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Thursday, April 7,1994
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Wednesday April 6th through Sunday April 10th.
NATION/WORLD UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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Court forecast could be cloudy
Clinton's appointee may carve out niche
By Richard Carelll The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Harry Blackmun's successor will join a dominant Supreme Court with no dominant consensus builder and no obvious ideological direction. History suggests a new member is not likely to change that mix very quickly.
New associate justices, no matter how chummy or ideologically on fire, don't exert much political power beyond their votes on the nine-member court.
President Clinton last year hailed his first high court appointee, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as a forger of alliances. But it's too early in Ginsburg's tenure to know if she'll live up to that billing.
ANALYSIS
Consensus-builder is a description
that also could fit George Mitchell, the Senate's Democratic leader. A former federal judge who's not running for re-election, Mitchell is mentioned as a possible court nominee, along with Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and others.
"There's an opportunity for a new appointee to carve out a niche—becoming an intellectual leader and part of a dialogue with (Justice Antonin) Scala, Northwestern University law professor Martin Redish said yesterday.
The political power seems to rest with three less-ideological justices — David Souter, Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy.
Retired Justice William Brennan used to baffle each entering class of law clerks by asking them to name the most important constitutional rule. After rejecting as wrong all guesses, a smiling Brennan would stretch out his hand and state, "It takes five votes
to get anything done around here."
Getting those five votes is an exercise done behind closed doors, in quiet discussions and by memoranda. Blackmun yesterday described his 24 years at it as "a fantastic, intimate experience."
President Nixon called Blackmun a "strict constructionist" — someone who could be trusted to toe the conservative line. Three years later, Blackmun wrote the landmark Roe vs. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide.
Blackman will leave a court that for years seemed on the verge of a conservative revolution in the law — one that would let states outlaw abortions, scale back affirmative action and allow a closer relationship between government and religion.
The court remains deeply split on those and other volatile issues, but it also is an institution increasingly content to dodge the limelight, to defer whenever possible to elected officials.
Pizza perpetrator to face charges
The Associated Press
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Alex Thomas may have eaten his way into the big house.
Thomas, 21, was indicted Monday on federal charges of fraudulently using other people's credit cards to order more than $5,000 worth of pizzas at a restaurant.
Thomas apparently got card numbers from guests at a hotel, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mike Whisonant said.
"I don't know exactly how many pizzas we're talking about," Whisonant said. "But he went to the restaurant 73 times and ordered four to six pizzas each time."
Thomas currently is jailed in Gulfport, Miss., on unrelated theft charges. Federal officials said they will bring him back to face the charges here once he is bailed out or released. Credit card fraud carries a maximum of 10 years in prison and $250,000 fine.
Bosnian Serbs propose talks concerning cease-fire
The Associated Press
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Bosnian Serbs proposed talks on a broad truce with the Muslim-led government yesterday, after stopping the U.N. commander from going to the embattled Gorazde enclave.
U. N. officials said they hoped to begin negotiations today on a cease-fire covering all of the former Yugoslav republic. There was no comment from government leaders.
Serb troops and the government army mostly have observed a truce around Sarajevo since Feb. 10; but fighting has raged between them elsewhere.
whose leaders are forming a new federation, has quieted central and southwestern Bosnia. So far, Serb leaders have rebuffed international efforts to get them to join the federation and are sticking to their goal of uniting their areas with Serbia.
A separate cease-fire between Bosnia's Croats and Muslims,
Ll. Gen. Sir Michael Rose, the U.N. commander for Bosnia, had wanted to personally assess reports that Goralez was about to fall to the Serbs.
U. N. officials said the fighting had killed 64 people, wounded about 310 and razed a dozen or so villages around the town of Gorazde. Ten people were wounded in shelling of the town yesterday despite Serb assurances the town would not be attacked, U.N. officials said.