy or morality suddenly found unacceptable by a majority of this Court.
Furman v. Georgia
WILLIAM BRENNAN
The influential dean of the liberal group, appointed in 1956 by Eisenhower
In a 1973 case holding that servicewomen have the same right to benefits for their spouses as servicemen do, Brennan reviewed the status of women.
Our Nation has had a long and unfortunate history of sex discrimination. Traditionally, such discrimination was rationalized by an attitude of "romantic paternalism" which . . . put women not on a pedestal, but in a cage . . . Indeed, throughout much of the 19th century the position of women in our society was, in many respects, comparable to that of blacks under the pre-Civil War slave codes. Neither slaves nor women could hold office, serve on juries, or bring suit in their own names . . . It is true, of course, that the position of women . . . has improved markedly in recent decades. Nevertheless, it can hardly be doubted that . . . women still face pervasive . . . discrimination in our educational institutions, on the job market and, perhaps most conspicuously, in the political arena.
Frontiero v. Richardson
BYRON WHITE
A 1962 Kennedy appointee, a centrist more often on the right than the left
When the court announced the newly required Miranda warnings in 1966, White dissented. Yet he strongly defended the court's right to be innovative
The Court has not discovered or found the law in making today's decision, nor has it derived it from some irrefutable sources; what it has done is to make new law and new public policy in much the same way that it has in . . . interpreting other great clauses of the Constitution. This is what the Court historically has done. Indeed, it is what it must do and will continue to do until and unless there is some fundamental change in the constitutional distribution of governmental powers.
Miranda v. Arizona
THURGOOD MARSHALL
Since his 1967 appointment by Johnson, liberalism's unwavering voice
In 1972, when the majority held that unanimous verdicts were not required in state trials, Marshall was angered